Star Wars: Super Teams - A Racing Game for All Ages

A Star Wars board game with a clear plastic window and chibi ships should not be this interesting, and yet here we are. We grabbed Star Wars: Super Teams as an impulse buy expecting a throwaway family game, then ended up genuinely enjoying how much decision making it squeezes out of a super simple ruleset.

We talk through the full flow of this card driven racing game: teams and player counts, how a shared deck means you might move an opponent’s ship on your turn, and why that makes timing the real skill. Then we dig into what makes the track matter, including hyperspace doubling, asteroid fields that cap your movement, and the Maw style section that can punish sloppy moves. The bonus cards push it further with rule breakers like ignoring hazards, flipping the Maw into a boost, or using a grappling hook to ride another ship’s big jump.

We also put it in context with other racing board games, touching on the Downforce vibe without the betting and why this one earns a spot as a lightweight tabletop game for kids, newcomers, or a late night filler. If you’ve been looking for an approachable Star Wars game that plays in about 30 minutes and still lets you feel clever, this might be the sleeper pick for your next game night with the family. Subscribe for more board game reviews, share the episode with a Star Wars fan, and leave a review telling us what game surprised you the most.

Transcript

Welcome And The Surprise Purchase

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. We're back, and better than ever. Joining me, as always, my trusty co-pilot, Clayton Gable. How are you doing, Clay?

SPEAKER_00 0:26

I'm doing great. And I feel like a real pilot because I've been playing Star Wars Super Teams. Is that what it's called? It feels like such a cheesy name that I don't I think it's wrong, but no, that's what it's called. Uh, it's called Star Wars Super Teams. I think this was put out by Zygomatic. Honestly, I've never heard of the publisher, I've never heard of the designer, Max Gerchambeau.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Okay. Okay. Can we can you you know give me just a sec? Let's let's click on Max. Let's see what Max has been up to.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yeah.

First Impressions Of The Toy Box

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Sonic Super Teams, Mosquito, Admiral, Carousel, Struggle. I've never heard of that one. That looks like a classic game. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

So it looks like this might be a re-implementation of Sonic Super Teams. Checks. Based on that. But yeah, I I honestly, this was an impulse buy. I was in the store and I saw it and I thought, this looks like some mass market junk, honestly, because it's got the box with the like clear little window holes where you can see these neat little toys in there. So it's got all these different Star Wars ships. And I was like, I don't know. This looks like some straight up junk. I did a quick Google of it. I saw it was a racing game and it was a lightweight. And honestly, the price was decent. It was like$29. And I was like, you know what? Even if we play this once or twice, I'm willing to give it a try. I like racing games. This might be something me and the kids would enjoy. So I got it. And I've played it a couple times now. And I'm happy to report that I find it to be a lot of fun for what it is. Yeah. I mean, so in this game, you have teams of different racers. There, there's the red team, which I think is the rebellion. I'm gonna botch this. There's the yellow team, which might be more rebellion ships. It looks like Coruscant Cruiser. You know what that's called? The one with the C. I think it's called like a Corvair or Corvette, maybe. Okay. Yeah, so the yellow one's got that. Then there's the Empire with with the Death Star and the Star Destroyer. Yep. And then another Empire faction with the TIE Fighter.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yeah, you got two TIE Fighters, and then you've got the the Death Star and Yeah, it's probably the core star here.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

I think that's what that's called.

Meet The Teams And Player Counts

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah. And then yeah, you've got the hammerhead, and looks like looks like a Clone Wars type ship. I don't know.

