How to Play Apollo: A Game Inspired by NASA Moon Missions

roll for crit presents how to play apollo in five minutes or less or more apollo is the cooperative space exploration game based on real nasa missions designed by jonathan gilmore and sarah addison and published by buffalo games your goal in apollo is to complete a series of flight steps and experiments using dice in order to successfully carry out a mission from nasa one player will represent mission control while the rest take on the roles of astronauts mission control starts with their own mission control screen and systems board along with a couple of dice and comms tokens mission controls board is placed behind the screen so that only they have access to it it features a number of sliders corresponding to various systems that will change and affect the game over time astronauts have an astronaut control board and flight damage board along with 5 black dice and 5 yellow dice to keep track of there is also a mission board along with its own unique set of mission and experiment cards one astronaut will be randomly chosen as the first player and receive the turn token then the game begins each round of the game takes place over two distinct phases the roll phase and the action phase first during the roll phase the astronaut with the turn token asks mission control how many dice they'll be rolling this is determined by the current position of the life support track at peak capabilities that means 10 dice if it crosses into level 6 that means 9 dice and so on all systems begin the game at their maximum level once mission control responds with a number of dice astronauts roll that number choosing which colors to leave out if the number is less than the full 10