In Master of Orion: The Board Game, each player begins with a board that has four tracks: Food, Fleet, Production, and Loyalty. The starting numbers on these tracks depend on the race a player chooses, with choices including fan favorites the Darloks, Psilons, and Humans. Each round, players gain resources and a number of actions, as determined by their boards. Players spend their action cubes each turn to manage their resources (Food, Fleet, Productions) and build systems. Since this is a tableau-building game, players use the cards in the deck to build up to four systems, each comprised of a maximum of five cards that represent various Structures, Ships, and Planets. Victory Points are gained by playing cards, creating matched sets, attacking opponents, and having certain resources and cards at the end of the game.
The game’s end is triggered in one of three ways: when a player has 0 Loyalty, a player has five cards in each of their four systems, or eight rounds of play have been completed. There are different paths to victory as players can focus on military means—training spies and attacking alien planets—or the path of creation—controlling the weather and constructing space fleets. The winner is the player with the most Victory Points, who is deemed the leader of the most developed civilization and therefore appointed as the Emperor at the Galactic Council.
- Earned the Seal of Excellence from The Dice Tower, the highly regarded YouTube channel and audio podcast about board games
- Designed by Ekaterina Gorn and Igor Sklyuev
- Adapted art style from the 2016 re-imagining of the video game
- One of the most buzzed about games prior to and during this year’s Essen Spiel board game trade fair
- Players choose from several races (Humans and various alien races)
Contents:
- 90 Structure Cards
- 8 Advisor Cards
- 6 Civilization Boards
- 60 Wooden Cubes
- 16 Tokens
- Scoring Board
- Rulebook >
Players: 2-4
Ages: 12+
Playtime: 45-60 min