A while back I wrote several articles about a “small” game on Kickstarter called Small Star Empires by Archona Games. I was contacted by the designer, my friend Milan, and sent a prototype copy of the game. I did a review of the game as requested, but more importantly I fell in love with Small Star Empires. Now I have received my production copy of the game, and I am blown away.

For the uninitiated, Small Star Empires is a modular strategy game where players move their ships (the tallest of the miniatures in the above picture) in order to build colonies and trade stations (the smaller miniatures). Along the way players will colonize planetary systems, explore beautiful nebulae, and establish the foundations of their empires.

The game comes with a mind-blowing 96 miniatures, 24 in each of four colors. In the above image a player’s colonies are pictured on the left. Trade stations are on the bottom right and ships are on the top right. When a player moves their ships a colony or a trade station is dropped where a player stops. I won’t go into all of the rules of movement here, but know that it is deeply strategic and sometimes ruthless.

The game has near infinite replay ability due to the modular nature of the board and the sheer number of ways the game can be played. There are 7 double-sided large tiles and 4 homeworld tiles that can arranged and flipped for endless possibilities. To go even further Small Star Empires includes a ton of single system tiles that add everything from warp zones, asteroid fields, space stations, black holes, and a lot more.

Small Star Empires is easy to teach and learn, quick to play, endlessly replayable, and has one of the highest price-to-value ratios of any board game I have ever played. I have paid 3 times as much for a board game and not received a 10th of the fun I have gotten from Small Star Empires. In summation, the value of the game is unmatched and the production quality is absolutely through the roof, and to top it all off the entire game fits in a box that will literally fit in the palm of your hand.

You can get yourself a copy of this amazing game by clicking here to visit the Archona Games website.