So who else here plays this excellent little sci-fi themed deck building game?
There's a physical version card game and a digital implemtation (like Sentinels!), and the demo verison of the app is free. You getall the cards in the demo but can only play against a pretty robust little AI, you have to buy the game to play multiplayer. It costs $5 to buy the game and one purchase gets it on all formats.
www.starrealms.com
If you want to challenge me my Star Realms name is LtUlman
I am imprimis5. Just a heads up, I hate the Gambits. I don't mind the extra cards that the Gambit pack adds, but the Gambits themselves are awful.
I like the idea behind the Gambits but think they are very swingy, getting both the "+2 trade" and "buy something less than 4" can lead to a huge advantage (which I can still manage to turn into a loss).
The ships and bases it adds are a lot of fun, new tactics to play with even though they fall along similar faction lines.
You sure about the spelling of your name there Craig? I just challenged imprimis5 and it said there was no such opponent! (And I both typed and copy pasted to check if I made a mistake)
Whoops! No 5. Just imprimis.
Asynchronous play is a great thing for app games like this. I have the physical version of Star Realms, but the digital version looks like a pretty good investment, too.
Is it me, or is that game almost exactly Ascension, but in space?
Deck builders all have a certain resemblance (“bucks” and “fight” resources, a central pool of cards to buy/fight, etc.), but Star Realms is much more about direct PvP action than Ascension is. It’s quite a bit faster as well, with significantly different card effects, rules, and gameplay.
So, “similar to” would be a much better description than “almost exactly” alike. Give the free version a try! (Ascension has a good digital version as well)
Uh oh. (I would describe Ascension as “like Dominion, but…not good.”)
I’m always happy to try something new, though, and a free app is a low barrier to entry. 
Interesting. I understand the appeal of Dominion, but I would describe it as “like Ascension, but…not fun.” 
Dominion is like taking Yatzee and for no reason turning the numbers into camera and actor icons and say it is a game about making movies.
There is no theme, just pasted on images because otherwise it would be a fancy UNO game.
Ascension adds more types of points to Dominion, which ups complexity and randomness. Again the theme is little more than pasted on images to give names to star points and red points.
Deck building the deckbuilding game is a joke, but it has more substance to the theme than either Ascension or Dominion. GSF or even the silly Mr. Card Game are better examples of using the deckbuilding mechanic to make a game with a theme.
Pasted on theme with no substance annoys me, which is why I don't play deckbuilders much, and why I take the time to come bug innocent people with my rants.
I am guessing you are not a big Reiner Knizia fan.
Oh, I've played both Star Realms and Ascension. And I was struck by the resemblance of those two as compared to others I'm familiar with, like Dominion. The 6-card centre row which is replenished, the two kinds of currency ("fighting money" and "money money"), the lack of Dominion's VP-only cards in favour of cards that do stuff and are worth VP as well and cards that give VP in the form of tokens from a central pool (or remove "HP" from your opponent, which feels incredibly similar to me).
Basically the core of the game didn't feel different enough for me to warrant owning both. In fact, if someone had said, "I know, let's retheme Ascension into a space game! We'll have to make a few minor changes because copyright, but we can keep most of the rules the same. And let's directly fight each other instead of having a central VP pool. That'll work." they'd probably end up with something very like Star Realms.
Sure, the card effects are different. But so are the card effects in the Ascension expansions, and they are still obviously Ascension.
Not that I'm criticising Star Realms, or saying people shouldn't play it. It's a good game. But it's interesting to me that it seems to get much more buzz than Ascension when the only major difference is the theme. I wonder why that is?
Interestingly, Reiner actually starts the design process with the theme. Somehow he manages to create games where the theme feels pasted on despite that. I don't know how he does it!
And Tigris and Euphrates is a masterpiece. His games are hit-and-miss with me but I love that one.
Sadly I haven't played his stuff enough to have a valid opinion.
I will say that I am fine with games where the theme/setting could easily be changed, many good games could be about very different subjects if you wanted, but when theme is completely unnecessary to the game but is given lip service, it annoys me.
Reiner Knizia games, from my limited exposure, seem closer to that category, and it only annoys me when the chosen theme doesn't fit.
Take Settlers, that game needs a theme, the theme fits well enough, and they don't push the theme further than mechanics support. Similarly Power Grid and Ticket to Ride don't bother me.
Yeah, I get that Dominion’s theme is…thin. There’s no particular reason why Actions aren’t Power Cells and Victory Points aren’t Quadrilithium Crystals. Or whatever. What appeals to me about that game, though, is that it does the “simple rules, emergent complexity” thing really well - and I think Ascension didn’t.
On the subject of deck builders and theme, has anyone here tried Apex, the Theropod Deck Building Game? You play as a carnivorous dinosaur species, hunting, evolving, and competing with other predators (NPC and other players). It has one of the better single player modes I’ve seen in a card game, too. And the card art… Mmm, dinosaurs.
Anyway, the Kickstarter for the first expansion just wrapped up.
Agreed about Ascension vs Dominion. Dominion is basically Spotting Combos and Working Out How To Pull Them Off:The Card Game, and I prefer that to Ascension's You Just Bought A Mediocre Card and That Revealed An Amazing Card That Your Opponent Can Now Buy That Will Help Them Win:The Card Game. I'd like Ascension much more if there was less randomness, because it's really hard to plan. I've built awesome "buying stuff" decks because there's a lot of high-cost cards on the board, and once they were gone nothing came up but monsters, and me with my rune-heavy deck that is now useless. I do like both games though.
There's a fun Zombie retheme of Dominion available as Print and Play on Board Game Geek!
But for me I hate it when there's a special themed name for something that already has a well-known generic and intuitive name. MtG's graveyard for trash/discard pile, library for hand/deck/whatever the hell library means, crystals for mana/magic points/spell points. Sure, they add flavour, but at the cost of making me have to remember what they mean every single time they come up, and I'd much rather be giving my attention to the actual game rather than learning another "language". (Reminds me of a small child I babysat once as a teenager, who had a massive screaming fit because I couldn't provide the "noonoo' they demanded because I didn't know what it was - this was in the 90s so I couldn't even call the parents on their mobile/cell to ask. Turns out they meant a dummy/pacifier, but I didn't learn that until the parents came home and the child and I had had a rotten evening.)
I hate it when fantasy books use “normal” names, but just change the spelling. Or when they use the exact same concept but change the name, just to change the name.
It doesn’t take 3 months to do, it takes 3 moons.
(On the subject of the thread, my Star Realms username is also metlarcturus, should anyone wish to challenge me.)
If there's a solid lore behind a fantasy world's terms, they can be an interesting and flavorful inclusion. In a non fantasy example, a samurai novel that uses a sprinkling of important Japanese words. Otherwise, it's a lazy shortcut for adding a fantasy feel to your writing. And there are plenty of offenders.