Kickstarter Korner- Stellaris: Infinite Legacy

What is this project?

Stellaris: Infinite Legacy is a board game version of the popular PC 4x game Stellaris. Beyond that, it is also a game that strives to turn traditional 4x board games, like Twilight Imperium, that take whole days to play and breaks gameplay up into multiple sessions via a Legacy system. Having played TI exactly once due to this time commitment, but loving that style of game, it piques my interest.

The idea for the game is heavily influenced by the PC version. This can be a blessing or a curse, as computers take care of a lot of details that you’ll have to track yourself in a board game. Some ideas also don’t translate well from medium to medium. But 4x strategy games are one category that often work in both. First impressions show the game taking the spirit and working them into the new medium well.

For example, one of the best features of Stellaris is customizing your alien race each game. This has been fully incorporated into the game. Each player will have a set of cards that are used to build up their unique species. This includes species traits, their ethics and government. You’ll have several choices for each, some being mutually exclusive. One nice feature is that effects that can’t be taken together come on the same card, so you can’t accidentally take them. It’s a small thing but shows a level of forethought from the designers that bodes well for the game play.

The Legacy mechanic has a lot of potential. One of the troubles with big 4x board games, aside from the time commitment, is that just as your empire starts to get interesting, the game ends. Also, some of the funnest part of a game are the early stages when you’re exploring. Stellaris tackles all three by breaking the game into multiple games. Each time you play, you’ll create a new game board but your empire can pick up where it left off in terms of tech and abilities. You are also free to create a completely new empire each game as well. The one you abandoned will remain in the game as a Fallen Empire you can encounter and interact with. Empires at different powers levels will have different objectives each game which means fresh civilizations still have a fair chance to win.

Another aspect of the Legacy system is that decisions made one game will affect others. Events will come up as you play and players will have to make a decision. The results of that decision may not come into play until a later session of the game. This can be true even if you switched empires.

The final interesting piece is the integration of the Crisis. In the PC game, Crisis are mid and endgame events that happen that affect the whole galaxy. There are a few types but often involve some invasion by a new power that is a threat to everyone. Every couple of sessions, players will be faced with theses and the game will transition into a semi-cooperative game rather than semi-competitive. As a fan of cooperative and variable gameplay this sounds intriguing and an excellent way to keep things fresh.

What do I get?

The standard game comes with components for four players. This is one of the nice features of the Kickstarter as each player will have a box that has all of their pieces and components for easy storage. These components include miniature ships, resources, tech and ability cards. This should make game clean-up and set-up significantly easier.

The miniatures included aren’t especially exciting. They come in 4 different colors and have five different types to represent the different classes of ships. That’s cool, I’m just unimpressed with the chosen designs for each class. They aren’t distinctive enough from each other, all variations on a rectangle. At a glance, the battleship is the only one I can readily tell apart from the others.

On the other end of exciting, the game board system stands out. The game will be played on a variable galactic map using hexagon. But these aren’t your typical tiles. Instead of flat edges, they use puzzle piece like edges so each tile connects securely to each other. This will alleviate that age old annoyance of accidentally nudging a tile and having everything get knocked around. Having played many tile games (Carcassone, Lanterns, Takenoko) which this is a frequent occurrence, this is a feature I appreciate.

The Kickstarter features two purchase options, one of which is just the base game. The Deluxe Edition (and the Early Bird Edition, no longer available as of this article) comes with two expansions. The Empire Expansion, increases the game from max of 4 players up to 6. It also features more game tiles and a few other things. The Frontiers Expansion adds a wide array of new techs. Unlike the stretch goals, some of these add additional effects to the game such as robot works, gateways and more starbases that add tokens and things to the game.

Stretch Goals?

As of this writing, multiple stretch goals have already been unlocked. Initially, they were not particularly exciting. Most of them were extra tech cards to include in your games. While cool and a welcome addition, they are not in and of themselves much encouragement to see the game hit ever more impressive milestones.

More recent goals have started to include things like new events, which include tiles and miniatures to go along with them. They have also started a metagame for more unlocked goals that involves interaction.

Will it fund?

It already has and then some.

Why should I back it?

If you like 4x games this sounds like a good one. If you like Legacy games, this is a different take on it. It is fairly expensive, with the base game coming at over $100, so that shouldn’t be ignored. You do get a fair amount for that price as it will have to be a substantial box to fit all of that. That is one of the nice aspects to Kickstarter games, they don’t need to be mass market so they can be priced high for high quality.