Tag: star realms

2294: Partners in Space Empires

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Finally got the chance to try out the physical version of Star Realms today, and it turns out to be an excellent game that appeared to go down well with all four people who were playing it.

I was particularly interested to try out the physical version of Star Realms because it provides the opportunity to play in ways other than the head-to-head two-player default style that the computer and mobile versions offer. You need more than one deck to do so (one deck per 1-2 players) but since the game is not expensive in the first place, getting enough cards to play with up to 6 people is still eminently affordable, and probably cheaper than many other, bigger-scale games.

We played in two different ways: firstly as a “free-for-all” game in which anyone around the table could attack anyone else on their turn, including splitting their combat scores between multiple opponents if they saw fit. The climactic moment of this particular game came when my friend James scored a massive 34 points of damage on my friend Tom, taking him down to just 7 Authority remaining. Conveniently, the hand I had drawn for my next turn — I was after James — had exactly 7 damage worth of combat power in it, so Tom was swiftly dispatched, to our great satisfaction; Tom generally beats both James and me in most games, so it’s always a genuine delight to utterly destroy him.

Following that, we tried a team game in which two two-player teams face off against one another, each team starting with a single Authority pool of 75 instead of the usual 50. In the team game, both players on the team play simultaneously and have their own “in-play” area, hand, draw deck and discard pile, but can pool the Trade and Combat resources they accumulate by playing cards. This means that the game’s “ally” abilities (which tend to trigger when multiple cards of the same colour are on the table) can only happen within an individual team member’s in-play area, but players can pool their resources in order to more easily acquire expensive cards or deal significant amounts of damage to their opponents.

I particularly enjoyed the team game; the dynamic was very different to the free-for-all multiplayer and two-player head-to-head variants, and the cooperative aspect worked well. In many cooperative or team-based games, “alpha player” syndrome rears its head, with one player tending to dominate discussions to such a degree that teammates go along with whatever they say without any real input. In Star Realms, however, the fact that each player is building their own deck — and teammates are mutually agreeing on how to proceed — allows for them to feel like they’re taking independent actions, but also to feel as if they’re contributing to the overall effort. Discussion and collaboration is essential to success — and can lead to some spectacular combos of cards hitting the table — but at no point did I feel like one player was dominating the table talk, nor did I feel like the game was especially unbalanced when played in this way. In fact, there are many aspects of the game that actually feel more balanced when played in a team game — certain abilities appear much stronger and more useful than they do in the free-for-all or head-to-head game, and specialising your deck with particular colour cards becomes even more important than it already is.

Star Realms was a resounding success, then, which I’m pleased about. It’s a simple, quick and easy to set up game that has a nice blend of theme and mechanics. I’m looking forward to playing it some more in the near future.

2289: Star Realms: Space Cards

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There are certain themes that, it seems, just lend themselves to adaptation into tabletop games, and space is one of them. It’s perhaps a side-effect of the overlap between sci-fi nerddom and board game geeks, but whatever the case, it works; there are some fantastic sci-fi games out there, including Eclipse, Race for the Galaxy and Space Alert, all of which are games I like very much.

Recently, I’ve discovered a new game called Star Realms which I find particularly appealing due to its simple mechanics and short play time. I initially discovered it through its mobile and PC versions, but have since picked up some physical packs to play it with friends, since it’s a very quick and expandable game that doesn’t require much setting up and only takes about 20-30 minutes to play, even with newbies.

Star Realms is a deckbuilding game. For the uninitiated, this means that it’s a game where you start with a small (fixed) deck of cards that provide you with some basic abilities, and over the course of the game you add to this deck to gradually make yourself more and more powerful, hopefully culling some of the less useful cards from your deck as you progress. It’s not the same as a collectible card game or CCG (in which you buy starter decks and booster packs of cards, then customise your deck to your liking before taking the whole thing into battle against another player), nor is it the same as a living card game or LCG (similar in execution to a CCG, only without the random chance element of collecting cards through booster packs) — it’s a game where you gradually build your deck as you play rather than before you start, and thus it’s a game where all players start on equal footing rather than those with rarer or more powerful cards having a distinct advantage.

In Star Realms, there are three resources to manage. Authority represents your overall “life”. You start with 50, and if you run out, you lose. You can, however, go over the initial maximum of 50 because it’s eminently possible to gain Authority as you play as well as lose it. Authority is a constant resource that you don’t dispose of when you discard a hand of cards.

Combat and Trade, meanwhile, are disposable resources, which means that they’re temporary and tied to the cards you play on any given turn. The basic mechanics of the game run thus: cards that you play with Trade on them add points to your Trade pool for the round, which can then be used to purchase cards from a selection of six available in the middle of the table. When purchased, these cards are added to your discard pile, so they’ll be shuffled into your deck whenever you reach the end of your current deck cycle. Meanwhile, Combat cards, likewise, add points to your Combat pool, which is used to directly deal damage to your opponent or destroy their bases. Outpost-class bases must be destroyed before you can damage your opponent; for those who have played Hearthstone, they’re a bit like cards with the Taunt ability.

Many cards then have various special abilities on them that trigger via various circumstances. Ally abilities, for example, trigger if you have two or more of the same “suit” on the table. Scrap abilities give you a one-shot powerful ability in exchange for permanently removing the card from the game. And in some cases, cards simply provide you with a helpful ability (such as drawing extra cards, or being able to scrap useless cards from your hand or discard pile to trim your deck) when you play them.

It’s a simple and elegant game that in execution is quite similar to Ascension, but the directly adversarial nature of it — you’re fighting each other, rather than trying to gain the most points — makes it a little more interesting to me, and almost gives it the feeling of a CCG like Magic: The Gathering or its ilk. This is entirely deliberate on the part of the game designers, of course, a couple of whom previously worked on Magic. By stripping out the collectible part of the game, however, Star Realms becomes accessible to everyone by putting everyone on an equal footing at the start of the game. It’s also expandable with additional decks and expansions that add interesting new cards to the game (such as Gambits, which give players super-special abilities they can trigger when they need to) but the base game is a lot of fun, and well worth a look for those who enjoy adversarial card games but perhaps balk at the idea of ponying up for booster packs for games such as Hearthstone and its ilk.