Orbital Conflict Preview

Building your space station. Space combat. Space investors. If these ideas interest you and you are intrigued to know how they work in a board game setting, read on. If you don’t care about head-to-head space stations obliterating each other and jockeying for position as the best bet in the cosmos, discontinue reading.

Orbital Conflict is a player versus player (PvP) card game in which the winner is the player showing the most VPs on their cards at game end. It is a game where placement of cards and orientation of cards is paramount in creating a space station that can dole out damage, take a ton of damage, or hybridizes offense and defense using resources granted from off-station investors.

DISCLAIMER: We were provided a copy of this game for the purposes of this review. These are final components, and the game is available from the publisher and other online retail stores. Also, I do not intend to explicitly cover every rule for the game, but to give an idea of game flow and play. -T

To setup the game (in this case a 1v1 head-to-head bout) shuffle all the cards with the white back together and deal each player a hand of five. Shuffle the smaller investor cards to form a draw pile. Give the starting player the Initiative card and you are ready to start!

The game follows a simple game flow following three phases per round: Draw, Main, Combat. During the Draw phase, the player with the Initiative card (I’ll call them the active player) will draw two cards from the white-backed deck (which I will just call cards). Then the other player will draw two cards as well. The active player then draws two investor cards for themselves and places them in front of their play area as possible investors to claim. The other player does the same. If there are any cards containing discard abilities that a player would like to play during the Draw phase, and the discard text reads they may do so during the Draw phase or any phase, they may play them and follow the discard instructions now.

Once done, the game moves on to the Main phase. During this phase the active player will play any cards they wish that are appropriate for this phase, and then the other player will do the same. During this phase players will be playing cards from hand (and as many as they would like) to add on to their space station, activate modules that were previously deactivated, claim investor cards, and prepare for the next game phase. Space stations can be added to via modules. Modules can be single cards, or multiple splayed cards. As you can see in the photo above cards have icons to the left of the white barrier and some will also have icons to the right. Depending on how a card is added to a module certain icons may be covered and therefore inactive. When adding a card to a module (called an extension) the player decides if they want to add the card to the right of the splay, thus covering up icons to the right of the barrier of the covered card, or under the stack to the left of the splay. Additionally, players may flip any card over to have the back showing, which will provide icons usable in a station module. There are restrictions for playing cards, but I will let you discover those on your own.

As you can see, cards will have green icons, which mean the module or extension is producing that resource, and they can have red icons, which indicate that they require those resources to be produced in order to be satisfied. If at any time a module’s resource requirement can no longer be satisfied, the module is turned 90 degrees and considered deactivated until their requirements are once again met.

Also as part of the Main phase a player may claim an offered investor card from the two that are showing each round. Should a player not wish to claim an investor they may instead force an opponent to claim an investor from their offer, assuming they can provide the necessary requirements of the investor card. This creates some fun player interaction with how the investor cards are added to the tableau that I will again let you discover on your own.

The final phase of the round is the Combat phase. This is when all the best laid plans are completely wrenched and players question why they agreed to play in the first place. Again, the active player will take their turn and then the other player(s) take theirs. Some cards will have discard abilities to allow an attack, but generally a station can only attack another station if it contains active modules. So if a player’s modules have all been deactivated they may not attack. A player will need attack icons (yellow circles) showing in order to initiate an attack and each attack icon adds to the total damage value assigned. As long as the number of attack icons equals or exceeds the number of defensive icons showing (the blue shields) an attack is successful. Taking damage from an attack is brutal. The attacked module will lose cards from bottom upwards per attack icon spent on the attack. So if the active player attacks and is successful with three icons, the other player must discard the three bottom-most cards from the attacked module. This is how you cause destruction.

Once both sides (or all sides in a 3 or 4-player game) have played their Combat phase, the Initiative card moves to the next player to begin the game cycle again. Play continues in this fashion until the draw pile is exhausted and any showing VP icons (pink diamonds) are totaled to determine the ultimate victor.

Components. This game is a large amount of two sizes of cards. The cards are of excellent quality (with the fine linen finish). The game box is about the size of Bohnanza, if you’re familiar. Here is what I want to point out about the components. The art is simply amazing on this game. I mean, just look at my play photos. I’m no photographer, but I don’t really have to be for these cards to really pop. The card art is top notch, the icons are clear, and I really like the graphic design on them. Truly, this game is very very well-produced.

So do I like it? HECK YES! I really love the card splaying, the double-sided (and actually useful) cards, and the absolute mayhem of figuring out how to reactivate my decimated modules. I want to compare it to some other great games, and it is really a combination of Among the Stars and Innovation. Except maybe better? I’m not sure yet. I will need to play all those games at least another bunch of times to really decide, but I am putting this one up there with them. Some cards are just unearthly, but I guess that’s the idea when you are playing a game involving space combat. I cannot recommend this game enough. You have to give it a try, and I know you will enjoy it.

PS – I have just been told by the publisher that an expansion is in the works, so I have such high hopes for Orbital Conflict to shoot through my Top 100 soon! End transmission.