You will get your production cubes from various sources such as the population on your planets, trade stations, political titles, and nebulas. Once that has been done and you positioned your four starting fleets, then we begin the game with production. Unlike politicians in real life, you do need to keep your promises to win. In terms of theme, you are emotionally invested since you picked the agenda for your civilization much like a politician and you decide what role to take in this galactic community. Since these objectives are secret and have a major influence on how the players will perform their actions, it also means there is some gameplay variety outside of race selection. From a mechanical standpoint, it allows the players to pick how they want to play the game in true sandbox fashion. This innovation to the formula is a marriage between theme and mechanisms. Besides your objectives, there are also three random public objectives. Every objective card also has a way to score additional points at the end of the game as well. Throughout the game, if you meet the conditions of your objective, you will reveal it to score points. Everyone starts with the same set of ten objective cards. Master Of Orion In A BoxĪfter picking your race, you are going to do something innovative: You are going to pick how you score. Your task is simple: At the end of the four Ages, whoever has the most victory points wins. These races are generic with generic names such as the “Cyborgs” and “Insectoids” with their unique abilities along with their Racial Wonders. This isn’t a licensed game and you can tell immediately the designers were huge fans of the computer game Master of Orion. Much like any other Space 4x game, your first decision is going to pick the race you want to play. The Silver River is another jab at trying to make the two-hour window work and we are going to see if it will survive the journey. There have been attempts by several designers to reduce the 4x genre into a mere two hours but to be honest, most of them are terrible. In the tabletop world, games like Twilight Imperium and Mega Civilization can easily hit the double-digit hour timeframe. Popularized by the computer game Sid Meier’s Civilization, this genre had numerous interpretations where a single session can last several hours. These four words represent the 4X genre and it’s been around for decades. The 4X genre is often associated with complication and game length. The Silver River wants to change that.Įxplore.