Star Realms: Frontiers

This might be a short one. Or I might get lost in some random tangent and hold you hostage for a super long time. No telling what could happen from this point forward.

Honestly, I have no idea how long ago I talked about the first set of this game and I am too lazy to do a search for it right now. Yeah, I’m talking about the game Star Realms. It’s a deck building game with a science fiction theme (if you were wondering about all that). I’ve had the first card set for a long time, and I play it as an app on my tablet all the time. It’s really been one of my favorite card games for a very long time.

Yeah, there are a ton of expansions for the game and I don’t have any of them. But this is something I hadn’t even thought of. See, I recently picked up the Frontiers expansion of the original game. But I don’t know if you would ordinarily call this an expansion.

You can actually play this card set by your self. Yep, you heard that right. You can actually solo the entire dame. And I am sure you are thinking it would get boring paying like that. But the reality is, the game now has variations that can spice up not only solo games but also team based games.

But there is something more there that is standing out to me right now. They changed up the interactions of the cards. Where the original game was pretty straight forward, the cards in this set have new and unexpected ways of creating combos and such. It’s more than just the three different functions of money, attack, or authority, an added complexity that makes you think more about the strategy you are creating while you purchase cards.

Mind you, I haven’t gotten a chance to play the game against other people yet. So far I have been doing one of the solo missions and getting a feel for how the cards work. From what I have seen with the solo missions, they actually play like some of the missions I have played in the app. The game has ways of cheating that can be aggravating at times (even though it tends to be more akin to luck of the draw). But it sets you up to work for your victory.

And so, since I wrote that last paragraph, I have had a chance to work through another of the solo missions. So a little comparison is in order. The first one I played was the Automatons mission. This one has a feel of the Machine Cult absorbing different populations in its quest to take over the universe. The Boss deck pulls cards from the same deck that ends up filling the trade row. There is an escalation of power for each wave of ships and bases coming at you.

The other mission I have played is the Blob Assault mission. In this one the Blobs have a set list of cards in escalating power that are drawn each turn. The player deck is comprised of everything except Blob cards. I actually find this one a bit more challenging than the first one I played. Sure, you know what to expect, but you know what to expect. If the trade row isn’t working in your favor you will be overwhelmed in just a couple turns. One of the games I played recently actually went to the end of the blob deck. I won the game but it was a hollow victory. All I did was survive the assault. I was unable to strike a blow for the free factions of the universe.

The changes are interesting enough that I am tempted to pick up some of the other expansions as well as some of the complete decks. Being able to add new and better cards to an existing deck can increase the replay ability of games. Granted the random nature of Star Realms insures that it will never play the exact same way every time.

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