Star Realms is a card-based deck-building science-fiction tabletop game, designed by Rob Dougherty and Darwin Kastle and published in 2014 by Wise Wizard Games.
[1] The goal of Star Realms is to destroy opponents by purchasing cards using "trade" points and using these cards to attack an opponent's "authority" using "combat" points.
[2] Star Realms is similar to other deck-building games, like Ascension and Dominion.
The game is marketed as portable and expandable, as it comes in a small box and contains only cards and no dice or markers.
Some cards also have the ability to be scrapped, which removes them from the game entirely but also gives the player some kind of benefit.
Outposts have black shields and act as protection in addition to any benefits.
An opponent's combat points must be above or equal to the base's shield value to destroy it and move it to the discard pile.
In the middle of the table is the "trade row", which holds the cards available for purchase.
In order to win the players need to attack their opponents' authority using combat.