Star Realms: Crisis

Two firsts happened this week: I got to play with the new Star Realms expansion cards and I got to play my first multiplayer game.

Multiplayer games still go pretty rapidly I'm glad to say, especially when everyone has a feel for the game. This is a nice change from epic Commander multiplayer games. The addition tactical decisions about where to spread your resources can make for an interesting dilemma, too.

After only a few games, here's what I can tell you about Crisis:

1) Heroes do not make their use immediately apparent. They're cheap to acquire, which is good, but they don't feel useful at first. Of the cards in this set, they are the ones that I think will need the most testing. I had two available to me at one point and I hesitated to use them. Noah had a similar situation and I think it's because Star Realms is about balancing when expend those scrapable resources. Some are obvious (Explorers) but bases or ships? This is harder to figure out and heroes fall under that category. Jury is still out.

2) Events are very cool. These are the impact cards, the ones that can sell the set. They're just random enough and the immediate impact feels pretty fair so nobody gets completely burnt.

3) The additional bases and ships don't suck but they don't light up the eyes. There are some interesting dimensions being added but at the moment they seem like 'win more'. For a first expansion, that seems about right. I don't need to get excited about what bases or ships do again, I'm already psyched.

4) This is absurdly expensive. $20 for 48 cards is pretty crazy when you can get the base game with 128 cards for $15. And of those, 110 are the ones you need to play the game-so what gives with this price point? If this doesn't balance out soon, I can see myself skipping out on future expansions. Because my money > less of my money.