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A fun, enjoyable family friendly deck building game for Android, iOS and PC.
Star Realms is a fun deckbuilding game that is currently available for Android, iOS, and PC. The game is free but for a one time $5 purchase you can unlock the full version on all platforms. I think this is one of the best deals out there and very smart. I hate having to purchase the same game on different devices. If you enjoy deckbuilding games such as Ascension, then I can easily recommend Star Realms.
[Editor Note: Right now we are running a contest here at ARC and a physical copy of Star Realms is one of the prizes!]
So how do you play? Each person starts off with 10 cards and then a series of cards are placed in the middle of the board (Trade Row). Players take turns to grow their deck of cards into a powerful fleet of ships with the objective of destroying their opponents fleet.
There are 3 areas players will need to utilize:
- Trade: Used to acquire Ships and Bases.
- Combat: Used to destroy Bases and to attack your opponent’s Authority.
- Authority: Each player starts the game with 50 Authority. The goal of the game is to reduce your opponent’s Authority to 0.
Each player’s turn is broken into 3 phases:
- Main: Here is where you will play your cards, trade, setup bases, attack
- Discard: here you will discard any card needed
- Draw: When you are done, the current cards are returned to deck and new cards are
drawn for the next turn.
Now, within the game, each of the cards is a ship or a base that belongs to one of four factions:
- The Trade Federation: specializes in generating large amounts of Trade and in gaining Authority.
- The Blobs: are best at generating massive amounts of combat and at removing undesirable cards from the Trade Row.
- The Star Empire: is a combat oriented faction that draws lots of cards and makes the opponent discard cards.
- The Machine Cult: gains most of its power from being able to remove undesirable cards from your deck and from having a large number of Bases designed to defend your Authority from attack.
As you can see there is a lot packed into this game. It might sound a bit complicated from reading this but once you play a game or two, you should not have any problems.
Now playing the game and winning are two different things. To win, you will need to make a plan on what types of cards and what factions you want to try and use to destroy your opponent. Of course he is doing the same thing!
I really enjoy the game. It is very easy to learn and get into but will take some strategy and practice to do well.
When you unlock the full game you will be able to play against the AI at 3 different difficuly settings, play campaigns, and play against others online.
Looking for a great family friendly game you can play offline or online, then Star Realms is for you.
You can check out the video review of the card game here from Drive Thru Review
Download for iOS
Download for Android
