by Nirumaru
This is a review of Core Worlds after 2 plays of a 2 player game with my wife. The games were played about a month apart. There’s no formula to this review, just thoughts and opinions grouped together.After our first game my wife said ‘it’s not as complicated as I thought it was going to be. It’s a bit like Dominion only with more to do and think about’. I think that is a very fair and accurate summary of Core Worlds (so maybe she should be writing this review?)!
Artwork and components: Almost all of the artwork is of a high quality and despite different artists being involved the artwork is very consistent. It looks futuristic and definitely on theme, although it must be said that all of the ‘worlds’ look very similar and not particularly enticing to invade (I would have thought the Core Worlds themselves might have looked suitably rich and developed). The cards are of good quality and look like they will last quite a few plays unscathed. The layout of the cards is actually very clear and easy to follow despite quite a lot of information being displayed on them. The cards are not overly large or small.
Components-wise, well, thankfully with so many cards you’re not overloaded with cardboard chits and tokens or boards. Therefore set-up can be done in a few minutes, most of which is shuffling cards and setting up the sectors.
The player boards are very helpful. They contain a whole lot of necessary information as well as quick references to the game phases and turn ability. There is one bug-bear with the player board and that is with the action and energy tables. The action table has a zero (0) number which you work back to as you carry out your actions. The energy table doesn’t have a zero (0), instead when you run out of energy you end up on the word ‘energy’. It’s a small minor thing but something that has bugged both of us.
It might be possible that in a phase you could briefly run out of energy tokens. It really depends on what cards are in players’ warzones and how many cards survived from the previous round.
The rulebook is well-laid out and while useful to have on hand during the first game players probably won’t need to refer to it in subsequent games. There are a few rules which are easy to miss (e.g.in phase 10 all remaining sector cards go into the central zone) but they are not game-breakers as such.
Gameplay: I won’t go into a long description of the gameplay as it’s clearly described in other reviews and in the rulebook. However, it’s hard not to say it plays a bit like Dominion but it is easy to say that it plays much more thematically, less prescriptive and allows for changes in strategy through-out the game. During our first game of Dominion my wife noted that it would make much more sense to focus on money than getting other cards – she identified the big money strategy and put it in play while I filled up on every card going. Despite one of the main aims of the game being to invade worlds with massive armies and spaceship fleets there isn’t much tit-for-tat play and so far in our 2 plays there hasn’t been a ‘take-that!’ moment (e.g. playing a Witch card). So you never feel like you are attacking your opponents, although you might deal their strategy a blow by drafting a card they were after.
One thing that is very clear after our 2 plays is that if your usual modus operandi is 2-player games it will take some time before you see all of the cards in all of the sectors. This means that it is difficult to identify particular strategies to follow, which cards are good to draft, which worlds are good to invade and when is optimal to play certain cards. It also means that the first few games of Core Worlds can be slower (e.g. upwards of an hour) as each time cards are revealed in a phase all of the players have to examine and read the cards. Certainly in our 2 plays we have only skimmed the surface of the game and the potential strategies available.
This is also a game where you need to be tuned in all the time to what you have in your deck, in your warzone, what kind of energy you can draw on and where your empire points might come from. Cards which give bonuses at the end of the game are crucial and making sure you can fulfil the criteria on those cards in order to get their bonuses can really influence your final few turns. My wife seemingly bungled the final phase and after deploying some cards didn’t have enough energy to do anything. However, one of the cards she deployed gave her a bonus of 9 points because it was in her warzone and she won the game by 2 points. The game manages to keep the tension going right up to the very end (although I am on the fence about the prestige cards).
Overall: I really like this game and so does my wife. I think it has more of a lasting appeal than Dominion and because of the randomness of cards drawn in the different phases there are quite a few strategies that can be played and changed during a game. There feels like a lot of depth to this game but you don’t feel swamped by the depth.
It is relatively simple to pick up and play even after sometime. Once everyone is familiar (i.e. seen them at least once in a previous play) with the cards I think gameplay will speed up and players’ strategies will become more defined.
If you like: science fiction themes (which is spot on for this game!), card games with a degree of deck building (which is really well implemented in this game – it actually feels like you are building an empire), fairly fast gameplay and games which aren’t over until they are over, then I would heartily recommend Core Worlds. It’s a good, thematic strategy card game with clean mechanics that in our experience is enjoyable, re-playable and is ‘married couple friendly’.