After reading some posts here on BGG, I went into BGG.CON this year with three games on my "must play" list. One of them was Supernova. I was lucky enough to find the BGG.CON attendee who had checked the game out from the library and we met up on Friday afternoon to read the rules, and play the game. After collecting a total of four players, we read the rules together and setup the game (rules and setup combined was about 45 minutes) and then we played a full game (took us about 3.5 hours with learning curve).

Before I get to the mechanics and my impressions of the game, I should say that I was lucky enough to participate in a tournament of the game the following day hosted by the game's designer, Oliver Harrison. We learned in that game that we had played a few things wrong in my previous game. I thought it might be helpful to highlight those things that we failed to understand from our reading of the rules to possibly help you. I don't know if I would fault the game manual or our sleep-deprived state but here goes...

Things We Didn't Understand In Our First Reading of the Rules
- You should collect an Resource Unit ("moon money") every time you win a space battle as the attacker, not the defender. (the RU comes from the "bank" not the other player)
- If you "control" a moon during your Income step, you get 2 RUs, but if the planet that the moon orbits is "controlled" by another player you must pay 1 of those RU to that player as a tax.
- There are 6 solar flares determined by the flip of the Supernova coin, 2 more solar flares that are mandatory, and the Supernova at the end of the game. Make sure you don't flip for a flare at the end of rounds 4 and 7, because the mandatory flare takes the place of those.
- You may only play one Research card per turn. Cards you can play outside your turn do not count against that limit.

Game Mechanics

Battles
I really enjoyed the way in which the battles are conducted. Battles are resolved based on who has the most battle points in the battle. These point come from one of three things: battle cards, reinforcement advantage, and technological advances.

Battle Cards
Battle cards are the heart of the combat system and they are a nice alternative to the randomness of dice. Every player has a base maximum hand of 4 battle cards which can be increased with technological advances (Comms) to as much as 9. The cards come in three suits (identified by color) and there are also wild cards (all of which have a value of 1). The cards are identical in each
suit and range from 2 to 5 in value, and then there are three high-impact cards as well. The high-impact cards each have a special combat effect - one forces the opponent to discard the highest value battle card from their battle set, another makes the two battling players swap their highest value card, and the final high-impact card is worth 1 less than the highest value card in your battle set.

The attacker plays at least one battle card facedown when he announces his attack (you can play as many as 4 total in a battle set) and then the defender can play up to 4 cards in response. The attacker can then increment his number of battle cards (up to a maximum of 4) and back and forth. The card playing ends when both player pass or when one player reaches 4 and the other passes, or finally when both players have 4 cards played. Cards are then revealed. The player with the highest total of battle cards (adjusted for reinforcement and technological improvement bonuses) wins. In the case of a tie, the defender wins.

Battle cards can be played in accordance with the following requirements. Cards played in a battle set must be either all of one suit, or could be up to one of each suit. Wild cards may be played in any number with any suit or combination. Finally, the high-impact cards can only be played with their suit and their suit only.

In the rare event that the only battle cards you have are high-impact, you may play one high-impact card alone by itself and it will have a value of 3.

Reinforcement Bonus
When the height of the tiles on the hex being attacked is higher or lower than the height of the tiles of the adjacent hex where the attacker is attacking from then there is a bonus applied based on the difference. So, if the attacking hex has a stack of two tiles and the defending hex has a stack of 4 tiles, then the defender has a reinforcement bonus of 2. The bonus for either attacker or defender can never be more than 2, regardless of the difference in height.

Technological Advances
Every race has a playcard where they track their technological advances. You purchase these advances with RUs during your Buying phase. Every tech has a value of 0 to 5. You start all technologies at 0. To upgrade a technology you must spend the level in RUs to obtain it. You may only buy one level per technology per turn. In addition, you must have the previous level to purchase a given level. So, you must have spend RUs to upgrade to level 1 on a previous turn to be able to purchase level 2. These technologies include Comms, Engines, Weapons, and Shields. Weapons and Shields grant a level+1 bonus to your battle total. Shields add to defense, and weapons to attack. Comms increase the maximum size of your Battle Card hand by the level of the tech. Finally, engines upgrade the number of control tiles you receive at the beginning of your turn. While Engines are not inherently a battle related tech, you can only attack as many times as you have control tiles so it is related.


