Players: 3-4
Playing Time: 1 hour

The Components

Galaxy's Edge is a small press game and when I review games in that category I usually have to make some concessions for lower-quality components because of the smaller economies of scales. That wasn't the case at all with Galaxy's Edge. I think the die (with stickered faces) was the only thing that would have clued me in to the fact that Galaxy's Edge was an indie game. Everything else was great quality and beautifully produced--exceeding my general expectations for a game, let alone an indie game.

Here's what all was contained within:

The Game Board: The game board is made up of 30 linen-textured sector hexagons. Each one shows one or more stars, with specific values, and identifies one of the alien races via a color border. They're easy to use and attractive.

Loyalty Pledges: Four more cardboard bits, showing the alien races and identifying their special (scoring) powers. I would have liked some iconography here, but the powers are simple enough that I was comfortable within them 15 minutes into the game.

Wood Bits: These are what make the game truly beautiful. Each player gets 20 colony discs (circles), 20 military tokens (triangles), 1 ban maker (octagon), and 1 flagship (rocketship-shaped). They're large wooden bits, dyed with an appropriate color (red, blue, green, or yellow) and treated with some type of gloss that makes them shiny. I've never seen wooden bits that were as attractive as these ones are, primarily due to the gloss.

Event Cards: 28 glossy cards that are a bit thinner than I'd like (though not terrible). Each one features some cartoony artwork that runs the gamut from OK to good. There's also some text explaining the card, all against an attractive background layout.

Die: A 6-sided wooden die with three options on its 6 faces. Though I did mention that the sides of this die are stickered on, I don't consider that a problem. The die is easy to read thanks to the color allowed by that very stickering.

Overall Galaxy's Edge is a good-looking game, full of great-quality, attractive components. Other than the light weight of the cards, my only other complaint has to do with usability. It's a bit hard to keep up with who has how much influence on each alien race. A little alien influence track would have been very useful, so that you don't realize that alien loyalties had suddenly changed halfway through the game.

Nonetheless, neither of those factors does much to lesson my instant like for the look and feel of this game. Thus I've let it eke in a "5" out of "5" for Style: excellent.

The Gameplay

The object of Galaxy's Edge is to score the most points by settling systems with colonies accomplishing the goals of the alien races whose loyalty you've won.

Setup: The board is randomly laid out with 30 hexes.

Each player takes all the bits in his color, plus draws two event cards.

Finally, the players each place their flagship in the outer rim of the board, not adjacent to any other ship.

About the Board. The board, as noted, is made up of hexes, randomly placed. Each hex has two notable qualities. First, it's related to one of the five alien races. Second, it contains one to four star systems, each worth 1-9 points.

Order of Play: During a turn a player may move his flagship and build in any order. Then he may roll the event die and must determine if any military control has been established.

Move Flagship: The player may leave his flagship where it is or move it to any adjacent hex. This is always important for placing military bases and is sometimes important for placing colonies (when you want to start colonies somewhere new).

Build: On his turn a player may build either a colony or a military base on an empty star system; the hex may not have a "ban" on it, which as we'll see could be deposited after building occurs.

Building a Colony. A colony may be built on the same hex as the flagship or anywhere in the same hex or adjacent to an existing colony.

Building a Base. A base may only be built in the same hex as the flagship. It can be built as a "Class 1", "Class 2", or "Class 3" military base; that must be chosen at the time of construction and can never be changed. As we'll see Class 1 bases are the most important, but they're all necessary to maintain military control.

Rolling the Event Die: If you built anything, you roll the event die. It may: move your ban to the sector you built in, move the next player's ban to the sector you built in, or allow you to do something with event cards.

I was a bit confused at first between the different players' ban, but as far as I can tell all that the "ownership" does is suggest on which turns the ban might move.

Event Cards. When you roll an event card event you can either play or draw an event. The event cards do a variety of things: allow your standing with aliens, allow you to take over enemy colonies, allowing you to move a flag ship, or protect you to some extent.

Determining Military Control: When all of the systems on a hex have been filled (with either colonies or bases), then military control of that hex is determined.

A player wins military control if he's the only player with 1 or more Class 1 military bases on or adjacent to the hex. If there's a tie, you look at Class 2 military bases, and if that ties, class 3. If there's a full tie, nothing happens, but if one player emerges victorious he gets to replace the highest-value opponent's colony with one of his own.

There are a few subtleties to this system:

First, the question is whether a military base of the appropriate type exists at all, not how many of them there are.

Second, military control can make a big difference in a game. Though sometimes the colony will be low value, it could also be worth lots of points (and might even help swing alien control, as we'll see momentarily).

About the Aliens: Establishing colonies can also gain you the loyalty of the aliens. The first player to establish a colony in each alien's hex type gets the loyalty of that alien. Thereafter other people can take that loyalty away if they establish colonies in more of the appropriate sort of hex.

Alien loyalty only has value at the end game, where it gives bonuses for certain types of building:

• Crystaloids: A bonus for each colony built on a 1-point system.
• The Hive: A bonus for building your own colonies together.
• Humanoids: A bonus building in systems with other players.
• Saplenti: A bonus for building the least military bases.
• Wargers: A bonus for building the most military bases.

Ending the Game: The game ends when no one has built anything for a full round of play. Then everyone totals the value of all their colonies' star systems and adds in bonuses from aliens who they have the final loyalty of. Note that military bases are worth nothing: they hopefully won you colonies over the course of the game. The player with the highest total wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Galaxy's Edge feels a lot like an abstract strategy game, as you have tight controls on what can be done and subtle interactions between a couple of different classes of components.

It's also Andrei Burago's second game; together those two games represent the complete output of ASSA Games. Burago's previous release was Conquest of the Fallen Lands.

The Game Design

Overall, Galaxy's Edge is a clever game that's fun to play.

I think I was struck most by its originality. Although there's a light feeling of abstractness, Galaxy's Edge isn't like anything else I've played recently. At times this resulted in me being somewhat confused over how the rules worked (e.g., the relevance of ban ownership, and the way that military control worked), but when I carefully read things through, and realized that the rules said exactly what they said, I saw that my confusion mostly resulted from preconceptions about how games should work, which is to say from this game's newness, not any actual problem.

There's clearly some good strategic play in this package. You have to balance military power with colony points and the value of grabbing various aliens with the value of points in hand.

I also enjoyed the fact that multiple paths to victory all seemed possible. At the end of the game, a player who had invested almost nothing in military bases came off almost as well as our war monger.

Though there's some ability for real and thoughtful strategy, there are a few random elements to keep the game from getting too stodgy: the card draws and the die rolls. They're not overpowering, but they keep you on your feet.

I do have some concerns about the opaqueness of the game: I'm ultimately not sure how much you can know & control when trying to move toward victory in the game. But that's something I couldn't decide one way or the other without several more games.

Generally, Galaxy's Edge was a fun, thoughtful, innovative, and interesting game that I expect to play again. I've give it a "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Galaxy's Edge is a game of science-fiction colonization atop a sturdy abstract gaming system. It makes you think, but also keeps itself moving forward, producing an enjoyable medium-length game.