So this weekend at Origins I had a chance to play Core Worlds, the forthcoming deck-building game designed by <PERSON> and to be pubished by Stronghold Games. This will be Stronghold's first original offering (to date all of their releases have been reprints). Based on my limited experience, I believe this one's going to be a winner.
Let me preface the "review" part of this by saying that since this was a prototype, I'm only going to highlight points I consider positives, and not call attention to anything I might have perceived as a negative, since there's still the possibility that things can change between now and production. That said, it won't be too hard to write the article this way, since I'd be hard-pressed to come up with much (if anything) I didn't love about the design.
Also, I apologize in advance for any terminology I might get wrong, as this is based solely on the memory of my one play, and I don't have access to a rulebook.
GAMEPLAY
In Core Worlds you represent a fringe faction trying to make your way through the outer rim of the galaxy and into the core, conquering worlds along the way, until you finally reach the center and most civilized part of the galaxy, where you ultimately try to take control of the powerful "Core" worlds.
Every world has four key values -- the amount of energy it produces when captured, the amount of victory points it awards at the end of the game, the amount of space-based combat you need to conquer it, and the amount of ground-based combat you need. (Some worlds can be conquered with only an aerial assault, some purely ground, most a mix of the two.)
The worlds appear in the center of the table awaiting their conquering at a steadily increasing trajectory of difficulty. The easiest worlds appear in the first two turns, followed by more heavily guarded ones (with better rewards) in the next two turns, leading all the way up to the victory-point-heavy Core worlds in the 9th and 10th turns. When you conquer a world, it is placed in front of you (NOT in your deck), and you gain access to its energy and any special ability text that might be printed on the card.
In addition to the worlds, cards you can draft for your deck are placed in the center of the table. These cards represent starships of varying size and ability, ground troops, heroes who have powerful special abilities, tactics cards which you can play to modify combat or gain immediate benefits, and a variety of robots, mechs and all things science-fictiony. The cards have a draft cost (the amount of energy you must pay to draft them into your deck).
The entire game is played over a mere 10 turns, which seems short for a deck-building game, but actually provides a very rich and full experience. 366
On each turn, players generate energy from their worlds (simultaneously) and then take turns performing actions (spending variable amounts of energy for each action) until all players run out of action points or the energy to use those actions. Actions primarily include drafting a card from a pool of available cards (it goes to your discard pile to be cycled into your deck), invading a world (to permanently gain its energy production and victory points) or deploying units from your hand to the table (to prepare for the aforementioned invasion). Once everyone finishes their actions, you discard your hand (you may keep one card though) and draw back up to your max hand size. The turn marker advances and you do it all again.
This happens for 10 turns, and then you add up all your victory points (mostly from worlds you've conquered, though there are some other ways to gain VPs) and the highest total is the winner. That's the short of it, though I'll get into some of the specifics below, as I outline why I feel this game does so many things right.
I should note that I played a 5-player "advanced" version of the game. We jumped into the deep end, but honestly I didn't mind at all. The game is easy enough to teach that we all picked it right up (doesn't hurt to have the designer teach you and answer questions, but it all still seemed very straightforward). And by the second turn I was crafting my master strategy which would inevitably win me the game. So not only can you pick up the game pretty fast, but you can actually PLAY the game your first time out, and not feel like the whole thing was just a learning exercise. Obviously you'll be able to play with a deeper level of strategy once you become familiar with the card pool, but I still feel the game has a fairly low point of entry, and that's a good thing.
Anyhoo, let's move on to part two.
WHERE NO DECK-BUILDING GAME HAS GONE BEFORE...
Core Worlds does ALOT right. 629