My kids (age 6) love playing games with me. For many years, we really could only play kids’ games together, which were basically memory or dexterity games. As they’ve aged up some, we’ve moved on to more complex games, with the “My First,” or “My ‘lil” style of games being perfect gateways for them. They’ve already torn through Catan Junior, My ‘Lil Everdell, and My First Carcassonne.
At Gen Con this year, publisher Wacky Wizard Games (an imprint of Wise Wizard Games) released their introductory deck-building game, Star Realms Academy. It’s tailor-made for families with simpler rules, cute art, and no reading required. Fingers crossed that this intro-to-deck-building game works as advertised.
Gameplay Overview:
If you’ve played Star Realms before, then a lot is going to be very familiar to you. However there are some rules changes, so you don’t want to just dive in and start playing. Each player starts with an identical deck of 6 cards. On a player’s turn, they must play all 3 cards in their hand.
Each card will provide one or more icons that include:
Coins: Used to buy cards from the market to add to your deck.
Attack: Removes your opponent’s shield token(s).
Draw: Draw a card.
Repair: Gain a shield token back.
Any ships you played and cards you bought will get sent to your discard pile at the end of the turn. Any bases you put in play remain there until destroyed by your opponent. Bases will also provide defense against attacks on you. Bases that are in play from previous rounds will provide their bonuses each round.
Some cards also have an “ally” ability which triggers if you play two cards of the same color/faction on a turn. So that green card may only grate you 1 point of attack, but if you play a second green card on a turn (or have a green base in play), then you get its boosted ability.
After finishing your turn, you draw your hand back up to three cards and your opponent goes. The first player to remove all of their opponent’s shield tokens wins.
Game Experience:
My kids have had zero experience with deck-building games, so I wasn’t sure how well Star Realms Academy would go over. It actually threw a lot of new concepts at them: deck building in general, bases that stay in play, ally powers… even having your own personal discard pile was new to them. They’ve only ever played games with communal draw and discard piles, so I had to explain how cards they play go into a special pile on their side of the table. Heck, even shuffling their discard pile when it runs out to form a new draw deck was foreign to them.
Halfway through our first game, my son said “This is confusing”… and I told him he’d get it eventually. And he did! Things started to click shortly after that and he figured out he uses coins to buy cards from the middle and red icons to attack me. Sure he didn’t have much in the way of strategy, like keeping your deck focused, or not overloading its size. But he loved it. Buying cards was a ton of fun for him and he eventually realized how powerful bases were and was laser-focused on gobbling all of those up.
My daughter was watching us play halfway through and things clicked for her as well. After we finished our game, she demanded a chance to play me. I’m not sure if she had a head start from watching the first game, but she grasped the rules right away and even won the game (legit). Proud Papa moment there.
Honestly, I think Star Realms Academy is a triumph in family games with its accessibility. The hand size has dropped down to 3 cards (from 5 of the original), there is no reading or text required, and all the icons make perfect sense. I also think allowing players to keep money between rounds was a great idea. With only 3 cards, it can be hard to buy each round, so saving 1-2 coins between rounds makes it easier to get those more expensive cards.
Now I could lament the lack of ways to cull your deck, how powerful bases can be if you don’t get a chance to buy any on your turns, or even how the blue repair cards can somewhat drag the game out. But, really, none of that matters. This was my kids’ first chance to play a deck-building game and it worked amazingly well. They grasped the new style of play and were able to handle all the new mechanics it threw at them. As an added bonus, they are even learning how to shuffle a deck properly (for the most part). I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better intro to the genre for them. It’s even fun for me to play.
My only complaint with the game is that the player boards are only about half of what they need to be. They have spots to track your coins and shield tokens, which is great, but really could have used a spot for your deck and discard pile. As I explained above, these are somewhat new concepts for my kids, so I often have to remind them of where to put their cards after they play. If they had specific spots to place all their played and discarded cards, it would have made the game go a little smoother. But that’s a really minor gripe in an otherwise excellent product.
Final Thoughts:
Since bringing the game back from Gen Con, Star Realms Academy has made it to our gaming table quite often. It’s been an absolute hit with my kids and they’ve taken to the deck-building genre with zeal. They love the cute art, playing strong hands on their turn, and buying cards from the market. I’ve actually had to sleeve my copy because, well, kids are rough on pretty much everything. But this will be a staple in our collection going forward for a while.
While we don’t give numerical scores for family games (because your game plays can greatly vary based on the age and experience level of your players), if I gave one for Star Realms Academy, it would get top marks.
