In 2008, a card game called Dominion was published, and an entire genre of card games was born. Known as deckbuilders, these games give players a small deck of cards to start with, and allow them to add to and customize their deck each turn. By fine tuning the contents of your deck, you can amass the most points, or defeat or your foes, or, most importantly for us here at Co-Optimus, work together to defeat a common foe. We’ve covered Pathfinder Adventure, Legendary (the original Marvel heroes and the Encounters set), and today we go into deep space with another deckbuilding game: Star Realms.
Star Realms sets itself apart from other deckbuilding games in several ways. Many deckbuilding games take quite a while to set up and play through, with a lot of sorting into piles after the game is over. Star Realms takes only a few minutes to set up, and generally less than a half hour to play, depending on the number of players. Just remove the base decks for each player, shuffle the rest of the deck, and lay out five cards, and you are ready to begin. Star Realms is also portable and inexpensive; the box fits in your hand and retails for just $15, and supports two players. Add another base set for each two players. Though the cost, package, and playtime are all less than other deckbuilders, the gameplay experience most certainly is not.
There are three basic currencies (for lack of a better term) that players accumulate during the game. The deck players begin with contains Scouts, which provide Trade, allowing you to purchase new cards, as well as Vipers, which provide Combat, which is needed to attack. Each turn, there are five cards available for players to buy, adding them to their deck. Ship cards provide Trade, Combat, or Authority, which is perhaps the most valuable resource, as when your Authority is reduced to zero, you lose the game.
The trade deck also contains Bases, which stay in play from round to round, providing all manner of benefits. All bases have a defense value, and can be attacked. Outposts are a special type of base, providing protection to their owner. Your Outposts must be destroyed before you can be attacked, and if your opponent cannot muster enough Combat to destroy an Outpost, they will be quite unhappy indeed, as you will survive more turns and have the chance to buy ever more powerful cards. These game mechanics are quite simple, and very easy to understand, especially for those with experience playing other deckbuilders. Yet the variety of cards and their interactions provide a deep experience for even veteran gamers.
One reason for this meaty gameplay is the four different factions in Star Realms. The Blobs excel and generating high Combat values, while the Trade Federation is less warlike, and best at protection and defense. The Star Empire is militaristic, specializing in drawing extra cards and forcing opponents to discard, hampering their resource generation. Lastly, the Machine Cult, rather appropriately allows tuning of your deck by removing undesirable cards from it, minimizing the occurrence of a bad hand. When you play multiple cards of a particular faction in one turn, they become more powerful, encouraging you to limit your purchases to one or two factions each time you play.
Star Realms was designed as a competitive game, and it certainly can be quite cutthroat. Often, the best play is to purchase a card that your opponent wants, just so their deck will not perform as well in future turns. Some of the cards that cost more Trade are incredibly powerful whether or not you have other cards of a matching faction to support them. On the other hand, if you can pull off a chain of cards of one faction, the stacking effects can be back breaking. It is not uncommon to do dozens or damage in one ultimate turn, ending the game in one glorious fell swoop.
Cooperative play comes to Star Realms with a pair of cards from the Gambit expansion, which is due to be reprinted later this month. Instead of fighting against one another, co-op players are given the task of reducing the Authority of a Co-Op Challenge boss. There are two such bosses in the set, the Nemesis Beast and the Pirates of the Dark Star. These bosses act by taking a card from the Trade row, and adding it face down to a stack. The number of cards in the stack is the amount of Power available to the boss that turn. In addition, a new card is drawn, and depending on the faction of this card, all manner of bad things happen to each player. The boss has a scaling amount of Authority based on the number of players. Like the standard Star Realms, these Co-Op Challenges are intuitive but still require a high degree of teamwork and strategy to defeat.
Given the ease of setup, inexpensive price, and the sheer amount of solid gameplay packed into such a tiny package, Star Realms is a must play for fans of the deckbuilding genre. It is easy enough to pick up that you can play it with even non-gamers, while still providing a serious challenge, particularly with the Co-Op bosses, for those who have played dozens of deckbuilders before. Star Realms is a fantastic experience, and belongs on the gaming shelf of every tabletop gaming enthusiast.