Category Archives: star realms

star realms

A short Star Realms movie

star realms

The description for this video over on YouTube says it all really. But I suppose I better repeat what I said there, here because I suppose unless you click through you will never get to read my words of wisdom, and reflections on the human condition.

Over there I said the following:

“I’m just testing the screen recording on the iPad Pro, so thought I’d do a Star Realms game I played recently. Gman usually gets the better of me in our match ups. I’ll put up the other game we had going at the same time where he totally owned me, big time.
Anyway I’ve been in this situation before and the cards have not been kind, and I get killed. This time things went my way…”

UPDATE: I’ve added the promised video of me getting my butt handed to me to the end of this post.

Star Realms App gets United

apps, star realms

White Wizard Games have just pushed out the latest update for their very popular app version of the amazing deck builder Star Realms.

This will be the first of I’m guessing 4 updates over the next few months that will add cards etc from the United expansions from the physical game.

Here is the release notes for the app from the App Store.


At the time of writing there was an issue actually being able to purchase the Command expansion. But hopefully that gets sorted ASAP. As I’m looking forward to playing with the extra cards. At £1.99 to unlock them across all platforms a bargain.

I’m super excited about the win/loss stats in the friend list. That’s how I play the game. Having lost the levelling Up/down functionality when the app got its makeover, this is the second best option.

Not much interested in the AI improvement, I don’t play the campaign or against the AI.

So if you are a fan of the game go get this now.

Star Realms Year 2 Promo Pack Contents

star realms

Part of the Hero Realms Kickstarter was backers getting the Year 2 promo pack for Star Realms. This finally arrived with the Hero Realms campaign deck and two boss decks at the weekend.

So what does the promo pack contain? Good question, here is the list of the 12 cards that make up the promo pack.

  • War kite x 2
  • Federal transport x 2
  • Imperial smuggler x 2
  • Probe bot x 2
  • Stella ray
  • Cargo mech 
  • Knightstar 
  • Bounty Hunter

But that means nothing really. What you really need are some poorly taken photos of the cards. So here you are…



How often these will appear when playing the physical game I don’t know. Especially when I’m playing with everything. That’s a lot of cards. 

I’m still trying to work out if I should add in the first promo pack. But that is a different decision because with promo pack 1 I already had the majority of the cards. I know some of them are only meant to be one copy. But with 300 odd cards would a second copy make much of a difference? That’s the decision I’ve been wrestling with. 

Anyway I look forward to seeing these cards on the trade row.

Star Realms App Update Available 

news, star realms

New major update of the Star Realms app is out. Look at what they have added.

I’m really chuffed about the friends list. More cards is also good. Plus I can challenge a friend to a real time game also. I’m not really a campaign player. All of my play is against friends. 

£3.99 to get the new cards. Which sounds expensive but that includes unlocking the cards across all platforms. That’s the nice thing about the Star Realms app. No matter which platform I play the game on once I buy an expansion I have it available across everything.

Some much needed additions. A must update to download. I think a must buy expansion but your mileage may vary on that.

Been a long time since I did this…

star realms

I’ve not done this in Star Realms (the app) in a long long time. So after blurring out my opponents name to save them any embarrassment (they usually kick my butt) I had to share this moment. 

Which reminds me if you click HERE it will take you to the Star Realms Frontiers expansion. 

From the Kickstarter page Frontiers has the following features:

  • Great gameplay for 1-4 players.
  • Solitaire and Cooperative mode!
  • Plays on its own, or combined with any other Star Realms set.
  • An all-new 80-card trade deck featuring some new mechanics like the double ally abiltiy which really rewards you for focusing on a single faction!
  • Starting decks for four players.
  • Four sets of new, easy-to-use score cards. 
  • Plenty of Explorer cards.
  • Full color rulebook for two player PVP games, and awesome multiplayer formats like Free-For-All, Hunter, and Hydra!
  • A sturdy, attractive, 4″ x 6″ x 2″ game box

Plus there are loads of other bits you can get. Just do the $60 all in pledge level and get everything. It’s a no brainer I think for Star Realms fans. Which I think I qualify as with the game at number 4 in my Top 100. My only decision is do I add on a new playmat? 

