Matthew BaileyGame #2 of our “UKGE ROUNDUP 2024” is “Star Realms Academy,” which we played at the “Wacky Wizard Games” stand (The new family friendly offshoot of Wise Wizard Games).
Star Realms Academy is a “my first deck-building game”. It’s essentially a junior version of the popular Star Realms deck-building game from Wacky Wizard Games.
You start the game by setting out your player board and placing your 15 health tokens on it. Each player gets a base deck which consists mostly of gold cards and one attack card. Everything else is placed on the trade board in the middle.
On your turn, you draw three cards and can then use whatever is on those cards to either attack the other player or purchase better cards.
These then go into your discard pile and when your discard pile is full, you shuffle it and start again. As well as having straight cards, you also have bases, which are essentially cards that stick around but can be put back into your discard pile if attacked by the other player. Base cards are fairly strong because they essentially give you an extra step. It’s important to manage the damage you’re dealing to the other player, but also to the bases.
Star Realms Academy is a really nice junior version of the main Star Realms and actually, it doesn’t play scrapping, which is a way of thinning down your deck. But the games are fairly quick so it doesn’t actually really matter.
There is no reading ability needed just symbols and numbers and I don’t think I saw a number higher than 3 (but don’t quote me on that).
The artwork is absolutely lovely and a real change in tone from normal Star Realms, which will obviously appeal to kids. Interestingly, I was chatting with Debbie Moynihan, COO of Wacky Wizard Games, and she said that the feedback they had received was also really positive from women who felt that the hard sci-fi theme of the base game was a little bit off-putting.
We really enjoyed playing this and we ended up playing more than one game of it. In fact, Jack enjoyed it so much that we picked up a copy of regular Star Realms which will inevitably end up in the summer review marathon. While Jack definitely could play the regular version, I am really looking forward to trying Star Realms Academy with Toby and expect a full review when it comes to retail later this year.
