The passing of time is measured by a deck of Event cards, and each round an Event card from the deck will be revealed. Usually these cards will trigger some minor possibilities to score extra victory points or a small benefit for a player who has fallen behind, but at three fixed positions in the deck (cards 5, 9 and 12) a Scoring Card will be revealed. In these scoring rounds the players will receive victory points for all their planets and technologies, and in addition the Galactic Council will award bonus victory points to the player with most votes in the Council. The number of votes in the council is determined by the alien planets allied to the players, and so it is preferable for a player to win other worlds as allies in opposition to conquering them. Thus, a planet may be taken by military conquest or by a diplomatic attempt, and the difference between both types of actions is based on the fact that the alien inhabitants of a planet will not like a hostile takeover. So, they will surrender only the planet's income, resources and victory points to a conqueror, but the planet's votes in the Galactic Council and the special ability associated to the planet's inhabitants can only be used by a player who has made a successful attempt of peaceful diplomacy to win the planet as an ally.

Good old six-sided dice are used to determine the outcome of battles and diplomatic attempts, but whereas a military conquest of a neutral planet needs only one successful hit-roll with a ship in orbit, a diplomatic attempt is more difficult since a player needs to roll a sum of 17 or higher with three dice to be successful. In addition, such a diplomatic attempt only can be made if the player is able to reveal at least one Diplomacy card from his hand which matches the alignment of the planet, but if he actually should be able to reveal more than one matching card the roll will get easier the more cards are revealed. If the diplomatic roll is not successful, the player just loses an action but not his cards - these must only be discarded after a successful roll. So, a player must decide how many cards he wants to invest in a roll, since the roll itself will take up a precious action - just like the drawing of new Diplomacy cards from the deck. Thus, the player is faced with a question of balancing and taking risks which is found quite often in Empires of the Void.

Space battles can be initiated by a player's action when two fleets meet at a planet, and once again the players will roll dice for the ships in the fleets. The procedure for dealing with such battles is pretty straightforward, since the players try to roll good results to score hits with their ships. However, all ship types are grouped into five initiative groups, and hits caused by ships with a higher firing priority will be scored (and removed) before ships with a lower initiative will get a chance to fire. This may result in a player losing all ships in his fleet before he gets a chance to fire back.

If all ships in orbit of a planet are defeated (or if the planet was left undefended), the planet will be taken over by the attacker. If the planet had been conquered by its former owner, it can now be set free in order to allow a new diplomatic attempt, but if the planet was befriended by its former owner it can only be conquered, meaning that the planet's inhabitants will remain hostile to their new ruler.

The situation faced by players of Empires of the Void is quite different from the approach taken in Eclipse or Twilight Empires, since the players cannot afford to waste their precious actions, and this usually results in a much higher rate of activity on the gameboard. Players will try to move forwards, taking opportunities based on strategy, timing (caused by the changing turn order) and quite a bit of luck, and this certainly will not be liked by players who want to avoid luck as much as possible in the games they play. However, if the undeniable influence of luck found in Empires of the Void is taken for granted, the increased dynamics and flow found in the game offers a great attractivity of its own, since Empires of the Void outclasses other space-opera games with its much shorter playing time and the avoidance of massive fleets resulting in stand-offs.

Going a bit deeper to the roots of the game's attraction, the ubiquitous element of timing found in Empires of the Void will pose a different challenge with every new game, since the players will need to balance which technologies will come most useful at which time. Thus, unlike Civilization-type games where the question arises whether a specific technology should be researched at all, players of Empires of the Void more often will ask themselves at what time a specific technology should be researched. Thus, the question may be whether the "Warp Gates"-technology should be researched early (moving all ships on the board with just two actions instead of moving one ship per action), or whether it might be wiser to go for technologies which increase a player's income and allow better chances in diplomatic attempts. The technology-tree found in Empires of the Void offers enough possibilities for finetuning, and combined with the specific abilities of each player-race a typical game of Empires of the Void will see the players move and develop in quite different directions. Some players will try diplomacy, others will go for conquest, and once again some players will try to develop big "Sunhammer"-dreadnaughts, whereas others will enhance their "Starcruisers" with better technologies while even other players will restrict themselves to much cheaper ships. There are lots of ways to be explored with every new game.

