Galaxy's Edge

Science fiction themes are a natural fit in board gaming and with good reason too: Distant galaxies, warring populations, alien cultures, what's not to appreciate? Assa games understands this concept as well and has chosen exactly such material for their follow-up effort to the immensely popular Conquest of the Fallen Lands.

Taking a look at Galaxy's Edge hard facts reveals a title designed for 3-4 players, recommended ages 10 & up with game time typically lasting around one hour.

Inside the high-quality box comes 30 sector tiles (hexagonal), 5 loyalty pledge cards, 28 event cards, 1 event die, 4 wooden ban markers, 80 wooden colony tokens (20 for each color), 80 wooden military tokens (again 20 for each color), 4 wooden flagships and a 12-page full color rulebook.

The back-story puts players in the role of flagship commander currently navigating the fringe of the known galaxy in effort to claim and colonize star systems. While it sounds like an arduous task in and of itself, the game is surprisingly instinctive after only a few moments of actual play.

Despite what appears to be a tile-layer, all 30-sector hexagon pieces are laid out immediately at the beginning of each game. So why not simply include a solid board you ask? The answer is that by not forcing players into maintaining a set-arrangement, the structure of the galaxy will be different virtually every time you play.

Each sector tile itself contains a variety of information including how many star systems are contained within, the point values for colonizing these systems, and the color/ pattern of the tile's border indicates which of the five alien races in the game controls the particular sector. These are the silicone-based Crystalloids, the insect-like Hive, the diplomatic Humanoids, intelligent-plant Splenti, and the sentient robot Wargers.

Players attempt to lay claim to sectors by plopping down colonies (circular wooden chits) or bases (triangular wooden chits) on their turn (each indicated by the player's chosen color). Movement of your flagship is limited to adjacent sectors but construction of colonies and bases need only be adjacent to sectors already containing one of your installments- so in other words, it doesn't take long before the board is well littered with installments from each of the four colors.

Exercising the option to build (either base or colony) results in the player having to roll the event die which can either result in the sector becoming banned from further construction for a time or the player earning the option to use one of the event cards in his hand. Event cards, like you may have guessed, are the great equalizer of the game as they grant such powers as moving one of your opponent's flagships anywhere you want on the board or force-swap colonies with one of your rivals.

Interestingly, once all of the star systems of a given sector become colonized, the option to gain military control of that region presents itself. This is simply accomplished by scanning the vicinity of the completed sector to determine which player (if any) possesses either a Class 1, 2 or 3 base. Conquering a sector allows that player to replace the most valuable colony of his rival on that tile with one of his own.

So by now you're probably wondering what's going on with all of this cutthroat colonization. The short answer is that colonies are worth points, my friends and at the end of the game, it's the player with the most points who comes out on top, numero uno, the victor supreme, the big cheese, okay I think you get the idea.

The scoring method is perhaps the most difficult aspect of the game to fully grasp but reduced to its most basic logistics- every colony you managed to establish on the board is worth the value indicated below it. Bases don't count for points but here's what's interesting- remember earlier I mentioned the five unique alien races in the game? Well all along the way players compete for the loyalty of these ragtag alien civilizations by establishing the highest number of colonies on the sectors controlled by them. By earning the loyalty of one of more, the player receives a card (loyalty pledge) that totally alters the scoring situation should they still have the card when the game concludes.

Need examples? Well, The Hive slaps bonus points to your score to the tune of 2 extras for every sector tile where you have a pair of colonies, 5 points for every one that you have 3 colonies and a whopping 9 points for every one where you have 4. The Saplenti sends an extra 15 points in your direction if you're the player who ends up with the least amount of bases on the board when all is said and done while the Wargers award the same amount of points to the player with the most. The Humanoids tend to reward all the players on the board for their efforts and the Crystalloids reward those who colonize the smaller star systems.

Not to worry, each loyalty pledge card highlights how the scoring is affected, the rulebook devotes 2-full pages to the subject (complete with examples), and the entire final page of the rules is also dedicated to making sense of the game end scoring by breaking it down into steps.

So now that I've explained the nuts and bolts of the game, the question becomes what is it like to actually play? Honestly, it's much more user-friendly than it all sounds. My best advice is to skip pre-reading the book and to simply follow along while actually setting up/ initiating the first round of play. Since the player basically has a maximum of four options on their turn, there are never any prolonged periods of waiting for the other players to take their turn. Pacing is quick and the 60-minute game time seems pretty much spot on for a 4-player bout.

The pieces, quality and construction of the components is absolutely top notch- with tiles that rival the finer stuff coming out of Fantasy Flight Games and perhaps the most wooden bits that this reviewer has yet to encounter. Durability earns additional high marks here and even the rulebook is just beautiful to behold.

Learning the game is quite quick and easy with the rules themselves being nicely organized with no shortage of full color photographic examples to draw from. There is some inherent strategy present but this doesn't feel like a game that poises players directly against one another (no cheap tactics). There is a bit of the "luck of the draw" element in the form of the event cards, but all in all, this isn't a game that relies upon randomness for its core dynamic.

To draw a more universal comparison for Andrei Burago's Galaxy's Edge would be to suggest that fans of Renier Knizia's style games will likely find much to appreciate here. It's a game that couples object placement with a mathematical conclusion and just enough randomness to keep things interesting right up until the end.

Finally, special recognition to the game's graphic designer Joshua Cappel, who just nailed the look of the game by bringing in clean, crisp cartoony images to a saturated genre. Everything from the box art to the tiles themselves bears a unique and undeniably attractive look that completes this solid package.