Conquest Diary

July 23, 2026

Star Realms has been around for over ten years, and while there are a multitude of expansion sets, there have only been three stand-alone sets. When we first launched Star Realms, standalone sets were a core part of the vision for the product.

One of the things that made Star Realms special when the first set came out was that it was a small inexpensive product absolutely packed with gameplay and replayability, without you ever having to buy anything else.  Fortunately for us, many of you loved the game, so there was great demand for expansion sets. We proceeded to make several pack-size expansions that were even less expensive, that you could combine with the base set to add new wrinkles to the game and fresh strategies.

To stick to our core vision for the product, we soon released a second standalone set, Colony Wars. Adding a new standalone set had several advantages. It was a product you could buy and play with even if you didn’t own any Star Realms cards yet.

We later added a third standalone set, Frontiers, but now after ten years of Star Realms, we are ready for a new one! When I was tasked with creating a new standalone set, I first took time to consider our goals that we strive for with standalone sets.

Now that the game has been around for ten years and there have already been three standalone sets and a multitude of smaller expansions, these two goals are more challenging than you might think.

Keep it Simple Stupid

This was easy to achieve with the first core set. Even the simplest of cards were new and exciting in a game that had never existed before. There were no worries about copying an existing card, since none existed yet. But every time you make more cards, you eat up more design space. The more cards that exist, the harder it is to create a card that’s new and fresh. This is especially true if you are trying not to use any new mechanics and you’re trying to keep the cards straight forward for new players. Let’s take one cost ships as an example of this challenge.

 

If I’m making a one cost ship, there are a limited number of basic things it can do:

These were plenty of options for the first set, but for several reasons that becomes more challenging with time. First, some of those abilities are faction specific. Only the Federation gains authority, only the Empire makes an opponent discard, etc.

This isn’t much of a problem for an expensive card. An eight-cost ship can have several abilities on the same card and can adjust those abilities to many different settings. An eight-cost ship can draw multiple cards, but it’s hard to have a one-cost ship that draws a even a single card while doing anything else without making it too powerful for a one-cost ship. An eight-cost ship could potentially gain ten combat, but you can’t have a one-cost ship gain anywhere near that. But you could also have an eight-cost ship gain a small amount of combat like four but then give it a bunch of other abilities to compensate.

Yet every standalone set needs new one cost ships in every faction. Yet there are standalone sets with factions that don’t have an eight-cost ship. The point is that it’s challenging to make brand new cheap ships and bases that are distinct from existing ones, and yet still simple and not covered in text and new abilities. As a result, there are much bigger differences between the expensive cards in various base sets than among the cheaper cards.

Make it Fresh

Paradoxically, while it’s hard to create cards without new mechanics after so many years, it’s also hard to create new mechanics after so many years. Over the years we’ve frequently added new mechanics for the cards in the smaller expansion sets. But each time we do that we reduce the design space for totally fresh new mechanics.

For the new Conquest standalone set I decided to do something different than in previous standalone sets to address this issue. I created a whole new card type: Planets.

One of the big things I strive for as a game designer is a tight connection between the flavor of my games with the gameplay. That’s why bases in Star Realms stay in place (until destroyed), but ships keep moving. Merchant ships provide trade, but battleships provide combat. Card games are abstract by their nature, but I want to create a feeling that flows with the story that the game is telling. The Trade Federation is obsessed with power and profit, so they specialize in trade and authority. The Machine Cult is obsessed with efficiency and purity, so they specialize in scrapping other cards from your deck.

The new mechanic in Colony Wars is being able to acquire certain cards directly to your hand if you have an ally in play. The new mechanic in Frontiers is two ally abilities on the same single faction card. These abilities went with the storyline of the various factions becoming more polarized first in the race for new colonies on the fringes of known human space and then later in the race to lay claim to the unexplored frontier of space. With Conquest, I wanted to focus more on the home systems of each faction and the worlds that have been long inhabited and made use of. Before the focus on expansion into the frontiers of space, these planets were the focus of countless battles and power struggles. Now players will have the opportunity to conquer those planets for themselves.

One of the side benefits of the fresh new thing in the Conquest set being a new card type is that it gives you two different ways to play. For new players who want to keep things basic or experienced players who want to stick to the classic feel for a given game, you can leave the planets out and just play with Conquest like you would with the original core set. But for players looking to get a fresh new experience, you can shuffle the planets into the trade deck and start conquering.

Any time I create a new card type, I want to give it properties that make it unique and separate it from the existing cards in the game. Like ships, bases, heroes, and tech, planets can be acquired from the trade row. Like heroes and tech, they go directly into play. Like tech, they have minor abilities that can be used every turn, and your opponent can’t get rid of them. Unlike tech, you don’t have to pay to use the abilities. But the thing that really sets planets apart from other cards is how you acquire them.

Until now the only way to acquire cards from the trade row aside from specialized abilities on specific cards was with trade. Planets are acquired by conquering them with combat. The more combat required to conquer a planet, the more powerful ability the planet has.

Given the storyline of conquest, it makes sense to acquire planets with combat, while also keeping them unique. It also sets up interesting choices for players. Instead of always attacking enemy bases and/or players, there is now a third option to consider when using combat. Sometimes you may really want to conquer a planet before your opponent does, but doing so may lead to letting your opponent keep a key base in play for another turn.

The other cards in Conquest are designed to go with the idea of conquering planets and what each faction’s priorities are when conquering them. The Blobs want more planets to mine for resources to keep growing their swarms. The Machine Cult wants more resources for producing nanobots and mechs, while also extending the reach of their high-tech religion. The Star Empire wants to add more planets under their control for “security”, to create a buffer between them and their adversaries while also just adding to their empire. The Trade Federation wants more planets that must buy and sell their goods, with more safe ports and unchallenged trade routes.

Testing the set without planets has gone smoothly so far but given how long we’ve been designing and developing ships and bases, that was to be expected. The bigger game development challenges all came when we started testing the set with the addition of planets.

In my first draft of the planets, they all had two abilities per card. One that triggered immediately when you conquered a planet and then never again. And a second weaker ability that triggered every turn. We quickly found that every planet was too powerful. This was because with two abilities there was never a difficult decision whether to acquire them and when you added in the fact they never go away it was just too much. I was pleasantly surprised to find that just by removing the conquer ability, they seemed fine. It doesn’t take a strong ability to be rewarding if it happens every turn and the only thing your opponent can do about it is to try to win the game quicker.

But without a conquer ability, you usually need to have a planet in play for several turns to return the value of the combat invested in conquering it. This helps make the decision whether to acquire them more interesting. We still ran into another problem though. Sometimes in the early game and occasionally in the late game the trade row would get flooded with planets, making it so there weren’t enough choices of what you spend your trade on. In the early game you usually don’t have enough combat to conquer a planet and sometimes in the late game it just doesn’t make sense to spend your combat on anything but attacking your opponent.

We tried a few different solutions, including having a separate trade row just for planets or having a planet pile a bit like the explorer pile. The solution we liked the best is having the entire trade row get scrapped and replaced if you end up with three or more planets in the trade row at the same time. I call it the Ticket to Ride solution. If you’ve never played Ticket to Ride, I recommend it and you’ll quickly see what I mean!

At this point the art and card design are complete for the Conquest standalone set. The development has gone well, but one of the advantages of releasing the cards in digital first is that we will be able to continue making some balance changes for a while if they are needed. I’m excited about what we have created with the set and with the new planet cards and I can’t wait for players to get to see why. Enjoy conquering planets and may your star realm prosper!