I Have been given the opportunity to review this game of Star Empires curtasey of Spellbinder Games.

The first thing I noticed as my first turn arrived was the load thump as the postman delivered the rule-book and turn-sheets. The big A4 rule book contains nearly 50 pages of important information, rules and tips. I spent the rest of that day sat down in the armchair trying to make head and tail of all the jargon as I have only played a couple of science fiction games before and those some years ago this became a bit of a shock with more depth and options than I had ever seen before.

The first thing that became apparent is that instead of playing on an x - y axis like most games Star Empires, is run on three axis x,y and z making mapping your searched areas more complicated. I couldn't just get one piece of paper and make some notes on where I had been I had to 10 or 12. In the end after a couple of turns I decided the best way to map my exploits would be to use a spreadsheet on my computer. I could use x and y axis on a single spreadsheet and then have a new sheet in front and behind for the z axis this made things so much easier that it was unbelievable. No more scruffy bits of paper or hunting around for the 1 important piece that was thrown out in the rubbish last week it was all now at a click of a button.

Planets There are so many planets to visit that is easy to say that no matter how long you play for you will never be able to visit every planet you wont even come close. At the star of the game I was given the option of visiting about 20 different Stars with each star having between 0 and 10 planets to its name. Each star was given its own unique name and classed as a certain classification such as Blue Dwarf Yellow Giant Black Holes etc. Each planet has its own set of unique atributes each planet will have listed the type of atmosphere it has along with the gravity of the planet how much water is there and the amount of raw materials and resources that are available to you. This is important to you as you start to colonise new worlds.

Colonise ? Yes in this gave one of your first objectives is to expand from your home world and start a new colony on a new planet. There are several reasons why colonisation is a major part of the game 1) Once you have a colony on a new world you will be able to trade goods between the two planets increasing your money which at the start of the gave looks a lot but soon runs out. 2) Resources on your home world will soon start to dry up and it will only be a matter of time that if you don't colonise then pure and simple you wont be able to build any new items. 3) As you colonise new worlds your population grows and you will find that you will be able to become a stronger force within the game. You don't then you will be easy pray to an empire set on weeding out the small empires for their own gain.

Spacecraft so how many ships can I have any how many different types are there? Well another Major difference between this game and many others is the fact that ship design is totally up to you. There are over 20 different classes of ships ranging from little scout ships to fleet carriers to huge star-bases. Each class of ship has its own parameters just so you cant build a tiny little scout ship with a cargo bay big enough to stick 5 other scout ships in. Each ship is made up of 8 different elements the hull is the basic size of your vessel, hyper-space engines, Manual engines, Shields, Weapons, Cargo space, Command center and special. these eight areas you specify how much money and time your designers spend in each area giving you the exact spacecraft you require so you could have a battleship that is totally full of weapons and able to blow anything out of the sky or one that will be able to sustain tremendous amounts of damage or some thing in between. This is another important part of Star Empires as building a ship with the wrong specifications may see it useless like a scout ship with no hyper-space trying to scout new worlds.

I decided that to start off the best thing to do was build some fast weapon less scout ships to find out what is out there and to find a new world to send my first colony to. I also spent money on mining new resources and building research bases to improve my technology. I probably built too many scout ships to start off with but as they are cheap it didn't really matter and i quickly found out what planets were around me and had a list of possible planets to colonise I found no other races in the first few turn which was good as it has given me time to sort out what it is that i am trying to archive. Colonisation has taken place on a planet that is very close to my home world which means that i can trade goods and run cargo to and from the two worlds. The new colonised worlds job is mainly to create tradeable goods these are shipped to my home world which in turn are turned into money which already is starting to dry up. My home world with a higher population concentrates on more trade able goods research and mining for usable resources. My scout ships have nearly reached the end of their initial searches and have found during their exploration several more planets that may be able to sustain life for my next colonisation. They also found a few planets that have special qualities and these have been used and extra research has been gained. I wont tell you any more for now as I am still playing but watch this space for further news....................

Overall the turn around has been swift and good reports have excelent an GM Chris Dempsey has been more than helpfull