Card Play Drives Every Ship

Hyperspace Asteroids And The Maw

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Somebody's gonna correct me and tell me in the comments, but yeah, tell us in the comments what these ships really are. But I know that they belong to the good and the bad guys, and you're racing, all right. And this game is so simple. Everybody and it changes a little bit based on the player count. So at a two-player game, you control two different teams. So I would be the green and the black team, and so which is a total of four ships, then because each team color has two ships, and then the other person would play the red and the yellow team, and they have their four ships. So at two players, you're each playing two different teams, four ships. At three players, everybody plays one team, and then you exclude a ship. Okay at four players you play as teams with another person, and so me and Isaac were playing as the red and yellow teams. I was red, he was yellow, and Mary and Mason were the black and uh green teams. So yeah. So we were essentially the game ends when your team crosses all its ships across the finish line, you win. How this works is there's a big deck of cards that move all the ships, and you shuffle them out, you shuffle them up, deal them out to all the players, six to each person, and then you go through and you play one card at a time. So you'll have a handful of cards. You might not have any cards in your hand that are your ship color at all. So you play a card and it might be moving somebody else's ship. And that's where this game, what is otherwise super breezy, breezy, lightweight, adds a little bit, a tiny bit of decision making because the timing of when you decide to play those cards really matters. Because if you have a really good card for somebody else's ship, you might wait, and this is probably a good time to take a break from that and talk about the different spaces on the board. So ultimately it's just a little racetrack you're racing around, but there are some special spots on the board that come into play. So there's a spot called hyperspace. And if you start your ship's turn on the hyperspace spot, you get to double the movement of the next card played to that ship. So if I play a six next time, now it's a 12. There's an asteroid field space. If you start your turn in the asteroid field, you can only move one space no matter what card you play. And there's these red little belts called mall, I think spaces. And you play a card that doesn't get you all the way through those red spaces, you just come back to the beginning right before those red spaces. Oh. So if I have a bunch of cards in my hand and I see, you know, I have a six for Mary's car, Mary's color, I might play that when I see one of her ships is in an asteroid space because I can play that six and it only moves one space. So you're simultaneously trying to play cards that'll move your ships at advantageous times, and play cards that will move other people's ships when you can maybe stick them into an asteroid field or put them into that mall space and have them move back a little bit. So that's pretty much the game right there. There are other spaces on the board that let you draw bonus cards, which a bonus card will do things like, hey, uh, and when my ship gets moved, I can treat it like it was a hyperspace spot and double the movement. There's one that lets you ignore the effects of an asteroid field. There's another one that lets you pretty much reverse the effect of those mall spaces. So if you would land in the middle of it, you instead go to the far end of it. So it propels you forward instead of backwards. And then there's one that's like a grappling hook that if somebody shoots by one of your ship's spaces, you can play the grappling hook card and just ride along with them, and they kind of tug you along to wherever they end up going. Nice. So yeah, that that is the basics of the game. So you have those six cards, you're gonna have to play them all. So everybody will play six cards, then you get dealt a new hand of six cards, you play those out. So you just keep going through that cycle. When one ship crosses the finish line, everybody gets dealt out two new bonus cards. So it kind of speeds up the game when you get these bonus cards because they you know let you move faster, let you ignore things, and that first ship crossing the finish line kind of triggers that.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Talk to me how you how do you navigate these like split spaces? Because there's spaces on the racetrack that have both hyperspace and asteroids, or asteroids and a blank space. So how do you how do those come into play?

Bonus Cards And Branching Spaces

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Yeah, so if it if you're the active player, you get to decide. So if I moved Mary's ship, I might decide that that one, her ship goes to the asteroid space. And if I was moving my own ship, if I land on that space, maybe I decide I go to the hyperspace side of the thing. Okay. So the next time somebody plays a card for my ship, it gets doubled instead of moves one. Nice. Yeah, it it seems it's so it's so breezy to play. Like I said, I mean, on your turn, you literally just play a card and move a ship. But there is enough to think about that keeps it engaging enough for a little family game or just like a filler kind of end-of-night game. You just want to, you know, drink a beer, eat some pretzels, and race some ships around a track. I don't I don't hate having it. I mean, it's it's the lightest of the racing games I have. It kind of reminds me a little bit of Downforce if there wasn't the betting, because in Downforce you also have a hand of cards that you play and you can move any of the cars, but you're trying to, you know, obviously move the ones that you bet on. So a little similarities to that, but again, it's lighter than any of these. By a long stretch, you can play this with anybody, and they could pick it up pretty darn quick.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Nice. And it's what a cool game for like youngins that are getting into Star Wars for the first time.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Yeah, with it with it, are is that what they're called in Star Wars Youngins, or are they young younglings, youngling? The younglings getting into Star Wars, and although it does look cheesy and mass markety, the toyetic factor is kind of nice, having those plastic little ships that race around the board. Those look cool out on the map, and they were fun to play with.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah, and it looks like I I just for kicks, I went into the Sonic super teams, looks very similar. You've got what, what, three, four different factions, and the spaces are like the coins, the question marks, which would be like your additional cards. There are spikes, there's like loop-de-loops that you go through, but this one does not have branching paths like the Star Wars one does. Oh I assume like when you get to those branching paths, you can pick one or the other. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Do you pick how your ship moves, or does like the person that played the card that moves your ship?

SPEAKER_00 10:55

The person that played the card.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Oh, okay.

unknown 10:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Because I saw like on those branching pads, like some of them, if I got played a card that moves my ship, they could send me into the Maw instead of across a hyperspace or whatever. That's that's kind of cool.

