Star Realms

Star Realms

Designer(s)	Rob Dougherty and Darwin Kastle
Publisher(s)	White Wizard Games
Players	2 to 4
Age range	12 and up
Playing time	20 minutes
Random chance	Card draw

Star Realms is a card-based deck building science-fiction tabletop game, designed by Rob Dougherty and Darwin Kastle and published in 2014 by White Wizard Games. The game started out as a Kickstarter campaign in 2013. The goal of Star Realms is to destroy your opponent or opponents by purchasing cards using "trade" points and using these cards to attack your opponent's "authority" using your "combat" points. The game takes place in a distant future where different races compete to gain resources, trade and outmaneuver each other in a race to become ruler of the galaxy.

Star Realms is similar to other deck building games, like Ascension and Dominion. The game is marketed as portable and expandable, as it comes in a small box and contains only cards and no dice or markers.

Cards

The game consists of the following:

• One 80 card Trade Deck
• Two 10 card Personal Decks, consisting of two Vipers and eight Scouts each
• 10 Explorer cards
• 18 double-sided Authority cards for keeping score
• Two Rules Sheets

The cards in the core set are divided over four different factions or races, each with different benefits or strengths. There are also Unaligned ships, consisting of the basic cards and others without a faction.

• The Trade Federation, focused on trade and growth. Specializes in generating Trade and in gaining Authority. 12 ships and bases.
• The Blobs, mysterious alien creatures. Specializes in generating Combat and removing undesirable cards from the trade row. 11 ships and bases.
• The Star Empire, former colonies of the Trade Federation. Specializes in Combat and drawing new cards and to force opponent to discard cards. 11 ships and bases.
• The Machine Cult, a cult of technology focused on robotics and computerization. Specializes in removing undesirable cards and defending from opponent's attacks. 12 ships and bases.

All cards have a trade cost, which is used to determine how many trade points the player needs to buy the card. Cards have either a trade value or a combat value or both, giving the player a boost for purchasing cards or attack opponents. Many cards also have a special ability, eg. letting the player draw more cards to her hand or forcing an opponent to discard cards. Some cards also has the ability to be scrapped, which removes them from the game entirely but also gives the player some kind of benefit.

Cards are either ships, which are used and then placed in the discard pile at the end of the turn, or bases which are played and stay in play until they are attacked by an opponent and then discarded. Bases are either a base or an outpost. Bases have a grey shield, and provide some kind of benefit but no protection to the player's authority or other bases. Outposts have black shields and act as protection as well as any benefits. Outposts must be attacked first, before an opponent can attack the player or other bases. An opponents combat points must be above or equal to the base's shield value to destroy it and move it to the discard pile.

Setup and placement

The "game board" consists only of cards. Each player has their own draw deck to draw new cards from and their own discard pile where they throw used cards. In the middle of the table for easy reach is the "trade row" which holds the cards available for purchase. The trade row holds five cards at every time plus a deck of 'Explorers' cards that are always available for purchase. There is also a trade deck which holds unrevealed cards for purchase and a trash heap where players throw cards that are removed from the game.

Each player starts out with a starting personal deck of ten ship cards and 50 points of "authority" cards. Eight 'Scout' cards and two 'Viper' cards, the most basic ships. The authority cards indicate how much health the player has left.

Gameplay

Each turn the active player draws five cards from her own deck of cards into her hand. The player to start the game only draws three cards into her hand, to limit any inequalities from being the starting player. When it is her next turn she draws five cards to her hand as per usual.

The player then plays the cards from her hand in front of her, each card giving either a boost in trade, attack or special ability. At the end of every turn, all played cards are moved to the discard pile. When the draw deck is empty and a card needs to be drawn, the discard pile is reshuffled to form a new draw deck. New cards acquired by purchasing with trade points are first placed in the discard pile and then enter the game when the pile is reshuffled. When a card is purchased it is replaced in the trade row with a new card from the trade deck. If a card has a scrap symbol (a trash can) it can be scrapped and removed from the game. In this way, each player builds up their own deck of cards by adding cards from the trade row. Each drawn hand will give different opportunities for gaining trade points or attacking the opponents with combat points.

Winning the game

In order to win the players need to attack their opponents' authority using combat. If a player's authority is reduced to zero she is out of the game.

For an effective game it is important to balance your purchases of different factions. Some factions will give you more Combat, necessary for defeating your opponent, while others will give you protection or Authority to remain in the game longer.

Expansions

White Wizard Games have released six expansions plus a standalone expansion for Star Realms. Some expansions/promo cards were only available to backers of the Kickstarter campaign while other expansions are available to the public. There are some differences between the online Gambit expansion and the collectible cards.

• Star Realms: Crisis – Bases & Battleships
• Star Realms: Crisis – Events
• Star Realms: Crisis – Fleets & Fortresses
• Star Realms: Crisis – Heroes
• Star Realms: Gambit Set
• Star Realms: Cosmic Gambit
• Star Realms: Colony Wars
• Star Realms: United

Digital game

Star Realms has also been released as a digital game for Android, iOS, Mac and Windows.

There are 2 gameplay differences between the games:

1. The digital version has an unlimited number of purchasable Explorers while the physical card game only has 10 Explorers cards. Although the Explorers were always intended to be unlimited for most games, the 10 provided can replicate an unlimited stack by either reusing scrapped Explorer cards or in a game where players have run out of Explorers, the players can use a proxy or decide that players can't buy any more until somebody scraps one.

2. Cards with ally abilities that include draw effects trigger immediately upon another card of the same faction entering play, rather than at the discretion of the player.

The digital game offers the player to play against other players online or play scenarios of varying difficulty against an AI.

Awards

Star Realms has won many notable table top gaming awards, including:

2014 Golden Geek Awards (as voted by the members of BoardGameGeek.com)

• Best 2-Player Game
• Best Card Game
• Best Indie Game
• Best Mobile / Handheld Game

2014 Dice Tower Gaming Awards

• Best Small Publisher (White Wizard Games for Star Realms)
• Best Two-Player Game

2015 SXSW's Table Top Game of the Year

External links

• The publisher's official Star Realms website
• The Kickstarter campaign
• Star Realms on BoardGameGeek