It’s a brilliantly flexible, incredibly addictive game that’ll keep you coming back for more, for many years to come. There are numerous standalone expansions that add to the basic formula, such as Star Realms Frontiers – which features both co-op and solo modes – but the best place to start is definitely the standard, basic version of Star Realms.Įxcitingly, the expansions can not only be played on their own, but also combined with the basic game too – and if you do want to play with more than two players, you can do so by adding in extra decks. It’s fast paced, incredibly easy to learn and – with four factions in the basic game – near endlessly replayable, with a superb amount of balance and variety. Players seek to reduce their opponent’s Influence total to zero while keeping their own afloat. Starting with a fixed deck of ten cards, players take turns to buy new cards to add to their decks from a central marketplace, with money and attack power being added from cards played, then reset between turns.
Star Realms is a deck building game in a small box, playable without any extra components at all – even scoring is cleverly handled by a couple of cards for each player. In our number one spot, we have what I consider to be just about one of the most perfect and well balanced, self contained two player card games of all time.