Actually, playtesting revealed one constellation where the different abilities of the spaceships and of the player races caused a bit of of a balancing problem, and the situation when this arose was during two-player games. If a player succeeds in winning the planet of Tan Lock as an ally, he gains access to the production of Black Hole spaceships, and with their comparatively cheap price, their rather high movement allowance and their formidable fighting capabilities these ships can be used to tear apart an opponent's empire. In games with more than two players the other players have some possibilities for a joint counterstrike, but if one lonely opponent is faced by the six Black Hole ships included in the game that player will be rather helpless against such an onslaught. Likewise, the race of the Narkani Alliance has a special ability to trigger one additional movement action per round by payment of one currency unit. In effect, the Narkani player will use this ability every round, and especially in a two player game the opponent usually cannot keep up with the increased mobility of his opponent.

If you give the different parts and mechanisms found in Empires of the Void a historical research, you will certainly discover that many of the elements found here are not new but alterations of mechanisms which can be found in many other games. The space battles bear distinctive similarities with battles found in Axis & Allies, the development of technologies which trigger improvements to a player's abilities is common to games like Sid Meier's Civilization, and even the background of conquering or befriending alien worlds can be found in games dating back for some decades. However, as indicated earlier in this review it is my opinion that Ryan Laukat has given the whole setting a refreshing new approach, since Empires of the Void has avoided the danger of becoming just another time-consuming strategic heavyweight. The game deliberately uses dice to challenge the players with uncertainties, but there is still ample of room for tactical planning due to the different approaches the players will take on aspects of timing, moving and fighting. The different mechanisms assembled in Empires of the Void smoothly fall into place, and this causes the game the game to move forwards at a great pace, keeping the players in thrall from the beginning right till the end. Knowing long periods of passive watching other players plan and perform their turns in other space-opera games, it seems a great feat that such periods of downtime had been minimized in Empires of the Void.

It is my impression that Ryan Laukat has given his debut game a lot of care, adding small twists and turns which greatly add to the overall playing experience. One point where this becomes visible is the multiple uses of the already mentioned Diplomacy cards which can be drawn if the players invest an action. At the beginning of the game these cards usually are used to win other planets as allies, but in the second half of the game - when many planets have allied with the one or other player - these cards are not devaluated but instead cards of identical alignments may be collected to trigger special actions. This ensures that these cards will keep their value throughout the game while at the same time the players will be faced with some surprising actions, and so the versatile use of the Diplomacy cards is just one more example of the finetuning the game has received.

To sum it up, Empires of the Void can be recommended because of its coherent and harmonious set of rules which is flanked by a very impressive and atmospheric artwork. It is great to see that Kickstarter made it possible for Empires of the Void to come to life!

In fall 2011 I discovered a new Kickstarter-project, and this time it was Ryan Laukat's game Empires of the Void. I was instantly taken by the great, comic-like artwork and the interesting sounding rules which promised a new take on classic space-opera games. Thus, I was all ready to join the group of Kickstarters when I discovered that Ryan has sponsored one copy of the game for the 2011 charity auction of the Jack Vasel Memorial Fund. Organized as a list at Boardgamegeek, many people had donated gaming stuff to be auctioned in favour of the Fund, and so people were bidding on different types of objects and rewards, ranging from small promo-expansions to big boardgame-bundles or oddities like a whole day out in New York (gaming evening included).

