by Scott Heise aka HomerJr

Star Realms is a race.  To win the race, you need to  build a deck that can reduce your opponent’s authority down to 0 in fewer turns than your opponent can yours.  It doesn’t mean building the biggest, baddest deck.  Nor does mean collecting all of the cards of one faction.  It means finding the quickest way to accumulate 50 damage to your opponent’s authority (the finish line), while also slowing down his rate of damage accumulation if necessary.

In Part 1, “A Game of Four and a Half Decks”, we explored how the average “race” lasts for 25-turns (13 player hands) and the concept of “decks”.  Now we’ll dive deeper into the different ways you can run the race… specifically, is it better to be the Tortoise or the Hare or something in between?  Which strategy accumulates combat in the fewest number of turns?  I assert that both the Tortoise and the Hare are capable of winning races, so knowing how they run a race is important to knowing which will be the winning strategy in a given game.

First, let’s define what I mean by “Tortoise” and “Hare” strategies in Star Realms.  Then, we’ll try running a couple races and see who wins. 🙂

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by Scott Heise aka HomerJr

The average game of Star Realms lasts 25 turns.  That means each player only gets 12 hands on average with which to reduce their opponent’s authority to zero.  With so few precious turns, it is therefore very important to make the most of each and every hand.  More importantly, these 12-14 hands per player are distributed among the “decks” formed by each reshuffle and each card in your deck can only be played once per shuffle.  Understanding how these decks affect the pace of the game, and thus your decision making, is one of the keys to becoming an advanced player.

Let’s break down a “typical” 25-turn game, and discuss how it should affect your strategy…

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