GE - Another review from rec.games.trading-cards.misc

[HammerJohn]

Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.misc
From: 113...@cygni.ho.att.com (Nick Sauer)
Subject: Galactic Empires review (primary edition)
Message-ID: <D12DJ...@nntpa.cb.att.com>
Organization: AT&T
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 1994 15:26:06 GMT
Lines: 104


In short: Go out and buy this game! I have been playing the Intro release
of Galactic Empires for awhile now. I have also been telling people that
it is the best multi-player collectible trading card game out there. With
the release of Primary Edition this absolutely locks GE in as a game that
is very much worth playing.

The first thing that is noticeably different in primary edition is the new
artwork. If the artwork turned you off GE before (apparently a fairly
common
complaint) you should take a look at Primary Edition. Scrye issue four
has
a lead article on Primary GE and shows a very representative set of the
new
artwork. The artwork is stunning and very much up to the standards of all
the other CTC games out there. Companion Games got a number of familiar
artists to illustrate the cards. I was particuarly pleased with the fact
that Melisa Benson does a good number of the cards (as she is my all-time
favorite Magic artist).

The second thing that is new is the much larger number of cards. Where
Alpha had 91 cards, Primary GE has 440 (actually, 439 cards that you
can buy and 1 that you can only get by winning GE tournaments). There
are now alot more empires to work with as well. Primary GE has four
major empires and four minor ones. The minor empires have enough ships
(or dragons) and equipment that any of these can be used as the primary
empire in your deck as well.

The game includes 11 different classes of cards labelled A, B, C, D, E, H,
L, M, O, S, and T. These stand for Abilities, Bases, Crew, Dragons,
Equipment, Hazards, Luck, Monsters, Occurances, Ships and Terrain,
respectively. Each class has cards numbered from 1-9 and some of the
classes have 10 cards as well. The main two cards you need to worry about
are Terrain and Ships (these are also the two classes of cards that make
up
the highest percentage of cards in the game). Terrain provides supply,
energy, ammo, research and economy points. The first three points are
what
you use to engage your ships. Ships need supply and most need energy
also.
After a ship is engaged, if it has any heavy weapons, each one must be
activated by spending an ammo point. Ships are what you use to attack
other players' fleets and, ultimately, their sector headquarters. Ships
in your fleet also protect your sector headquarters from being attacked
by other players' fleets.

On your turn you do the following. First, you allocate terrain points.
Your terrain and some of your bases will generate the points described
above. At this time you use this to engage ships and power up their
heavy weapons or use points to remove monsters, occurances or hazards
that have been played on you by other players (this usually takes research
points). Once you are done assigning points you go to the engagement
phase. All your ships and bases that have received the appropriate
amount of supply and energy engage (untap or remain untapped). Next
you have a play cards phase. You can play a maximum of three cards from
your hand during your turn. Next, you have your fire weapons phase. All
of your engaged ships can fire their phasers (or subspace whips) and
any heavy weapons that were powered up at other player's fleets. A
single card can only be targeted once but can receive fire from
multiple sources. Ships are damaged with one point from each phaser
or heavy weapon fired at it. Terrain can only be damaged by heavy
weapons and takes one point for each heavy weapon fired at it. The
sector headquarters can only be fired at if a player has no ships left
in his fleet and is damaged just like ships above. After the fire phase
you get a second play cards phase. Finally, you get the discard phase
where you can order ships and bases in your fleet to self-destruct
(i.e. discard them from play) and use any of your remaining card plays
for the turn to discard cards from your hand. You then draw cards from
your deck based on your hand size: 9 or less cards you draw 2, 10 or 11
draw one, 12+ no draw. Oh yeah, you start the game with a hand of 9
cards.

There are some cards within some of the classes labelled with an R/ in
front of their class and number. These are called reaction cards and
can be played during other player's turns in reaction to stuff they
do. If played during another player's turn these cards do not count
against your three card limit on your turn. Reaction cards can also
be played in response to other reaction cards. This then follows the
standard LIFO resolution order.

Ships have shields (the Mechad have EMF nodes) and structure points.
The number of shields a ship has is shown on the card with shield
icons. A ship's structure points is equal to its number (an S4 ship
has four structure points). Shields repair one point for free at the
start of your turn. Repair points can be used to fix structure or
shields on damaged ships.

To win the game you must destroy your opponents' sector headquarters.
These
each have 25 points and (generally) cannot be repaired with repair points.
When a player's sector headquarters is destroyed he is out of the game and
the person who knocked him out gets to draw two cards as a victory
celebration.
To quote the rules, it is amazing what your population will do for you if
you
are winning the war.

Those familiar with the Alpha rules will find few differences in the rules
themselves (mostly additions to clarify rules). The deck construction
rules
are probably where the most changes have occured but they still follow the
same format as Alpha. The Primary rules also include a Q&A section at the
end (which is always a good thing).

Overall, Primary Edition Galactic Empires is the best multi-player CTC
game
available on the market right now. I cannot recommend this game highly
enough.

Nick Sauer