MERCS Miniatures and Megacon Games are returning to their flagship space exploration game Emergence Event with a new expansion, The Awakening, and the expanded Galaxy Edition, releasing in June 2017.

The original Emergence Event was released in 2014 (see “‘Emergence Event’ and ‘Mercs:  Recon’”).  Calling itself a “3X game,” it puts players in the captain’s chair of spaceships sent to explore, expand, and exploit uncharted space without the “extermination” element common to the space colonization genre.

The Awakening is the first expansion for Emergence Event.  It includes six new galaxy tiles for players to explore, two new alien spaceships and matching captain boards, and 79 new game cards.  It also expands the game by offering solo-player rules.  MERCS is estimating a $30.00 MSRP.  A copy of the base game is required to use this expansion.

The Emergence Event Galaxy Edition is simply a copy of the base game combined with The Awakening expansion, for a total of 25 galaxy tiles, 6 ship miniatures and matching captain boards, 252 cards, 4 custom dice, 1 scoring board, 104 plastic crystals, and hundreds of tokens.  MSRP has not been announced.

MERCS and Megacon are funding the production of the new expansion and the Galaxy Edition through a Kickstarter campaign that attracted more than $30,000 in pledged support from 500 backers in its first weekend (an average of $62.17 per backer), with 13 days remaining.  The company plans backer fulfillment in May 2017, with release into the trade about a month later.