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Empires of the Void II

76.00€

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Contents - Description

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.

In Empires of the Void II, you have been given a mission to establish a foothold at the fringe of the galaxy for your galactic empire. The game begins when your massive Worldships reach the fringe, where you must explore, wage war, use diplomacy, and construct buildings to gain victory. The fringe is sparsely populated and the few local sentient species are struggling to survive, leaving huge regions of planets open for exploration and colonization. Many species are eager to ally themselves with a powerful empire to gain security and stability in a chaotic and difficult time.

As you explore and interact with planets, you will discover unfolding stories of the fringe. Each inhabited planet is home to a unique alien species, with their own goals, values, and problems. Will you give aid by fighting off pirates, transporting goods, and curing strange diseases? Or will you invade and rule with a cruel hand? This may be your last chance to prepare before the Kurross meet you again.

Additional information
Ages

13+
Players

2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players
Play Time

90m – 180m
Designer

Ryan Laukat
Mechanics

Action Points, Area Majority / Influence, Follow, Dice Rolling, Hand Management, Modular Board, Point to Point Movement, Variable Player Powers
Theme

Civilization, Economic, Science Fiction, Space Exploration, Exploration
Publisher

Red Raven Games
Video
Ratings

Meeple on Board Rating

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Board Game Geek Reviews


  1. 8.5 out of 10

    With a metal start player token, that replaces the 1st player card. I use obslete player card to separate the 10 recommended event cards for your first play. Needs some good packing system to reduce the long setup time. Beautiful game with nice player interaction and nice missions. And all playable with 4 players in 90 to 120 min.

  2. 9 out of 10

    There is a lot of different elements going on in this game that harken to others. It's like a mixture of Islebound, Firefly, Scythe, and Tiny Epic Galaxies, but limiting it to those comparisons is doing it an disservice. The planets feel alive, and play a huge roll in impacting the game itself with event cards that change in every game. Replayability is through the roof. To me, this is Ryan's masterpiece. It's a game that takes the strengths of his other games and throws it into one glorious box. My small complaint is how daunting setup can be, but boy is it worth it.

  3. 6 out of 10

    Once we learned the flow of the game, the pace of play was just lightning fast. That is what will set this apart from other space conquest-ish games for me. The end game doesn't feel rushed or like the game ends too quickly for you accomplish your goals. In the end you've had a chance to do a lot, and see a lot of story in a tight amount of game time. I love that. After a few more plays, I am really quite glad that I got a chance to play this one a few different times. I love the design of the different species and how they intersect. The flavour of the game and the story elements are my favourite parts by far. The missions are great! Its a very unique world and I love exploring how the different games unfold, very theatrical. However. I feel like the board and the unlocking of powers, the action selection mechanism for the turn, and the combat all feel a bit underwhelming. The combat never felt high stakes, even though on paper it seems like Kemet, (or in truth more like Scythe) in reality I only saw combat happen when someone felt sure they could beat someone else up for a quick point, or when they were fighting the nobodies who were guarding a planet after the main force had moved away. Splitting your forces is a terrible idea in this game, so its really impossible to hold onto anything, but the game is always asking you to build stuff on different planets. The action selection made the game move fast, but wasn't at all central to the game, and the variant that just removes this mechanism left me feeling let down. If you can remove it entirely then why didn't you? I would prefer a game know why it's doing something and stick to its guns rather than try to please everyone. The player boards and the progression of powers is fine, but it feels like a ploy to make you deploy stuff on the board. Most of the time the you care more about freeing a space on your player board than putting anything anywhere, and that feels a bit like a cheat to me. There are marvellous moments in the game, and wonderful little mechanisms and pieces of design that are fun. The game really is fun! It's just not a finely honed experience, and not a truly epic and open one either. I can't quite get over its identity crisis, but maybe you won't care about that at all. I can't help compare it to one my favourite Laukat games, City of Iron. That game is punishing, relentlessly tight, maddening and rewarding and providing a window into a rich world. Do some players hate it? Yep! But I LOVE that that game doesn't apologize for what it is. This game has great vision at its core, but seems to want to be something for everyone, and I for that I'm afraid that I don't love it. I really enjoyed my plays of this game, and I wish I liked it more. The missions and events are the backbone of a really unique and interesting thematic, story driven design. I had issues with how long the set up was, which was a consequence of the intricate design. Ultimately, it's something I would play again, but if I had the choice between this and City of Iron, I know what I would choose.

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Empires of the Void II

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