Verses: Star Realms vs Star Wars Destiny

Head to Head, Matchup, star realms, star wars, VS

If you have been following the posts of mine about ranking and my top games posts you will have seen that these two games have been in my Top 10 games since I started using my “match up engine”. Plus because of the nature of my process they were always going to go head to head.

So Star Realms or Star Wars: Destiny? Which did I choose?

I don’t think it’s any secret that I love Star Realms. Thanks to an awesome app I have up to 20 games on the go at a time. I’ve played thousands of games. Since records began I’ve actually managed to get the physical game to the table a whole 25 times. I really do like the deck building mechanic. The shared trade row. Plus the expansions. Oh my, the expansions. You can mix and match or if like me just play with everything thrown all in. With Gambits and Events you can get some crazy turn one purchases. Plus missions now change how a game can be won. This game just gets better and better. Oh and comboing cards so you draw your whole hand, and do one massive amount of damage. Or when you claw back from a single authority to get the win. You definitely get some great gaming moments in this game.

Star Wars: Destiny, OMG! I knew if I played it I’d get hooked. It ticks a lot of boxes for me, deck construction, dice, Star Wars. Ok the collectible side of the game is a big draw back.  But no worse than Magic the Gathering, Dice Masters or others of that ilk. There has been that initial difficulty in getting product. But hopefully that has been resolved by FFG, and so far it’s looking that way. I enjoy the deck construction side. I like building decks and playing them to see if they work. Yes there is a random element with the dice rolls. But there are ways to reroll and even chose a face of the die. So I don’t see that as a drawback. Sometimes the dice rolling adds an element of suspense that I like. Especially when the other player rolls badly letting you off the hook for an action or two while they mitigate that bad roll.

In the end I kinda copped out, sat on the fence and declared this one a draw. I really enjoy playing both of these games. And would find it really hard to make a choice between which to play if they were both in front of me.

And looking at the comments to the post on Facebook and Instagram, the slight edge goes to Star Realms. But it was close, one vote in it. And a draw if I take out the Hero Realms vote! The public can’t decide either then.

Holding on by my finger tips

apps, news, star realms

This Wednesday sees a “massive” update to the Star Realms app.

In an email plus a more detailed post we got the following warning:

“IMPORTANT: PLEASE FINISH ALL OF YOUR GAMES BY TUESDAY, MAY 16!

ALL IN PROGRESS GAMES WILL BE DELETED WHEN THE APP IS UPDATED

ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 17”

So what changes warrant this ominous warning?

For starters the app is getting a graphic update.

Apart from the new look, we are getting more cards:

  • “53 All-New Colony Wars cards in the Trade Deck with fun, new mechanics
  • Cards that can be purchased from the Trade Row and can immediately be put into play or into a player’s hand.
  • Blob faction has a new ability to “acquire a ship of cost x or less for free”.
  • The Stealth Tower card that comes with Colony Wars allows you to copy any base in play!
  • Two new chapters in the ongoing campaign, each with six missions!”

In their infinite wisdom the way levelling works is changing:

“Currently, we have a lot of players that are “Forever Fives” – stuck at level 5 (that’d be me). This isn’t much fun, so now, if you make it to level 6, that will be your floor. If you then make it to level 7, that will be your floor, and so on. Sounds more fun, doesn’t it? However, it should be noted that now challenges won’t count towards your level or weekly or monthly leaderboards, but they will still count towards your overall number of games played, as well as your win percentage.”

So this change is going to be controversial. I welcome the moving floor. However the majority of my games are challenges against friends and the odd mystery Internet person I’ve never met, but been playing for a long time now. So basically if I want to level up I am forced to play random  games. Otherwise if I don’t want to play random games whatever level I’m at the end of Tuesday I’m stuck at. Wow that sounds fun!

Another big change is real time games! I’d go read the post for this one. I think it will replace the 3 minute games. Which I hardly ever played. I’ve seen some welcoming this. Mainly from those that stream games. I might start doing that myself. Who knows? The whim might take me to show the world just how bad I am at the game!

So I need to complete all my current games by Tuesday, make sure I don’t drop below level 6 (I don’t think I can push it up to 7).

You can read the whole announcement HERE.