Venture into the Galaxy with ISS Vanguard, Galactic Era, Sidereal Confluence, and Space Empires: All Good Things

ISS Vanguard is a 1-4 player co-operative, campaign board game that will bring players into an epic sci-fi adventure as they play as four sections — security, recon, science, engineering — onboard the first human ship with the possibility to reach outer space.

The campaign introduces the unique story written by Krzysztof Piskorski (Tainted Grail), which is full of hard player choices, twists, and branching storylines.

Gameplay is divided into two main stages: Ship phase, and landing on planets. During the ship phase, players manage their ship (a binder with printed sleeves) where every section has to make gameplay decisions.


Then, you prepare your crew for landing on the next planet in search of answers to humanity's biggest questions. Together you pick a lander and customize it with modules, then each section chooses a crew member to take on a mission (with more experienced crew members having better ranks ), deck-builds a skills deck, takes equipment, and choose dice for their character.

The game comes with more than one hundred crew members, each with unique characteristics.

During all phases of the game, players will be directed to a log-book that consists of story encounters, often written in the form of action-packed dialogues between the characters.

All Good Things, the last expansion for Space Empires: 4X, provides:

Master Rule Book and Scenario Books: Since this is the last expansion and completes the system, it will come with a Master Rule Book that encompasses all the goodness in all the expansions. Likewise, it will include two Master Scenario Books: one for solo/co-op, and one for competitive play.

Two new, alternate empires: Similar to existing empires, but different, with fighters that don't need carriers. If the original game had fighters that were like TIE Fighters, these are more like X-Wing. They don't have boarding ships or Titans, but have a new class of ships. The other ships have slightly different stats/costs.

Variable, but balanced home systems: Everyone has the same home system for balance reasons. However, knowing what you are going to find is something that has always bothered many people. This will fix that.

Scenario cards: About thirty total, and one or two could be flipped to change the overall galaxy conditions for the game. A couple of these are from the scenario book, but most are new.


Missions: Missions are resource cards that can't be just played, but require a player to complete something on the map to gain a larger benefit. Think of the plot of a simple Trek episode.

Deep space planetary attributes: The NPA planets in deep space will now have a bit of personality. Some will be harder or easier to take. Some will really be worth fighting over.

Crew cards: Not everyone will always want to play with these, but they will bring even more personality into the game.

Facilities game: Two new facilities are added. This will really complete the facilities game.

Everything else: Extra cards of every type, Starbases, Defense Satellites, Cyber Armor, New Terrain, more terrain to support larger scenarios (more terrain is needed anyway to support larger scenarios so new terrain types are also included).

Galactic Era is an epic space strategy board game with a focus on exploration, expansion and combat.

The most innovative feature of the game is that you can choose to play as the "dark" or the "light" side with the appropriate consequences. You can switch your alignment during the game though, too.

The amount of luck involved in this game is very low. Combat is deterministic with hidden information (no dice are used).


Further features:

----• Many paths to victory, from peaceful to warlike.
----• Alignment determines how you can interact with other players: "Light" (STO) factions can ally with advanced civilizations encountered but may not interfere with primitive civilizations, are peaceful towards other STO players, are peaceful with STS players unless attacked first. "Darkness" (STS) factions can be as peaceful to aggressive as they wish, and are able to subjugate primitive planets.
----• Develop your civilization in across five different technology fields: Military, Spirituality, Propulsion, Robotics and Genetics. Those who are committed a single area of specialty are rewarded with epic powers, at the highest level.
----• Cooperate with other players by trading technologies.
----• Choose from fifteen unique factions, each with a unique power, sometimes even two (one for each alignment).
----• Fog of war creates uncertainty by hiding fleets with their tactical options and advantages. Fleets have advantages over others in a Rock-Paper-Scissors fashion.
----• Secret objectives give each player a surprise power, while encouraging different avenues of play.
----• Highly variable game setup that influences objectives.
----• A detailed and rich background story, based on testimony from secret space program whistle-blowers, UFO/ET witness accounts and channeled material.