Boxed Sets - these I got the most use out of in the sense of both were worn to death; boxes broken through use:
Adventures in Space: the original contains everything you need to get started - ship combat system, little paper-fold ship minis, star system generation rules. I spend lots of time fighting ships against each other. The layout is a little tricky with lots of leafing to-and-fro during use but by goodness did I get a lot of use out of these. I wrote up testing the ship combat rules last year if you want a sense of how it plays.
War Captain's Companion: more ships and an advanced set of 3D space-combat rules - I used all the lore expansion - ships, gear, etc - none of the systems stuff. It was worth it for more ships.
Reference Books:
Lost Ships - my favourite - after being teased in all the earlier sets about the 'lost' ship designs of the humanoids - here they all are! I liked this a lot, it felt like treasure at the time and was a solid expansion to the lore and to table-ready stuff. Your mileage may vary on some of the odder designs but this was my favourite reference book.
Complete Spacefarer's Handbook - the player focused one - lots of kits - some nice stuff like tips on how to run Spelljammer Campaigns, shiny foil printing and Spacefaring organisations but I was less impressed on how much of an 'adaptor' this book felt like; reference to other books, a whole section on how PHB spells worked when used against Spelljamming ships, it felt partly like an errata for other books to make them Spelljammer compatible.
Practical Planetology - I did not love this so much at the time - we got examples of fire, air, earth and water planets with the civilizations that thrive on them - what I wanted was generator rules to do this myself. With the wisdom of hindsight I see that I should have read these as guided examples and then gone away and done likewise. I have come to a later appreciation of this one.
Rock of Bral - the guide to the asteroid city of Bral - with lots of factions, a bunch of NPCs, building descriptions to go with the huge map of Bral that came in the core box set and some tips on setting a campaign on Bral and conducting space-combat engagements around it. I remember finding this interesting but it did not hook me as some others did - I think the old 'rogues gallery' approach never really my fire, I think I could have done with a little more like in the core book of 'hooks to do with this thing'.
Adventures:
Wildspace - the first adventure and I was underwhelmed - mainly because it is just set on Spelljammers, it does not really get the players using one, they are passengers, being flown about by others. The setting is cool, definitely recyclable but I did not figure I could ever cat-herd any of my tables into actually doing this.
Skull and Crossbows - an anthology of adventures, 3-5 pages per adventure split into 'Pirates & Corsairs', 'Relics & Hulks', 'Starfaring Races', 'Monsters of the Void' and 'Rewards and Revenge.' Self contained, easy to drop into an ongoing campaign with a little work to hook in the players. Has the old-school detachable cover that functions as a DM's screen and a poster which reproduces 8 ship plans which appear in the adventures.
Crystal Spheres - a chunky 64-page adventure where a fugitive prince requests aid to rescue his sphere-ruling house from a malign influence. There are great bits to this with voyages to different spheres, a witnessed space battle where the players take control of one side to give a sense of the space combat rules and a proper villain with a dreadful scheme but there is a fair bit of work to be done and a few of the tiresome "under no circumstances allow..." instructions found in old adventures. Don't tell me what not to do, give me some tips "to avoid spoiling X, do A, B, C". Epic stuff if you can make it work.
Goblin's Return - part one of the Second Unhuman War - starting with the players getting a mission from an elven Imperial admiral to go sign on with the resurgent goblinoid forces as mercenaries, infiltrate their base and figure out their battleplans. As typical of the Elven Imperial Fleet, failing to volunteer for this is not accepted. This module is effectively a space-base as a dungeon with the objective to poke about, learn the secrets and escape. Lots to like here.
Heart of the Enemy - the follow-on to Goblin's Return - a mcguffin hunt against enemy rivals in a strange crystal sphere, interesting stuff here - potentially very high tension given the stakes involved including the demonstrated competence of the bad guys. Some good space battle potential, new vistas to be seen and a nice wrap up with the solid possibility of fouling it up and failing to stop catastrophic consequences. Solid stuff, might require a little tweaking to fit the sensibilities of your table but I can see why this two parter is regarded as one of the greats.
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