Galactic Empires

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[1], 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 filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy in May 1997.[2] Carl Schulte, the spokesman for the game, hoped Component Game Systems would have purchased Companion Games and continue the game.[2]

This article is about the card game. For the general topic, see galactic empire. For the book, see Galactic Empires (anthology). For other uses, see Galactic empire (disambiguation).
Galactic Empires
Galactic Empires card back design
Designer(s)Carl Henry Schulte
Publisher(s)Companion Games
Players2 or more
Setup timenone1
Playing time45 minutes up to 2 hours
Random chanceSome
Skill(s) requiredCard 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.

3208 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.

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.

Sets and expansions

Sets and expansions were in English. A German version of Series II Primary 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 204
Series VIII Comedy Club on the
Far Side of the Galaxy		 July 1996 Comedy Club Network 100/172[3]
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
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References
  1. "Galactic Empires". Boardgamegeek. 1994. Retrieved 3 August 2020.
  2. Varney, Allen (October 1997), "Inside the Industry", The Duelist (#19), p. 77
  3. Varney, Allen (May 1996), "Reports on Trading Card Games", The Duelist (#10), p. 8
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