In a recent game, I had a spread of planets, sort of in two arms, stretching from my Homeworld to the perimeter of my local space with minerals nicely distributed around the Homeworld and along my planetary lines; that allowed me to smoothly and rapidly develop. I did tout the use of the cardboard tokens as a strength, but the use of this material did provide a drawback as well.

When one starts playing however, it is outright evident what the game is and does, with many novices wondering why it took as long to explain the rules.And this aspect of game component sparsity was perhaps the biggest hurdle for me to overcome in deciding to purchase Space Empires.

Free time for gaming is such a precious commodity that players will not squander a minute of it on something that does not “grab” them on the first play-through. If you include all the Optional Rules (discussed later), this fiddly problem is eliminated via the Instant Technology Upgrade optional rule. When a Colony ship moves into the hex where a planet is located, it can immediately land on that planet and start the process. Players collect income, counted in Construction Point (CP) depending on their homeworld and colonies, their minerals, their worlds trading with one another (always in the confines of the same empire) and deduct the maintenance costs.

Each of the Scout ships has one movement to start and will be allowed to only move one hex each turn. A hit will reduce the Colony one step (ie: 2), so a Colony with 5 CP is reduced to 3 CP, 3 CP is reduced to 1 CP, and 1 CP is destroyed if hit.