Empires of the Void II First Impressions

Empires of the Void II is an epic space game.

It will leave you feeling refreshed.

The Kurross Empire emerged from the deep, endless pool of space, dark and undetectable. They crushed Earth’s paltry fleet within a week, and broke through the great planetary shield that protected the surface. Bright blue oceans turned to an irradiated wasteland as they bombarded the planet, shredding the remnants of thousands of years of human history.

Markan, last captain of Earth’s forces, made a final, desperate attempt to survive, salvaging an abandoned Worldship from hundreds of years past. She took command and headed for the fringe of the galaxy, where there was a chance to gain a foothold, grow in strength, and find new allies for the fight against the Kurross.

Earth’s long-time enemies, the Zun and Decima Empires, soon followed in their own Worldships, leaving behind decimated worlds and lost family, determined to stake their own claim of the fringe.

Empires of the Void II Game Play

This is a brief, far from a comprehensive overview. Just the basics but enough to get an idea of the game.

To start, players get a player board representing one of the factions along with a bunch of tokens and a Worldship mini. The Worldship and a few tokens, representing a Star Sloop and Starfarer ships, start on the map.

On the board is an action selection area with 5 actions on it. On a players turn they move action selection pawn to a different action on that board and then they take that action.

Then the other players in turn order can either Follow to perform that action or Refresh. Let’s look at Refresh before looking at those other actions.

When you Refresh you take income from symbols on your player board and on Planets you control. You also get to draw Power cards back up to your hand limit. More on what all that means for you in a bit. First, the actions.

Actions

Move & Attack

Move everything in one space to an adjacent space and pay command to move additional spaces. You can freely pick up units from planets as you pass over them but you can’t drop them off on Planets without ending your movement. Some planets take up two spaces with one on the planet surface and one in orbit.

Some spaces are hazardous and can only be moved through via a roll of a die.

If you land on a planet something will happen depending on the status of the planet. But if it’s empty you add a token to control it or replace the token if a player controls it. If it’s inhabited by either Aliens or player units then you fight. Some planets have goods tokens which you collect and can be used on other actions.

To Battle against a player, roll the dice shown on up to 3 units in that region, pick the highest, and add any Power from your Units then play a Power card from your hand. The highest total wins with ties going to the defender and the winner taking control of the planet and gets a victory point while the loser retreats.

To Battle against an alien, it works the same with another player rolling for the alien and their power card coming from the top of the deck.

Research & Build

Research, place a Good token on a building track to reduce the cost of the building or on a technology to gain the ability.

To Build, pay the cost of the building and place it on a planet you control or your Worldship.

Card Action or Diplomacy

For a Card Action, just pay the cost of a card in your hand and resolve. Some of these cards give you Missions to achieve during the game by completing certain criteria. Some of these include Pick up & Deliver style missions and stealing things from an Opponent.

Diplomacy allows you to put influence on a system and if you have the most you gain that system as an ally.

Recruit

Pay the cost for units (or aliens if they’re your ally) and put them on a planet with your building, or your Worldship.

Scavenge

This just lets you take the Refresh action as the active player.

Game End

When the last power card is drawn players take equal turns and 1 additional round. Players score for buildings, technologies, influence, control and on cards. The player with the most points wins.

Theme

Space and all that. It works quite well with quite a few thematic elements thrown in.

Not a “space” fan myself but I can’t fault the theme.

Setup

Not my game so I let the owner crack on with it. Seemed to be a lot going on and a lot of things all over the place.

There seems to be a fair bit of removing certain things before setup, the kind of thing you might need a help sheet or the rulebook.

Components & Artwork

Not too bad. There’s a lot of it and it’s all over the place but it isn’t bad. Although my purple Worldship looked like it had been snapped but it hadn’t, it was supposed to be that way.

The art is that Red Raven style which is OK but not for me but the graphic design is nice.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

It’s fairly straight forward once you get going. There’s a lot of bits but it all boils down to knowing what each of the 5 actions are and why you need to do them.

The only hidden information is the hand of cards so new players can be helped with those that they don’t understand

Empires of the Void II Summary

Now, I don’t like space games really and I especially don’t like long ones that include PvP. I would play Gaia Project anytime instead If I wanted something space-based.

Everything is pretty good with a few thematic elements that were nice.

But, the problem is that Empires of the Void II is a 2-3 hour-ish game where most of the time ‘Refresh’ is the best action to take… the boring one.

It gives you cards which you need and money which you also need. I have no problem with this but following the lead action SHOULD be the better one to take.

It just rarely was.

Jesta ThaRogue