Stronghold Games has announced the Q4 release of Core Worlds, a new science fiction deckbuilding game designed by Andrew Parks with art by Maciej Rebisz.  The 2-5 players in the Core Worlds game each control a barbarian Star Empire. During the course of the game they invade worlds and draft new units and tactics into their budding empires. Core Worlds’ chief mechanics are “card drafting” and “hand management.”  Each card lists its Empire Points in the upper right corner. The player whose Empire contains the most Empire Points at the end of the game is the winner.

 

Each player represents an Empire that begins with a Home World and a Starting Deck. A player’s Empire consists of all the cards in his or her hand, draw deck, discard pile, and Warzone, the area in front of the players where their conquered worlds are displayed. New cards are drawn from five Galactic Decks and placed face up in the Central Zone, the game’s common play area. These cards include new units and tactics that players can draft and new worlds that they can invade. In order to add new worlds to his or her empire a player must discard enough cards from his or her Warzone to match the fleet strength and ground strength of the world being invaded. Games take approximately 60 minutes to complete.