Once battle is resolved, if the attacker wins then they place their tile on top of the other players tile taking control of the hex. This means that if the defender was well reinforced, then the attacker gains the advantage of that reinforcement.

Final Comments

I really like the battle engine in Supernova and I think this game is going to be a big hit when it is released as a result. I will try and post more mechanics soon but I am all typed out.

I would highly recommend this game and it will be very well received by the strategic gamers in my circle for sure. It manages to scratch both the wargamer and strategy gamer itches in me.

The tournament was fun, though the game can go a bit long. I think the time required to learn the rules made it longer than it should have been. Otherwise, I can see it has huge amounts of strategy.

You don't have enough cards in your hand to ever take it easy, so it looks like back and forth is a key part of the game. Research cards are very useful, though the limit of one per turn can be a limit. (We may have messed that one up in our game.)

I plan on writing something up later, but I wanted to add a comment here. I managed to win my board. While I tried to play well, I don't think I was necessarily better than the other three players at the table. Except for an initial attack that hit me, I managed to get largely left alone and took advantage of some other results.

In case it takes a while, I want to note that the others I played with were great players. The attitudes were great throughout!

Brad

I won one of the tournament games too, with the same positive experience as Brad. Our game was markedly different to the other games going on as it was way more topsy-turvy with the likely leader changing regularly through the game and no one player dominating or "turtling" for long. I think everyone in our game grokked it after one round; this is a game of conflict, not exploration. This is not a bad thing, the game was a lot of fun. The lack of a runaway leader kept it close right until the final supernova - three players were within 4 points, with the fourth player not far behind.

As for the game length, everyone on our table agreed the next game would go a lot faster. I think 3 hours is easily do-able with a group of experienced players.

I did get away with being a turtle for most of the game. The fact that the other 3 gamed together at times ended up helping me here, since I sat on the sidelines for most of the game, mostly until it was my advantage to jump in.

I don't think I would have gotten away with this strategy a second game. I think that ongoing combat would be a key part of most games.

Brad

I've only been able to play a very early prototype of the game and am anxiously looking forward to this getting released. Same could be said about the battles.

Can't wait to see what the new cards look like! The original ones were nothing like what Mike Doyle has produced.

Fantastic writeup, Richard. You've captured the mechanics of battle very well.

Well, I just realized that I missed one minor point.

There is one last element that can influence a battle. There are encounter tokens on the board that you can capture. Some of the tokens are crystals, one for each battle card suit (color) and also a silver crystal (wild card). These can be used to add a +1 to your battle score as well if you have them.

Hello, glad to find eventually something said about SN... I have been waiting for a long time for SN, more than one year I think. I looked to it last year at Essen 2007 but no chance to get it last year. I got it one year after at Essen 2008... yes !!!!

I play it with my 2 eldest boys (12 and 14) and they like it, but lukely enough for them, they did not get the chance to read the rulebook, that was my job. And I have to say...yes, this rulebook is perhaps the worst I have seen up to now :-( Whilst the game reveals itself to be well designed, turns are flooding in an easy way, and players do not have to wait very long their turn to come back, the first step that consists in reading and understanding the rules is perhaps the most difficult part of the game. Don't ask me why the rulebook is not perfect, I'm not a good writter. But we had to play several games and dig deep inside the rulebook each time we played.

So, don't missunderstand my feeling, this game is very nice, and we like it. Sure it will fall down many times off the shelve ;-)

Richard, reading your review, you mention some rule points that were wrongly addressed by your fellows and gave some details about those wrongly applied rules.

