Well balanced deck-building customization game featuring battles in the deep of space? Sign me up twice.

^{As usual, feel free to skip to the 'Buy If' section at the bottom.}

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Out of my entire game collection so far, Star Realms represents the greatest bang for my buck. As of this writing it's about thirteen bucks for a deck on Amazon. Each deck supports two players, and up to 6 can play (3 decks).

Moreover, there are different game modes available depending on the amount of players.

We won't go into the 6-player mode and some of the more exotic side modes (such as Raid, where 1 player is a boss that the other players, the "raiders", try to defeat and Hunter, where players may only attack players next to them and are restricted in how they may attack). We'll stick to the main game mode (essentially a free-for-all), because otherwise I'd be reviewing several significantly different games and the article would be enormous and unweildly.

The main game of Star Realms consists of players duking it out for galactic supremacy. Each player starts with 50 authority. These are basically your health points in the game. When you run out of authority, you're out of the game. The last person standing wins.

Star Realms is a deckbuilding game in the same vein as Dominion. And, much like Dominion it is a self-contained game. Made by the makers of Magic the Gathering, these self-contained games were made as a response to one of the biggest problems with deck building games: starting players are totally screwed until they spend a small fortune and a lot of time.

With Star Realms you don't have to buy a starter deck, then another deck, then realize that the deck you bought doesn't go well with the one you have and buy another. To be sure it has several expansions, but these are all optional. For 12 bucks USD you have a complete game that you can play with one other person (buying the same deck again will allow you to play with up to 4 players).

^{Each turn you have limited coin to buy cards.(Source)}

Each player starts the game with 2 vipers (which will soon become your bane) and 8 scouts. They shuffle these cards and place them face down, drawing five each (accept on the first turn, where the person going first only draws three). After each turn, cards go into a player discard pile. When a player has drawn all their cards from the player deck, the discard pile is shuffled into a new deck. Scouts are a resource card, which enable you to buy cards from the trade row.

This is part of the true genius of Star Realms and part of what makes it stand out from other deck builder games.

The trade row is a row of five cards drawn from the main deck before the game starts. Players buy cards from this deck using resource cards (the cost of each card is in the upper right-hand corner), which they then add to their own deck to make them stronger. This gives the game a level of interactivity far beyond merely attacking and defending. When you see your opponent buying a card, you can take a guess at the strategy he's trying to go for. Maybe he's trying to get cards from a certain faction in order to get the faction bonuses some cards have. Maybe he's going defense heavy, stockpiling bases (which we'll get to in a second). Or, maybe he's going attack heavy.

Based on that strategy, you may want to adjust your own.

^{Imagine big ships constantly birthing little ones and you begin to understand the concern the Blob faction causes other factions. (Source)}

Star Realms features four different factions, each one specializing in something different. There's the Blob faction, who specializes in overwhelming enemies with cards that allow you to draw more cards, and which features high damage.

^{Imagine America in World War II and you begin to understand the Federation faction. Always building new things when you destroy old ones, and wealthy up the wazoo.(Source)}

The Federation is all about damage recovery and overwhelming resources. Those green symbols on the card represent how much Authority is recovered when that card is played. Note that some cards in each faction have a faction symbol next to a colored number. This means you may only use this ability if another card of the same faction is played that turn, and is the ingenious way Star Realms pushes players to specialize in only one or two factions.

^{Star Empire faction is the most annoying of the factions.(Source)}

The Star Empire faction is all about constantly added pinpricks of damage and player sabotage.

^{Machine Cult faction is like a small but effective guerrilla force in space.(Source)}

Machine Cult faction is all about efficiency and versatility. It's the best for combining with other factions, by far. You can easily get rid of excess cards and take advantage of powerful cards from other factions.

Each faction feels different in a way that matters. You make important decisions as you desperately try to out buy and out maneuver your opponents. The colorful, beautiful artwork of the cards makes each game an absolute joy (although I'd recommend getting sleeves, mine are already showing a bit of wear). Often, between turns, I'll find myself admiring the artwork.

So, what's the verdict on Star Realms? Well...

Buy If:

1.) You want to play an easy to learn game.
2.) You want to play a gorgeous game that can scale as high as you would ever need.
3.) You want a versatile game with other game modes available (when there are 3 or more players).
4.) You're curious and interested in games such as Magic the Gathering, but don't want to spend a billion dollars.
5.)... Buy this game.

Don't Buy If:

1.) Card games are utterly repellent to you and you aren't even willing to give one a try.
2.) You can't stand space themed games.
3.) You have no soul.

Conclusion

.... Buy this game. It's too much fun, and at a price point of 12 bucks, what risk are you really taking? This is usually the point where I'd recommend other games, but since Star Realms is the best deck builder I've played so far I'm pretty sure you won't like the others if you don't like this one.

And, as always, all proceeds from these posts go towards more board games!

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