Racing Game Comparisons And Publisher Notes

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Yeah, I it it seriously, it you don't think it's gonna be fun when when you play it, but it you actually do kind of feel clever and you feel like, oh, okay, yeah. Take this, Mary. I just I just played your six and you only got to move one. That stinks, but it is, I mean, I had rounds where I got dealt my six cards and there was not a one card moving my my color of ships, so you know that could be frustrating, but I don't know that you can get frustrated in this game. It's like 30 minutes, and you can always do something that's kind of clever if you play your cards right, which I appreciate.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

So I just kind of researched Zygomatic because I was a little unfamiliar with other stuff that they had published, but they have the survive the island and survive escape from Atlantis. Oh, and then they also have Formula D, which is like kind of a younger version, eight and up of a racing game. Kind of looks like Heat, where you're like choosing the gear and moving your car along some path for the race, and there's like curves and stuff. It's like a downscaled version of Heat. So yeah, they have a little bit of a pedigree in racing games, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

I like racing games, me too. And I I they're so easy for people to understand what the goal is, you know. And I have so many that I like. And is this one really worth keeping around when I have the likes of magical athlete and I have heats and you know, thunder robe vendettas, but just for how light it is, and people know Star Wars, so it's a theme that somebody might be interested in playing. I I think is worth having as that just hey, here's your first racing game that's not shoots and ladders or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Yeah, rated at seven and up, so very approachable, very easy, a weight of 1.2 on board game geek. Like this is kind of a no-brainer, and you just gotta play your cards, and yeah, I love it.

Star Wars Lore And The Name

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Yeah, okay. So, yeah, that's that we don't need to belabor it here. I played Star Wars Super Teams, it looked like I shouldn't like it, and I liked it. I'm not gonna say it's the best game that there ever is, but there's a place for it in the world, and I think if you listen to this and it sounds like something you enjoy with your family, give it a try. It's really not that expensive for what it is. I might have paid twenty dollars just for the little figurines.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Yeah, I mean, from a collector's standpoint, like people love collecting ships for Star Wars, like they sell a thousand different lines of collectible starships, and I bet you that in those lines there's not chibi little starships that you can race around the galaxy, and yeah, that's what you get in Star Wars super teams.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Star Wars Super Team, what a cheesy name.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

They couldn't have come up with like Star Wars, I don't know, faction. They need what they should have done is they should have made this like a pod racing game where you had teams of pot racers. Oh, that would be cool. Like what is it, the Tuscan Raiders on the on the field, or like that would have been cool.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Yeah, I don't know how they left that untapped and they didn't even put the word race in there, just super teams.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Yeah, like if I'm if I'm just looking at the front of this box, it's got ships flying through space, got a big star destroyer in the back. Yeah, it says nothing about racing. You just uh fly around in super teams, sure.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Super teams, yeah. Super teams. Now you know what it is. If you see it, it's a racing game.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

That's what Star Wars is known for, is all the memorable teams that they have.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

What's your favorite Star Wars team?

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Obi-Wan and Anakin.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Okay. Infamously, like, we're at each other's throats and like almost killed each other, but sure, that's a that's a team.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

I like that tension.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Maybe like the bad batch, that's a good team.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

I haven't seen all that. I'm not up on the lore. Travis, you you do lapse around me with the lore. Have you seen the new Darth Maul series?

SPEAKER_01 15:36

I have not. I it was kind of waiting. It seems like it's well received. I know people are not entirely happy with how they have handled Darth Maul canonically, and they just the fact that he looks cool and had a double-bladed lightsaber, which is the first time that we saw it in theaters, like on the big screen, carried a lot of weight, but once he was killed and then came back with like robot legs, and it's kind of like Boba Fett getting swallowed by the sarlac pit. He just these kind of one-off characters that look cool and have a cool aura on screen end up being these like massive centerpieces for canonical lore.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

So yeah, that was big, that was a big deal. I remember, I mean, that was formative. Those movies were coming out when when we were like eight, nine, ten years old. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Impressionable, yeah.

Video Game Detour And Closing

SPEAKER_00 16:29

And I remember watching those lightsaber battles with Darth Maul, and just I probably saw that one in the theaters five, six times when I was a kid. Like I just kept going back. I thought that was the bee's knees. So I might have to check out the show.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Uh, if I might take a detour here for a minute, have you played like any of the Star Wars video games? No. Oh, well, there is a bounty hunter video game with Boba Fett where you're flying around with a jetpack and like fighting bad guys. They also have a Star Wars racer for the N64 that is pod racing. And you, it's like a kind of like a Mario Kart racer type, yeah. Uh, but you're pod racing, and it was kind of middling at the moment when it came out and struggling with N64 graphics, uh, but they are re-releasing a new Star Wars racer this year. So get up for that if you're into Star Wars video games.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

I'm into Star Wars Racing, otherwise known as Super Teams.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

All right, let's not belabor this any longer. This has been Star Wars Super Teams. I have been Travis, he has been your uh Starship Captain Clayton Gable. This has been Operation Game Night, and we are out of the way.