The specialty of the copy of Empires of the Void offered for auction there was the fact that the winning bidder would not only receive a copy of the game, but also be allowed to design a new race for the game, and Ryan had promised that he would draw a fitting picture for this race and create a player tableau which would then be available for download for all players of Empires of the Void. For me, this offer meant an irresistible temptation, since my long-term readers will know that I always loved to create small mini-expansions for great boardgames. And now such an opportunity was coupled with the promise that fitting artwork would be created, and for me this meant that I simply had to win this auction! So, being located in Germany I ended up booting my computer at 5:30 AM on a monday morning, since the bidding phase for all auctions was ending at 12:00 PM Eastern time. Fighting a sniper-duel with another bidder in the last minute of the auction, the game secured a great contribution to the Jack Vasel Fund, and I ended up with the opportunity to personalize my own copy of Empires of the Void which was due to arrive about half a year later.

To give you the background for my new race, I would like to take you on a trip back in computer game history to the year 1990, when programmers Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III created a space combat computer game which has succeeded in gaining cult status. This game was ACCOLADE's Star Control II. Indeed, the game offered quite entertaining sequences of space combat between various types of ships, but even more important was the fact that the game had a very complex background story in which the player was given the task to save the galaxy from the evil Ur-Quan Hierarchy. Numerous sentient races had to be convinced to join the player's cause, and for this lots of missions had to be performed. There were long sequences of dialogue, and each race had its own specific style of communication, sometimes sinister and dark and sometimes outright hilarious (mind you, this was BEFORE computer games featured speech!).

I have never been a computer addict, but this was a game which fascinated me as a youngster, and I played all my way right until the end. Even the final sequences of the game were unforgettable, with the Ur-Quan Space Station blowing up and the player character returning to his homeworld, and a bit later I typed a six-pages walkthrough of the game which was even published in a big computer magazine. I still fondly remember this playing experience, and as a tribute to this great game I have designed the new race for Empires of the Void to resemble one of the races found in Star Control II.

And now, coming as a G@mebox Special, the new race is ready. As promised, Ryan has drawn me a beautiful player tableau featuring the new race, and he also designed a new planet token to go along with it.

Click on image to enlarge and download!

The special ability of the Sirens basically means that they may steal a Starfighter from an opposing player in a space battle, provided that at least one Siren Diplomat ship is present in this battle and the Sirens have an unused Starfighter ship available. If these two conditions are met, the opposing Starfighter is removed and handed back to its owner, whereas the additional Starfighter of the Sirens is placed at the same space and - of course - participates in the battle on side of the Sirens.

On board of the "Behemoth", flagship of the Grand Admiral:

"Sir, we have entered the star system of Belshar, and in a few minutes we will have visual contact of Belshar II. This must be the homeworld of the Sirens!"

"Thank you, Ensign." replied the Grand Admiral. "Keep me informed on our progress, and lauch our of wing of Starfighters immediately upon arrival at the planet's orbit."

The Grand Admiral smiled at the prospect of conquering the mysterious planet. The true nature of the Sirens was unknown, as they were trading with the other galactic races through emissaries. However, the exotic goods coming from Belshar were known for their enormous value, and so the Grand Admiral had been sent to subdue this remote world. Other expeditions had vanished on this mission, but he was sure that the Behemoth's wing of high-tech Startfighters would be more than enough to invade a world of artisans and traders.

At this moment the green globe of Belshar slided into view, and only seconds later the squadron of Starfighters was moving towards the atmosphere.

"Sir, we have video contact with someone broadcasting from the planet's surface. In fact, all of our pilots are receiving this signal as well."

The transmission started, and a stunningly beautiful woman appeared on the screen and addressed the invaders. "Starfighter pilots! We know that you have come to conquer our planet, but those of you who abandon this sinister plan and defend our planet will be welcomed as heroes by my sisters and me. You will get shore leave on Belshar as long as you desire, and be assured that this experience will be … unforgettable!"

The last words hung in space for a few seconds, but then the Grand Admiral's eyes widened in shock as he saw the whole squardron of Starfighters blow each other to smithereens. And finally, when the Starfighters had vanished, a fleet of spaceships rose from Belshar to deal with the Behemoth…