Star Heroes
Due to launch next week on Gamefound, Star Heroes is an ambitious new trading card game (TCG) from The Space Collective that bridges the gap between TCGs and board games. Tho' you're collecting cards to build and enhance your factions, just as you might in a conventional TCG, the gameplay in Star Heroes has the feel of a highly strategic '4X' (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) board game.
We've so far only played Star Heroes as a two-player game but it can be played by up to four. We reckon it will lend itself particularly well to be played as 2 vs 2 team game. The players have their individual playing boards onto which they play their cards but the interactive gameplay takes place on a shared central board representing the solar system, albeit not as we know it... The game is set 500 years in a post-apocalyptic future and the sun, at its centre, is a Dyson Sphere with the space between planetary bodies divided into hexagonal regions. As you expand across the hexes so you increase the income you generate, using it to pay to play cards from your hand. It's a system that works well and is much more intuitive and satisfying that rival TCG systems that require players to 'burn' cards in order to play others.
Over the course of a game you'll be bringing space ships, outposts, crew and your eponymous Star Heroes into play, mostly to attack rival players. You win by eliminating an opponent's home planet, conquering all an opponent's zones (hexes), defeating five opposing Star Heroes or by being the first to accumulate 30 'Eternium' shards. Eternium is the reward set out on many of the cards for meeting the card's requirements. The multiple alternative win conditions mean that games aren't merely a mutual exchange of blows or a race to collect points; you can be trailing badly on other win conditions and still wrest victory from the jaws of defeat.
Aside from the unique TCG/board game hybrid gameplay, the standout feature of Star Heroes is the stunning artwork - all of it the product of human hands rather than AI. The Space Collective plan to launch a series of regular releases of card packs, along with playmats that will expand the game further out into space. The Gamefound campaign for Star Heroes launches on 3 November. Click here to find out more...