There is one that I still don't get the true out of it :-( About the mandatory Solar Flare at the end of the phase, you say that the mandatory one eludes the possible one from the end of the last round. But reading again and again the rules, I cannot come to a final decision about this one... the possible Solar Flare seems to come in any case at the end of the round, and the ends of the phase 1 and 2 see the rising of the mandatory Solar Flare. I don't see any straight clue in the rule telling that the possible one doesn't take place when there is a mandatory one.

Maybe can you tell me where in the rule you read that point ?

Another point that we missed totally is the fact that you can "buy" encounter coins with your allocated control tiles... but it is written so tiny at the end of the book :-( Still, it is not clear to me if we can buy one and only one encounter coin ? or as many as wished ?....

Oh yes, a last thing to be mentionned... I have the game since 2 months only, and the space tiles are no more flat :-( scrolling more and more with the time so that now, it is no more easy to build the board space and keep it connected.

But at the end, we love it, and we spend nice time around it ;-)

Ph Snykers

Do you mean 2 flares on the same "end of turn"? When we played, with the designer there, it was just a single flare (possible) each turn. It did happen on the turns indicated (2, 3, 5 if I recall correctly), but it might happen on the other turns.

Is this what you are asking?

Brad

Phil,

Sorry for the difficult reading of the rules. I wrote it myself - not sure if I should be proud or ashamed. I've never written rules before so this was new to me. It makes sense in my head, but I suspect any future games I create should have their rules written by someone else. Sorry again.

As for your questions. At the end of each phase, the mandatory flares override the random ones. No coin is flipped. The number in between is to indicate this mandatory flare and the number of hexes that this flare will burn. Once it is resolved, the turn marker moves from 1/4 (the last round in phase 1) through to 2/1. This is also true for the flare at the end of phase 2 and the Supernova at the game end.

You may trade as many control tiles per turn for encounter tokens as you wish. There is no limit. To make it more interesting, you might introduce a house rule that allows you to take 2 encounter tokens for each control tile you trade in. Just a thought.

Finally, if you are having issues with your boards warping, please email Torben at Valley Games; I believe he is addressing these issues if they come up.

I'm happy to hear you're enjoying the game with your kids!

Oliver

Oliver,

Thanks a lot for answering, I could not believe it, the "Designer" is talking to me. Now I feel so excited, a bit like TRON, stating its faith in the "Designers" ;-) "Yes ! they exist! ".

Ok, I think I have been a little bit to harsh, the rulebook is not so bad, it has lots of nice colored pictures to show examples, it has extended explanations on the different mechanisms of the game etc... and to be honnest, english is not my mother langage ;-)

What is perhaps to retain about this is the difficulty to find back quickly the small sentence in the rule book that would definitely close the mounth of your opponent during a game, when he's trying to cheat you ;-) If it takes too long to find it back, you have to retrieve, and I dont like it lol.

Thank you also for the clarifications about my 2 questions, now I am longing for the weekend to start another game, taking into account your comments :-)

And again, I want to let you know that SN is a very good game. We were used to play Nexus Ops a lot because we found it nice, fast, simple and complex in the same time, and well balanced, but there is a while that we did not find back the same feeling with the last acquired games. With SN, we do !

For the scrolling board, I think I will follow your advice. It is not easy to play with a "bended space", time contractions and Relativity are not easy matters for my young boys lol ;-)

And please, keep on designing such good games ;-)

Phil - GuS797

Phil,

Did you get any response from Valley Games about the "bended space" boards? I'm having the same issue..

Kris

Hi Kris,

To be honnest, not yet requested to VG. End of the year is in approach and I have plenty of things to do :-( But I will probably do it after the Xmass holidays, will try to arrange something with VG for next Essen.

kr

Phil

Great read! This definitely sounds like a game I want to try.

Now if only some retailer (FLGS, online, I DON'T CARE WHO!) would get some copies in I would be one happy camper