Fire Photon Torpedoes! (Review of Star Realms)

Star Realms is a deckbuilder where you are building up an army of space ships and space stations.  You can play the game cooperatively against others or cooperatively/solo against an enemy card.  You collect resources to buy new ships/stations and try to build up your attack power (called "authority") to destroy you foes.

Total Plays: 50 solo, 10 cooperative, 600+ digital

COMPONENTS
I’m not a card game sleeve-er, but if I had to sleeve one, it should be this game (but I won’t). It is looking a little shabby, but I don’t believe it’s from a lack of quality but due to a large amount of shuffling. I usually play this game on my tiny iPhone screen and so I often forget how much I love the artwork until I pull out the physical game and play it. 4/5

RULES
To be honest, I don’t know if I have ever read the rules to this game before. My brother-in-law introduced the game to me and after he taught it to me, I just knew it. It is a very simple game and all of the different actions and abilities are fairly self-explanatory. Even the solo/cooperative rules that change the gameplay aren’t difficult to figure out. I’ve also found this game extremely easy to teach other. 5/5
GAMEPLAY
Although I just said this is a simple game, it’s surprisingly complex for a card game. There are a lot of different strategies you can take with this game. Are you a base hoarder? Which faction(s) do you usually run? What do you use if your usuals aren’t available? Do you burn cards for their special abilities all the time or never? If you use them, when do you do so? That being said, it is very simple to pick up. It’s a deckbuilder: buy new cards, use the new cards, defeat your enemies. I really enjoy this game solo, it’s nice and quick but you can play it over and over for an hour. 5/5

REPLAYABILITY
After 600+ plays on the iPhone app of just the base game, the cards can get a little repetitive. But I don’t play that much of the physical game and I also have the colony wars expansion (not too mention the newest Kickstarter coming my way at the end of this year). I have lot of cards and I feel like I can go quite a few games without seeing a similar spread of cards. The two solo challenges that come in the game have gotten a little old for me though. I’ve done a few of the BGG challenges and I’m excited for the new solo challenges in the upcoming expansion, but that part does keep me from playing this game as often as I would. 4/5

FUN
If you haven’t guessed by now, I love deckbuilders. This game is fun. Who doesn’t want to have a fleet of space ships fighting for you? It’s easy to pick up and learn and you can get through one game in 15 minutes and then play more. I think it will be more fun with more solo challenges, but still a great game. 9/10

TOTAL SCORE - 27/30

Love this game.  Love it cooperatively and solo.  I'm not a big competitive gamer (which you may have noticed) and this is definitely a go-after-each-other type of game, but I do still like it that way as well.