Galactic Empires

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This article is about the card game. For the book, see Galactic Empires (book).

Galactic Empires
Galactic Empires card back design
Publisher	Companion Games
Players	2 or more
Age range	13+
Setup time	none¹
Playing time	45 minutes up to 2 hours
Random chance	Some
Skills required	Card playing Arithmetic
¹ Although the game itself takes no time to set up, each player must prepare his or her own deck, which can take anywhere upwards of half an hour.
BoardGameGeek entry

Galactic Empires was one of the "first wave" of collectible card games to come out on the heels of Magic: The Gathering's success. Produced by Companion Games, the first cards were released in August, 1994, and can be difficult to find; however, excepting a few misprints, they were all reprinted in Series II Primary Edition released in December, 1994. A large number of expansions and a revised core set (Series U Universe Edition) were released over the following 2 years; this ended abruptly when Companion Games went bankrupt early in 1997.

Nearly 3,000 cards were printed altogether, perhaps more than any other collectible card game of the era. These included several hundred promotional cards, some of which can be nearly impossible to track down today. By the time of the game's demise, at least 40 different empires (and 16 distinct "tribes" of one empire, the Indirigan Nomads) had been printed in varying numbers and levels of playability.

[edit] Game play

As with all collectible card games, every player puts together his or her own deck. In Galactic Empires, each player takes the role of the leader of a "sector" of a galactic empire. The object of the game is to defend one's Sector HQ while destroying the other players' Sector HQs. There are a variety of card types, the principal ones being resource-providing terrain (mostly planets and moons) and resource-consuming ships, which can deal damage to opposing ships, terrain, and Sector HQs (and a variety of other card types). Each empire had its own unique trait, usually a weapon; there were also several "shipless" empires, for instance the Space Dragons and the Time Knights, that damaged and defended using other means.

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[edit] Sets and expansions

With one exception, all sets and expansions were in English. A German version of Series U Universe Edition was released at about the same time as its English-language counterpart, but with fewer cards.

The set sizes in the table below have been compiled from checklists on the Internet and may be inaccurate. Many of the sets contain cards that are identical except for artwork and/or flavour text; for most sets these have been counted as separate cards. An exception was made for Series VIII, which has 100 distinct cards, among which 23 have 4 versions, 1 has 3 versions, and 1 has 2 versions, all but one of which have the same artwork and slightly different flavour text; so the die-hard collector would count 172 different cards. Some sets have cards for empires other than those listed, but not enough such to play these empires from this set alone.

Series	Set	Release date	Empires	Size
	"Alpha"	August 1994	Argonian, Krebiz
Series I	"Beta"	August 1994	Argonian, Krebiz	90
Series II	Primary Edition	December 1994	Argonian, Bolaar, Corporate, Space Dragon, Indirigan, Krebiz, Mechad, Vektrean	441
Series III	New Empires	March 1995	Clydon, Plasma Occupied Territory/P.O.T., Scorpead, Tufor	210
Series IV	Powers of the Mind	August 1995	Filarian, Psycanti, Visonic	152
Series V	Time Gates	August 1995	Time Knight, Tranoan	157
Series U	Universe Edition	November 1995	Argonian, Clydon, Corporate, Space Dragon, Indirigan, Krebiz, Mechad, P.O.T., Scorpead, Tufor, Vektrean	565
Series VI	Advanced Technologies	January 1996		152
Series VII	Piracy	May 1996	Bolaar, Corporate Pirate, Indirigan, Leopan	205
Series VIII	Comedy Club on the Far Side of the Galaxy	July 1996	Comedy Club Network	100/172
Series IX	Persona	August 1996		205
Series X	Galactic Invaders	October 1996	Aqaaran, Gekonauak, J'Xar, Orgon, Treglean, Zedan	260
Series XI	Allied Forces	December 1996	Drone, Erodi, Noble, Pakta'don, Paraloid, Shon-ti, Tarra'ki, Treglean, Trochilidae	145
	Promo cards		Aesthetic, Battle Birds, Collector	315