Science Fiction

Star Realms is a spaceship combat deck-building game by Magic Hall of Famers Darwin Kastle and Rob Dougherty (Ascension Co-founder).

Star Realms is a fast paced deck-building card game of outer space combat. It combines the fun of a deck-building game with the interactivity of Trading Card Game style combat. As you play, you make use of Trade to acquire new Ships and Bases from the cards being turned face up in the Trade Row from the Trade Deck. You use the Ships and Bases you acquire to either generate more Trade or to generate Combat to attack your opponent and their bases. When you reduce your opponent’s score (called Authority) to zero, you win!

The game consists of:

One 80 card Trade Deck
Two 10 card Personal Decks, consisting of two Vipers and eight Scouts each
10 Explorer cards
18 double-sided Authority cards for keeping score
Two Rules Sheets

Factions

Each of the cards in the 80 card Trade Deck is a Ship or a Base belonging to one of four factions: The Trade Federation, The Blobs, The Star Empire or The Machine Cult.

Trade Federation

In the far future, the more traditional governing bodies of the human race have been replaced with corporate leadership. The earth and its surrounding colonies are ruled by a group of corporations called the Trade Federation. The Federation’s policies are focused around trade and growth, but especially in profit and prosperity for those at the top of the corporate ladder. While they prefer to deal with other star realms using trade and diplomacy, they have a large defense branch dedicated to protecting the Federation’s trade and other interests.

The Blobs

These mysterious creatures are the first alien life forms encountered by the human race. Most of the initial encounters consisted of human colonies being completely obliterated. On the few occasions that a Blob ship has been recovered somewhat intact, the only biological remains found inside have consisted of a gelatinous mass, thus leading to the moniker, “The Blobs”. While for several years all encounters between humanity and the Blobs have been extremely violent, there is currently some limited trade between various Blob factions and some of the more daring human traders.The Blobs are best at generating massive amounts of Combat and at removing undesirable cards from the Trade Row.

Star Empire

The Star Empire consists primarily of former colonies of the Trade Federation. These colonies were on the outer edges of the Federation. Not only did they feel used by the corporations, but they felt the Federation failed to give them adequate protection from the Blobs. As a result, one ambitious colonial governor was able to unite several colonies into an independent empire under his control, one with a strong military, both for warding off the Blobs and for discouraging the Federation from trying to reclaim their lost colonies. The Star Empire is a combat oriented faction that draws lots of cards and makes the opponent discard cards.

Machine Cult

A cluster of industrial mining worlds were completely cut off from the Trade Federation by the Blobs. With the threat of annihilation by the Blobs always looming and no contact with the rest of human space, these worlds were forced to take drastic measures. Soon a cult of technology arose, focused on using advanced technology, robotics and computerization to create strong defenses and a powerful military that belied their relatively small population. Since their leaders believed their salvation lay in technology, technology soon became their god and their religion. 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.

Playing Star Realms

​When you play Star Realms, you will be able to acquire and use Ships and Bases of any and all of the four factions. Many cards have powerful Ally abilities that reward you for using Ships and Bases of the same faction together, however.

As you acquire cards using Trade, you put them into your discard pile, to be later shuffled into your personal deck. When you draw Ships, you do what they say and they get placed into your discard pile at the end of your turn. When you draw a Base, you play it face up in front of you and may use its abilities once every turn. In addition to Combat being the way you reduce your opponent’s Authority to zero and win the game, it’s also useful for destroying your opponent’s Bases. Some Bases are designated as Outposts. Your opponent’s Outposts must be destroyed before you can use Combat to attack your opponent’s Authority directly.

Star Realms is easy to learn, especially if you’re familiar with deck-building games, but it’s a game that takes time to master. Each time you play, the game is filled with various strategic decision points. Should I take the best card for me or the best card for my opponent? Should I focus on taking cards of a particular faction or on taking the best card available? Should I be focusing on acquiring more Trade or more Combat? Should I attack my opponent’s Base or their Authority? These are just some of the many choices you’ll be faced with. New players needn’t agonize over these choices just to play, but as they become more advanced players, they will find this depth of strategy leads to great replayability.

Space Cadets: Resistance Is Mostly Futile is the first expansion for the original Space Cadets game.

A variety of new missions, map obstacles, and enemies are included to challenge both novice and veteran crews. Even missions for just two players! Blast parasites, save a space station and stop the mighty Star Kraken, an enemy unlike any you have faced before.

Also Cadets, be sure to welcome your new crew mate, the Science Officer! Any difficulty can be bested with one of his helpful inventions... If only they weren't made of parts of the ship.

Survive lasers and tentacles and the well-meaning Science Officer tearing apart your ship and prove that you deserve the title of a true Space Cadet!

Smash Up: Monster Smash consists of four new factions for Smash Up: vampires, mad scientists, werewolves and giant ants. Tremble before the power of the ants!

Vampires gain power as they destroy your opponents' minions
Mad Scientists have released death in the form of powerful creations and can empower various minions
Werewolves have explosive power to beat down opponents
Giant Ants work as a great hive mind, spreading their power around as necessary to ensure their atomic-age victory

Smash Up: Monster Smash can be played on its own as a two-player game or combined with other Smash Up titles to allow for up to four players to compete at the same time.

Integrates with:

Smash Up

The Battle at Kemble's Cascade is a board game adaptation of a classic shoot 'em up video game. In the game, which is played out on a scrolling space backdrop, the players take on the roles of brave space pilots sweeping around in nimble yet powerful fighters, searching the asteroid clusters for universal glory and ancient technology. Players compete to obtain the most glory, with glory resulting from carrying out missions, finding lost treasure in asteroid clusters, and destroying alien entities, not to mention other players.

In the game, players fly through an ever-scrolling space setting, which is represented by rows of cards. Each turn, the bottom row is removed and a new row is added to the top. Players move their spaceships and resolve effects continuously, performing actions such as collecting power-ups and money, fighting alien cruisers and titans, blocking and shooting other players, and dodging asteroids and black holes. The players need to balance the use of their ships' energy as it's used for both absorbing enemy fire and boosting their movement speed and fire rate.

The game includes missions and achievements as well as a mechanism called "threat level" to keep everyone in suspense throughout the whole game. Threat allows players to enjoy the satisfaction of both shooting wildly at each other and dodging the hundreds of bullets raining down from enemy fighters and other players.

All player ships are fully upgradeable with four different weapon classes, engines, shields and more. Each player must buy the upgrades and navigate the path that best fits his chosen strategy in order to successfully complete his missions and attain the most glory.

News from the depths! The AquaSphere is a research facility stationed deep below the ocean's surface, and your skilled team — consisting of an engineer, a scientist, reprogrammable bots and exploratory submarines — is trying to gather as much data as possible.

The game board in AquaSphere has two main areas: A research station comprised of six sectors in which your scientist conducts experiments and a headquarters where your engineer supervises preparation of the bots. During each of the four game rounds, you take several turns, and on each turn you either:

Use your engineer in the headquarters to program a bot; each round you can choose from three of the seven actions.
Have your scientist bring a bot to a sector to perform an action.

Through actions such as improving your lab, sending out submarines, collecting crystals, and examining octopuses, you expand the abilities of your team or gather knowledge points, which are necessary to win. Additional challenges result from the limited size of your lab, which is your personal stock; you can increase the size of your lab, which makes life easier, but this costs valuable time.

AquaSphere is a challenging game of strategy and tactics with different paths to victory that requires planning in advance as well as skillful use of short-term opportunities.