Sure, you've got the basic game, but the game is also fine tuned for changing up the setup to create more interesting multi-player situations. The lesson is that bases are powerful, but they open you up to attacks from your left and right, which is a nice, clever balance.Īnyway, so the other reason that this game shines above other Ascension clones is its versatility. I ended up losing that player on my left, as he was able to better focus on damage and healing himself. At which point both other players started ganging up on me, which they could because I had so many bases for the player on my left to shoot at. In my second play, I built as many bases as humanly possible so that I would have huge bonuses and an impenetrable shield against damage. After my first play, I was convinced that the game was unbalanced and bases were terribly over-powered. ![]() Something like this actually happened the second time I played Star Realms. In this sense, it can almost become a 2-on-1 situation against the player in the best position and nobody gets eliminated until they are no longer of use. ![]() Instead you'd want to focus all your fire power on taking out the right player's bases so that the left player has a greater chance to do massive real damage to him. So if you're in a 3-player situation where the player to your left is almost dead and your real competition is the player to your right, whom you can't harm directly, there is little point to actually knocking out the crippled player on your left. And you can attack the bases of the players to your left and right. Though you are only able to do actual damage to the player on your left with your attacks, players can also have bases out in front of them, which absorb damage and give the player a bonus every round until they are destroyed. Due to some nice balancing mechanics, even if you're the first person out, the end of the game is usually only a few turns away. Once a player's hit points are depleted, they're out of the game, and the last player standing is the winner.Īt this point, you might be thinking, "Player elimination? Blerg!" But, really, players don't typically start go down until the very end of the game. Whereas in Ascension attack power allows you to kill monsters to collect victory points, Star Realms has you using that attack power to directly attack your opponents - reducing their hit points (a sort of secondary currency). Star Realms, much like Ascension, has two main forms of currency - money, which allows you to buy new cards, and attack power. ![]() The first is the idea of direct competition. Because it is in the other aspects of the game where Star Realms makes some strong improvements. Of course I would still love to have more control over what gets added to my deck, but we'll just have to get over that aspect of the game. Yes, it is an Ascension clone, but where Ascension took a great game and made it bad, Star Realms has taken a bad game and made it.better? Yeah, definitely better. ![]() Have I mentioned I'm a fan of control?Īnyway, so why am I sitting here writing a review of Star Realms? Surely one of the endless supply of Ascension clones can't be worth my time? Well. To sum up: Ascension took the core deck-building mechanic of Dominion and replaced the one strategic element of having a choice on what cards with which to build up your deck and replaced it with something completely random and useless - a parade of cards from a randomized deck that you have no control over. All right, I'm pretty sure I've made it clear that I am not a fan of Ascension and the millions of Ascension clones that are constantly springing from the woodwork.
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