Other people have already covered the mechanics pretty well, so let's just dive right in. A friend of mine came back from Origins with a copy of Smugglers. I mean, how could he not? Spaceships, smuggling, Han Solo analogies, aliens, more Han Solo references, how could you pass it up?

Here's what I like about it:

- The art is all really good, I like it a lot. It has a really good combination of shiny, minimalist game graphics (graphic design elements, not really art), computer generated ships, and hand drawn characters and aliens. All of it looks good and adds to just the right amount of cheesyness needed for a smugglers-in-space game.

- The theme elements and such are all pretty good. From the different characters, to the planet card anecdotes, to the different equipment and such, it's all pretty cool. It's enjoyable just to go through and read all of the cards that come with the game.

- In my world view, no game passes muster without combat. This one does have it, so it's safe. Perhaps more important though is that it's not really a combat game, while nor is it entirely a trading game. It does a good job on this count of conveying the feel of smuggling in space---it's not really a fighting job and combat's not the focus, but there's some combat involved.

- The game has a lot of interesting choices, and they have lasting consequences. Do I just keep on trading and mind my own business or do I try and steal some stuff from one of the other players? Do I accept the Crime Lord's offer and risk getting in big trouble? Do I dump my cargo to escape this pirate or do I take him on? Do I trust player 2 enough for us to meet up and exchange goods without him attacking me? These all make for neat decision points, and they do have real consequences. For example, getting stuck with a huge bounty after a botched Crime Lord offer is a big deal, and you'll pay heavily for choosing to accept it. On the other hand, it could have made you fabulously wealthy, so it made sense to take it.

- The end game mechanic of making the Koroth run is awesome. Part of that is the Kessel Run reference and part of it just the slight shift it makes in the theme/goal from being the richest smuggler to being the best, which might not be totally about money. I also like that it sort of caps the game, there's no continually collecting money until all players are eliminated or something like that. However, I do like the ideas for short-game variants of "Play till someone has X credits" or "Play for an hour, richest wins."

- Bonus points to Playus Maximus for DT Strain, the designer, being here and on their boards answering all questions, and hopefully incorporating appropriate points into both the expansion and their future games.

The solid decision-making combined with the good art and theme elements makes this a good game. However, there are some problems (nothing's perfect). Roughly going from minor (e.g. production things) to serious (gameplay things):

- The board. Everyone complains about this, and I think I totally understand why they did it, but the material quality of the board's not cool at all. I don't even mind the flimsyness so much, but rather the fact that it's in two pieces. It just drove me nuts that it kept getting slightly misaligned and such, and I wasn't the only one playing whom it was bothering. Note however that the cards and some other components are excellent.

- No $10 dollar bills? Not an earth stopper, but kind of annoying to keep having to draw two fives. The 1ks are basically irrelevant given the 500 credit bills (I can't imagine that you'd ever need them, given how many 500s and 100s there are), so they could have easily been 10s instead.

- Any game with money could really use a Monopoly-style bill tray. Expensive and annoying to produce, I know, but it would be nice.

- There's no nice, "official" way to keep track of how much has been sold to a planet with a special event going on (AFAIK). We wound up putting bills under the planet card, but that was a little cumbersome. I suppose you're supposed to write it down but that's not cool. I can sort of see why chits weren't provided, given that you may need a lot of them (e.g. for that planet we had at one point which had a famine, a war, and a festival all going on at once. we still don't know what they were celebrating), but it would be nicer.

- Ditto the spaceship sheets. Some chits, blocks, something, would be cooler than writing everything down.

- This is partly a materials question and partly a rules thing---what happens when a planet is on a nebula sector? Do players have to stop there? If so, how do you know there's a nebula there given that you're not going to remember and the planet chit does a pretty good job of hiding it?

- The rules are in general pretty well written and put together, however the notion of "being in combat" and such could be just a little clearer, e.g. that when you uncover a pirate card you're "in combat" and lose your turn unless you can flee. The way the rules are written, it makes sense because you "encounter" players or planets after moving, and may go into combat as part of encountering a player. It's not as clear for the destiny cards that you're in this special sort of encountered phase, which may or may not bypass the rest of your turn.

- Having seven planets on the board is odd whenever you have to randomly choose one of them (i.e. you can't just roll a D6). The mechanic given in the rules is clunky, slow, and I'm not even convinced it's statistically correct (although I haven't thought about it at all). We wound up grabbing a D8 and re-rolling on 8. However, we're also considering playing with only six planets and using the seventh slot for those times when an extra one comes out (e.g. Crime Lord offer). This is related, both positively and negatively to some of the issues regarding randomness and choices mentioned later. I would be curious to see what the designers say about why they chose seven planets and what might be the effects of reducing that.

- Getting a bounty placed on you is crippling, which is good, but there seems to be few ways to recover from it, which is bad. If you fail a Crime Lord, you're going to get a serious bounty put on you head, which severely limits your ability to visit many planets. As far as we could tell (hopefully we didn't just miss something obvious in the rules), there isn't really a way to get rid of it except to go to jail. It would perhaps be cooler if the bounty reduced over time, perhaps a fixed amount each turn, so that you could over time straighten up your act and interact normally. Note that this would preserve the relative effects of large bounties versus small ones. Again, probably something the designers talked about so I'm curious what they say. In our playing, it just felt overly crippling to get a huge bounty.

- It's perhaps too easy to upgrade the ships, and everyone basically winds up with very similar capabilities very quickly. Some differentiation among the ships would be cool. Although our group hasn't tried it yet, I really like the suggestion from the designers that each ship be capped at 26 points so each player has to make decisions as to what systems they wish to prioritize in upgrading.

- Randomness. There are a lot of random elements going on in the game. Some, like the destiny cards, are cool and I like. The destiny cards do a lot to spice things up and add to the theme, without the luck of the draw dominating your choices and becoming the prominent factor. However, some I don't like. For example, that planets go away whenever something is sold to them. That makes it very difficult to plan routes and juggle materials, as they can disappear pretty much on a whim. This is one of the reasons the special event cards are cool, because that planet then sticks around for multiple sales, so you can plan around that. It would be interesting if planets stuck around a little longer. For example, upon placing a planet you might roll to randomly determine how many rounds a planet would be available to sell at, and then have a counter keep track of when it would be going away (closing for business).

- One final note that's not a plus or a minus is that there is a lot of simple calculating that goes on in this game, and that goes a long way towards making it sort of lengthy. The players all have to be careful to try and plan/calculate ahead, as well as being willing to let people work on things in the background . For example, there's lots of things you can do to keep the game moving, such as "Guys, I'm going to upgrade my engines on this planet." and then figure out exactly how many points/how much to pay while the next person starts their turn. Regardless, though, it is a game which requires some patience and a willingness and ability to play for a few hours.

Despite that list being kind of lengthy, I think this is a very good game. The production issues are all pretty much understandable for an independent publisher and they by no means ruin things. The gameplay issues such as bounty and disappearing planets are more serious, but still not detrimental. In addition, I think some house rules (hopefully with suggestions from the designers, e.g. in the expansion) could eliminate or greatly reduce those problems. Great art & theme, solid decision making, and a good mix of combat/non-combat and random events, all make for a good game. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.