Tabletop Review - Star Trek Star Realms Edition

Designers: Darwin Kastle

Publishers: UVS Games and Wise Wizard Games

Reviewed Version: Physical Card Edition

BOLDLY GO!

Attention all Star Realms and Star Trek fans: there is a new Star Trek Star Realms edition that is coming in October 2024! You read that right, Star Trek: Star Realms! Star Realms will be releasing an amazing Star Trek-themed deck for their amazing line of Star Realms editions. This box comes with everything you need to play Star Realms using the iconic Star Trek ships, stations, and some of the well-known species from the shows and movies. The Federation, Klingons, Dominion, and Romulans are the factions you can use to defeat your opponents and rule the galaxy! The Ferengi even make an appearance in the deck by being the Explorer cards that any player can purchase for 2 Trade Points.

But what is so special?

I am glad you asked! Not only does this box feature the ships and stations from Star Trek, but it also comes with a playmat for the usual Trade Line of Star Realms, a Star Trek-themed Rulebook, cool colored Authority Counters, and the box itself has a printing of the NCC-1701-0 Enterprise ship on the inside. And if this does not excite you enough, this box includes enough cards to play 2-4 players!

Players will find awesome little flavored text at the bottom of most cards, stating little tidbits about the ships and stations that come straight from the shows, and that Trekkies will love! Iconic stations like the Daystrom Institute Black Site, the Romulan Neutral Zone, the Hall of Warriors, and many more. Ships such as the Galaxy-Class Federation starships, Jem’hadar Battlecruiser, D7 Stormbird Class, and Bird-of-Prey ships, can be found in this collector’s edition! And if that is still not cool enough, some of the cards even show the commanders and captains of the exact ship that is shown on the card, and no two cards (except the starting cards) are the same. Each card features a different ship!

What about changes to gameplay?

To be honest, there are no changes to how the game is played. This change-up is strictly cosmetic. The game is played just like the classic Star Realms game but with a cool Star Trek overtone to every card played. Of course, this is not a card-for-card exact same deck as any previous Star Realms version, but the rules and gameplay are the same.

This cosmetic change does make it more difficult to add to other decks because the back of the cards are all blue and say 'Star Trek Star Realms' which can show off your hand to your opponent. While this may not be a big problem, there is one glaring issue with adding the decks to other more classic Star Realms decks which is the Factions. With the classic Star Realms, the Factions are Federation (blue), Blob (green), Machine Cult (red), and Star Empire (yellow), but in the Star Trek edition, the Factions are Federation (blue), Romulan (green), Klingon (red), and Dominion (purple). This creates a bit of difficulty when trying to mesh the versions together since there is no purple in the classic-type decks. This means that the Star Trek edition might just be a stand-alone version of the game, rather than an expansion of the original.

This means that players can add the decks together, it will just be more difficult since the Dominion (purple) will have to be equated with the Star Empire (yellow) in the other versions of Star Realms. Players would have to remember that purple and yellow cards would be purchased from the Trade Line together to build their deck properly. And again, because of the back on the Star Trek edition cards, the backside of the cards might also give opponents a bit of an edge when knowing what card editions are in the player’s hand. After playtesting this game, our group did find that if players add starting cards from both the original and Star Trek editions, the issue with the card-back difference seems to dissipate.

To our review group, this would really be the only setback when getting this edition of a great game. Not being able to seamlessly add it to other versions is a bit disheartening, but there are workarounds to make the edition playable with other versions. Being a fan of both Star Trek and Star Realms, this edition is still amazing!

Conclusions

While the lack of compatibility with other versions of Star Realms does take a bit away from this edition, Star Trek and Star Realms lovers will both find this edition to have plenty to rave about with this version.

I would love to say this is a “Must Buy”, but due to its difficult compatibility with other versions, I would say that Star Trek: Star Realms would be a HIGHLY RECOMMENDED game for the vast majority of gamers out there!

STAR TREK: STAR REALMS EDITION IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

A copy was provided by UVS Games for the purpose of this review.