In Tiny Epic Galaxies players will be competing to earn victory points through colonizing planets and improving your empires abilities. The first player to reach 21 victory points wins. 
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This is one of my favorite of the Tiny Epic Games. This was also my first introduction into the Tiny Epic Universe. It was described as a big game in a little box, and that is definitely a solid description. Gameplay is pretty smooth and easy to teach, and learn. The following mechanic is a great way to keep other players invested during other people's turns. The base game has a solo option where it’s you against rogue factions. Each faction has their own abilities and strategies. 
The game does have 1 major expansion, Beyond The Black. This ads more ship varieties, more ways to gain points, as well as a point tracker mat to help keep track of score. It also has two play mats that are available which give the game a lot of room and a lot of pop on the table. 

This past weekend we had the opportunity to take a run through a little bit of Starfinder: Beginner Box. I will share a bit of my experience as a fairly new game master to the system, and what my players went through. 

I'm fairly new to the universe of Starfinder. I haven't played much of it. I have some of the books and the beginner box at home. I have browsed the rules, the first adventure in the beginner box, and have played one or two Starfinder Society games. 

A group of friends came down to play some board games at our friendly local game store of Gauntlet Games. We played a few board games, but the itch started and the group wanted to role play. I didn't have any of my stuff and didn't want to run home to get something. 

Note to self... Put a starter box together for your vehicle for emergency situations. 

None of the other people had anything to run. So I grabbed the Starfinder Beginner Box. I knew the game rules a little bit. It had pregenerated characters in it which made that aspect fairly easy. 

Opening the box I was met with a nice pamphlet showing off the core book, and a couple of the extra books a person might use. On the back was a nice advertisement for Starfinder Society. I laughed at this because at another table across the room, Starfinder Society as being played. 

The other contents in the box included a heroes handbook, a gamemaster guide, a set of dice, cardboard pawns  showing heroes and enemies that players might encounter in the beginner box. There were 6 blank character sheets for custom player characters, and 6 pregenerated characters. Also included was a double sided map and player aids. 

The players at my table chose Navasi the Envoy, Iseph the Operative, Raia the Technomancer, and Obozaya the Soldier. 
The game master guide lays out a really nice beginner adventure. 

The player characters had been recruited by the star league to defend the frontier... no wait. That's The Last Starfighter. Different thing all together. Though... that makes a decent base for an adventure. May have to revisit that later. 

Things and people have gone missing from one of the lower parts of Absalom Station. A call for heroes had been put out by the station commander. A reward of 1000 credits to those who find out what is causing the disappearances. 
With the map on the table in front of us, the players put their character pawns on the starting room. 

Pathfinder has two main modes with it, Exploration and Combat. During exploration mode players are moving and interacting kind of free form around the rooms. Combat mode is when players take an initiative number and take turns fighting enemies. 

The players arrived at the first room. There were two closed doors exiting from the room. 

Upon opening one of the doors the players were met with a couple of space goblins. A little bit of a fight to warm the dice up a bit broke out. One goblin was left dead by a nicely placed critical and the other was disarmed and set loose. 

As the players continued to explore the station they came across a sleeping pirate. After disarming him and subduing him with a hefty blow to the head. The players looted the room. During the looting the pirate woke up and tried to pretend to sleep. After he woke up and a bit of interaction by the players. He gave up his name and a little bit about what was going on in this area of the station. 

After a slight warning the players decided to head back and explore a different hallway from the starting area. They came across what looked like a bar with a holographic advertisement for magical elixirs. No one was brave enough to try any of the elixirs. 

The next room was a hydroponic garden. They came across the unarmed goblin who was patching himself up. Upon seeing the players he ran off down one of the coradors. A large six legged cat like creature with one central eye attacked the players. The players dice were trying to kill them as they could not manage to roll very high. The six legged cat was able to down one of them. 

The players were struggling a bit and I didn't have a GM's screen to hide rolls so I could modify rolls as needed. I'm a GM that likes to tell a story rather than just simply hack and slash, let players die all willy nilly. Even if it is a beginning adventure with pregenerated characters. 

So I decided to have the pirate from before come up to help. Though by time he showed up the players dice decided to play nice with them and start rolling higher. 

After this fight it was getting late. The players decided that their characters would rest up in the pirates makeshift quarters. We called it a night from there. Some of our players had a considerable drive home before the night was done. 

This was a fun trek into GMing a fairly new game system. My players did seem to enjoy what they played. 

The story continues on into something like 6 more rooms. It varys from exploration, to negotiation, to combat encounters with a fun little final enemy. 

The beginning adventure is one that shows off different elements of the game to new players and did a really good job at teaching a new GM how the game system works. 

My players seemed to really enjoy the futuristic setting. They asked if we could try different settings again sometime. Why yes... yes we can. I have Fallout, Star Trek Adventures, Doctor Who, Cthulhu Dark, Call of Cthulhu, 6s, Elfwood, and more. I can be a lot more prepared with those game systems as needed. 
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It was definitely a fun time to play Starfinder and GM again. 

Players work together to play cards into a single pile of cards in an ascending order. The trick is you cannot communicate what cards are in your hands. In fact you can’t communicate at all with other players. Can the players clear their hands out in eight levels of play? Ten? Twelve? 
The players start with a number of lives equal to the number of players. Each player receives a number of cards based on the level of the game. Round 1 one cards each, round 2 two cards each. Each player tries to play a card in ascending order to the previously played cards. If no one holds a card lower than the one just played the game continues. If someone does all players discard all face up cards lower than what you played and players lose a life. Lose all your lives and it’s game over. When everyone empties their hand successfully the round has been won. Players have an opportunity to earn Shuriken cards. When played Shurikens allow players to discard their lowest card face up. Opening up options for play to continue. 

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This game is tricky and fun. Not being able to speak to each other is super difficult. It takes a bit of finesse with the card playing to know when to play your cards. Early on it’s not so bad. Starting off you have one card each so it can be easier. 
This is definitely a fun game in our collection and it is simple enough for a variety of folks to play from seasoned gamers to beginner gamers. 


Game or Developer Games - https://pandasaurusgames.com/products/the-mind
Board Game Geek - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244992/mind

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From the dice wall! 
Dragons Lair Omaha - https://sites.google.com/site/dragonslaircomicsandgames/home

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• Zero Session - https://www.zerosession.com/
• Indie Game Alliance - https://indiegamealliance.com/

​Players clear off the locations of mint tokens. Each player gains one mint and the players may begin their turn. 

The game does feature a solo mode where the players have a solitaire ai to face. Each of these brings their own challenges to the game. 

The game is a minty fresh take on the worker placement genre. It is super simple to play and pick up. It takes up such a small space on the table that it is easy to pull it out and set up quickly. It is definitely a solid travel game. Though the airport metal detectors might get a bit angry at the metal. 

While this game is fantastic to play it does have a few drawbacks. The first being the small packaging. While this is a great selling point of the game, there is so much to this game that sometimes getting the cards out of the little tin can be difficult. I do not have very dexterous hands and they are very large as well which I understand is a factor. AI can be difficult to follow along with the flow of how they work. It has taken me a few plays to get their patterns down right. The only other critique of the game going back to the small size of the container is there isn’t much room for expansion of more buildings. While the advanced locations do provide great randomness to the game they can be a bit repetitive.