In the early days of deckbuilding games, one of the attempts at a versus deckbuilding game was Star Realms. Originally sold as a game in a small deck box, it has slowly received updates over the last 10 years, and largely not diverged from that small box (or packs) format. The most recent set, however, has expanded from those roots to deliver something bigger, and more ambitious.
To that end, Wise Wizard games brings us Star Realms: Rise of Empire, a legacy campaign game for 2 players that plays 30 minutes per scenario.
Gameplay Overview:
The basic gameplay is the same as you can expect from a Star Realms set. If you’re familiar with the game, very little will be surprising. As one of the earlier deckbuilding games, it borrowed from others and has been borrowed from since its original set in 2014. So even if you’ve never played Star Realms before, it is easy to pick up. You generate currency to buy better cards and power to attack your opponent and their bases, with the goal of reducing their Authority (a.k.a., health) to 0 before they do the same to you.
The primary addition to the basics that this set adds is three new factions. Traditionally, Star Realms has had four factions—Trade Federation, Star Empire, Machine Cult, and the Blob—which all have their own theme and flavor of abilities. Here, the first two are represented by the players and do not appear in the main deck (at least initially), and the second two do not appear at all. Instead, the main deck is comprised of the Consortium, the Kingdom, and the Scavengers. They have the standard ally effects from previous sets (abilities that activate when you play other cards of the same faction), as you might expect, but they also all do something when you acquire them, such as gaining attack or scrapping cards out of your deck.
Throughout the campaign, you have the opportunity to upgrade these new factions’ cards by paying an extra cost when buying them from the center row. When you do so, you apply both a sticker with a new ability, which covers the on-acquire ability, and a dual-faction sticker so that it will trigger ally abilities of your faction in addition to its own (for example, a Trade Federation player upgrading a Consortium card would end up with a Trade Federation-Consortium dual-faction card). You can only upgrade 20 of these throughout the campaign, so trying to upgrade the cards quickly is important, but you don’t necessarily want to just upgrade the first 20 that you have the opportunity to do so.
The campaign itself is the other big innovation of this set. It is played out over a series of 12 scenarios (or 13, if you have access to the extra 11b scenario from the Kickstarter). Victory points are earned for wins or for other objectives throughout the scenarios. Each scenario has two sides, depending on who won the previous game, and that winner typically is given a choice on the scenario card of which alternate rules will be used for the next game. Gradually, new card types and cards are added to the main deck over the course of the 12 games, and at the end, there’s some final scoring before victory points are tallied and an overall campaign winner is determined.
Game Experience:
To get it out of the way from the start, the biggest issue I had here was with what was billed the “legacy” aspect of the game. That is the card upgrades. As it works out-of-the-box, in games 1 through 4, each player has a unique set of upgrade stickers for 5 specific costs, with a base and a ship option at each cost. On each “line” you can only ever use one of the two: either base or ship.
For example, in the first game’s sheet, if you decide to upgrade a 5-cost base, you would not be able to then use that sheet’s 5-cost ship upgrade. You can score a “political victory” by using 5 upgrades from that game’s sheet, but if the game ends normally (or if your opponent scores a political victory), you can still use any unused upgrades in later games until you’ve used 5 from all your sheets.
The reason this struck me as problematic is that it is really fairly limited. The stickers just seem to be inserted, so it can be called a legacy game. There is an Infinite Replay Kit that has a deck with all of the possible upgrades that you can use in lieu of stickers. That it was so easy to do this way makes me feel like the stickers should have just been left out. Switching out the cards without stickers is just faster and easier (and completely resettable). All that said, the upgrade mechanic itself is fine. It creates some interesting choices, especially as you are running low on upgrade options.
As far as the campaign itself, it has some interesting concepts. The early campaign having a focus on the upgrades and the political victory, modifies it from the original game in a meaningful way. From scenario 5 on, events and gambits are introduced to gradually switch things up, but that middle part of the campaign was where it felt like it dragged. In many of the scenarios, the options presented for the scenario rules are somewhat minor.
For example, there was a scenario that reduced the costs of all bases by 1. This had a significant impact on how the game played out. Your strategies and choices are different in that situation, so that was a simple rule change that made for an interesting scenario. On the other hand, some would do things like just add Explorers to the players’ deck/hand, or set Starting Authority/hand size to different values. That has an impact on the start of the game, but it often didn’t feel like it was really a different or unique scenario.
That said, the final scenario did show what interesting scenarios can be like. I will keep spoilers to a minimum, but it does majorly switch up gameplay by changing your objective and how you think about approaching your turns. Also, narratively speaking, it was the most interesting of the story elements of the entire campaign. If the campaign dragged a bit in the middle, it did at least finish off with a bang that was worth the wait.
While the sameness of some elements of the campaign did hurt it, it was reasonably well balanced. Once cards have been upgraded and both sides have access to the ally abilities of the other due to the center row, the differences between the starter cards and what they can enable are negligible. Many games in the campaign could have gone either way, and it came down to who got their deck running best first, much like normal Star Realms. There’s also a catch-up mechanic starting with game 5, where a player behind is awarded progressively more gambits (like the original Gambits expansion) that help keep both players in the hunt until the very end.
The overall gameplay was as good as you expect from Star Realms. Fast-paced, a bit strategic, and a bit lucky. The on-acquire abilities do add an interesting element beyond the campaign. Being able to buy a card and instantly get a benefit is a space other deckbuilding games have explored, and it is effective here. Sometimes, you just need a little bit of extra attack! However, they seemed to pull back on the deck-thinning since all non-upgraded Scavenger cards can do it on acquire. This makes it a bit easier to have a bloated deck compared to normal Star Realms. Though in post-campaign games, that can be fixed with a customized center deck, as usual.
Final Thoughts:
There are two aspects to this set: how it functions as a legacy campaign game, and how it fits in as the next Star Realms set. On the latter, it does very well. If you enjoy Star Realms, this is a good next step to pick up. On the former, however, is where it is a little lacking. The Rise of Empire campaign overstays its welcome given how simple the scenario modifications are, and the legacy aspect isn’t really very legacy. It’s legacy-lite, in a way.
I would have liked to see this fixed by maybe having fewer scenarios, but ones that are more dramatic changes to the standard gameplay. Maybe not as much of a change-up as scenario 12, but so that none of them feel like “well, this is just a filler.” Quality over quantity. As far as the stickers not really delivering on the legacy aspect, it felt like they needed to be more variety or just go with the Infinite Replay Kit in the box to streamline it. The upgrade system is good. Just the execution with the stickers falls a little flat.
It seems like there is more to tell, so I hope a future campaign endeavor could look at addressing these concerns. As someone who is solidly what MtG would call a Vorthos, I loved seeing the story preceding the original, and would love to see how the Blob and Machine Cult are fully introduced into the story to the point we see them in the original core set.
That’s not to sell the post-campaign gameplay short. The final deck after the campaign adds additional unupgraded cards, so there is a healthy balance of cards with ally effects and cards with on-acquire effects, which makes for good games. In the end, we did enjoy the campaign as well, but this post-campaign state is probably the set’s strength.
Final Score: 3 Stars – Really good as a Star Realms game, but the legacy campaign aspect does not deliver as well despite some definite highlights.
Hits:
• Scenario 12 is an unexpected curveball that almost redeems the campaign’s other shortcomings single-handedly.
• New factions and the ability to upgrade them lead to interesting choices. Even if the stickers are unnecessary
• It’s Star Realms!
Misses:
• Stickers feel unnecessary, added as a way to just call it a legacy game.
• A number of the campaign scenarios are not very interesting and add additional length for little added benefit.
