GMT Games | Space Empires 4X | Board Game | Ages 12+ | 1 to 4 Players | 180 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

The Blue plan is to destroy all of Yellow’s combat ships and then eliminate the Yellow Colony itself, thus making the planet Cerberus eligible for colonization by the Blue forces. Colony ships simply move toward a planet that can be Colonized, either one of the 8 Planets that are in your home system or one of the Barren Planets that require you to have invested in Terraforming Technology.

A Black Hole will remain in the space that it was discovered in and will not block movement through the hex, but each time a friendly or an enemy ship enters the hex, they will have to pause to check for survival. Once all ships in a System have been destroyed or Retreated, you may attack an enemy Colony or Homeworld. Good player reference sheets make it easy to look up what you are capable of doing based on your current technology levels. An enemy Colony is not itself considered a combat-capable unit, so you may choose to stop in, or move through, an enemy Colony space. One difficulty in games of this genre is that they are often either overly simplistic or tediously detailed.If you include all the Optional Rules (discussed later), this fiddly problem is eliminated via the Instant Technology Upgrade optional rule.

While I wasn’t quite moved to purchase it , I was nevertheless intrigued enough to set its name aside in my head until a time came along where I could afford to try it. About 4 hours later, after a great game which the oldest won, all 3 insisted in setting up another game for the next day before going to bed. Space Empires 4X is a game in the finest tradition of 4X space games - eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate. It feels as if the game needs an outsider, an arbiter, not because somebody is going to malevolently cheat against his opponents, but because it is not that hard to make a mistake and screw the game over.There are certain intricacies about how to enter unexplored systems, enemy occupied hexes and how to initiate colonization on normal or barren planets, these are however easy to grok. Multi-player scenarios have the option for team play, including 2 players against 1 in a 3-player game.