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.
The game consists of the following:
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.
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 attacking opponents. Many cards also have a special ability, e.g. letting the player draw more cards to her hand or forcing an opponent to discard cards. Some cards also have 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 in addition to any benefits. Outposts must be attacked first, before an opponent can attack the player or other bases. An opponent's combat points must be above or equal to the base's shield value to destroy it and move it to the discard pile.
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Wikipedia