Ascending Empires: Zenith Edition is a very serious 4x style game…
…oh, but you flick your ship is through space!
The last survivors of the human race have fled to a new galaxy in fear of annihilation at the hands of an unstoppable enemy. Now, having discovered the ruins of four long dead civilizations spread across the stars, a race to develop technology based on these alien relics has begun. Humans will once again ascend to the stars to claim the galaxy.
Ascending Empires: Zenith Edition Game Overview
Quick Rules Summary
This is a fairly in-depth game, I’ll just cover the top level stuff here.
There is a board representing the galaxy and players each has a warp gate in each corner.
On your turn, you can take 1 or 4 actions:
Move – by flicking your space ships around the board.
Build – a structure on a planet you occupy (usually because it’s empty and your ship is in orbit) to increase its defence and gain energy.
Deploy – a troop onto a planet with an outpost or a city, or a star ship near your warp gate.
Interact – with various objects.
At the end of your turn you can attack other star ships if you’re in range or opponents planets if in orbit.
You can score points for attacking and also for developing technology on your tech tree.
How do you win?
When the point pool runs out or all planets are occupied, the game ends.
You get 1 point for every two troops you have on planets. You get 1 point for each planet you control in your quarter of the board, 2 points if it’s in an opponents segment.
2 points per relic you own, 1 point per visible point symbol on your dashboard and points on mission cards you completed. Most points wins.
Main Mechanisms
The main mechanism is dexterity. You’re pretty limited on what you can do if you can’t get the weight of the ships correctly to get in range.
USP
Again, the dexterity element attached to a mid-weight euro is unique.
Theme
Fighting for planets in space, it’s been done before.
Setup
There’s a lots of bits to place on your player board. The game map is actually quite sparse with just the player pieces and planet disks.
Components & Artwork
The components are nice. The little plastic bits on the player board pop. The think planet disks are nice and the neoprene mat is smooth for flicking ships on.
There isn’t any artwork really.
Ease of Teaching
The individual actions are easy to teach. The nuance around some elements as well as the more confusing building/placement rules are tricky.
Similar Games
This was originally released in 2011, this is an upgraded edition.
It’s a lighter Gaia Project or Eclipse, but with flicking!
Ascending Empires: Zenith Edition Review
Positives
A different spin on a 4x style game.
Tech trees are fun!
It looks nice on the table.
The neoprene mat makes the flicking nice and smooth.
Negatives
If you can’t flick well you’re in trouble.
One of the abilities in the tech tree lets yo stick to planets which is useful but also takes away the skill element for flicking.
It’s a bit mean.
Summary
A nice idea that just doesn’t work for me.
Jesta ThaRogue