Star Realms is a non-collectible deck-building card game, primarily suited for two players (though multi-player is possible) with a science fiction theme and easy core mechanics. Each player starts with his own small deck and 50 authority (life). The first player to reduce his opponent’s authority to 0 wins.

Card play provides resources, combat damage, and boosts to your authority (life).

• You use the resources to buy new cards to add to your deck. But first, in general, they go to your discard pile and so take time to be available.
• You use the combat damage to reduce your opponent’s authority.
• You add boosts to your own authority, making it harder for your opponent to win.

In your turn, you may play all of your cards. At the end of your turn, played cards and purchased cards go to your discard pile, and you draw new cards from your deck. When your deck is exhausted, you take the discard pile, shuffle it, and that’s your new deck.

Most cards belong to a faction. Some cards have a basic effect and an additional effect that is available if you simultaneously play a card of the matching faction. Therefore, making your purchases has some strategic depth as you want to be able to trigger additional effects, but you also don’t want to focus only on one faction.

Some cards trigger an effect when you buy them. It’s important to also maximize these effects, but it can be tricky.

Some cards are bases and these, when played, stay on the table and continue to have an effect each turn unless your opponent destroys them. One type of base (outpost) even protects you by taking damage before your own authority is hit.

There are several games using the same key mechanics but with a different twist. This version is a campaign game of twelve scenarios with the following features:

• Each player takes either the Star Empire or Trade Federation. Each starting deck is slighly different.
• During play, you can upgrade your purchases and align them with your faction. This is done by applying stickers to your cards.
• In each of the first four scenarios, you get a new set of upgrade stickers. In these scenarios you can also win by being the first to utilize five upgrades.
• If your opponent wins four or more scenarios, you get one gambit for every victory over three he has. Gambits are typically one off benefits that reduce the cost of buying bases or add to damage of certain cards, and so on.
• At a certain point random event cards are introduced. They do exactly what they say and tend to affect both players.

Roy and I just finished the twelve scenario campaign game of this Star Realms product. In the early scenarios, I built up a decent lead. But Roy was the clear winner in the second half and finally edged me out 11-10 in the final reckoning.

I suspect that, in a sense, I was penalized for being first to four wins as that gave Roy access to the gambits. They weren’t cards with big effects, but they were a definite advantage. By the time I got some, the pendulum had swung.

The events were not too powerful and added some surprise and variety to the game.

We enjoyed playing the game and it held our interest so that we were keen to complete the campaign. However, as Roy pointed out, once we had done the upgrades in the first four scenarios, the game seemed to lose its focus: there were no more new sticker sheets and the victory points available for being the first to upgrade 20 purchases didn’t seem much of an incentive.

The scenarios did a reasonable job of presenting a different type of game, but truly it’s all about how quickly you can kill your opponent. The exception is the last scenario. Spoiler alert! In the twelfth scenario, both players have to join forces to fight the Blob. The Blob uses different mechanics to generate damage against the players and there are some interesting challenges. That scenario, for me, was better than most of the latter half-dozen.

Basic Star Realms is fun. This version was also fun. It could have been better with a bit more work done on some of the scenarios, though. The physical quality of the game is very high. The rules are clear and easy to understand. I Have had more than my money’s worth because I played through to the end of the campaign. So, if you think you will manage to copmplete the campaign, I’d recommend it. Otherwise, not.

For more information about the game, see here.