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Every tribe on Apsyntion has the same origin story - the same apocrypha retold for generations. That once, our people came from the stars. That their homeworld was lost, swallowed by Wormwood, and the ancestors built the arks in a last desperate gasp, releasing them to the sky like so many seeds in the wind. That the people of the ark, so roughly deposited on the soil of an alien Eden, fought for the right to rule this new world and remake it in their own image.
Sovereign is an expandable card game where each player controls a burgeoning far-future civilization at the brink of war. You will build an empire from the ground up, managing civilians and military units, along with facilities unique to your faction's way of life.
Each player controls one of ten factions, with a personal ideology represented by a prebuilt deck. A deck has 30 unique cards specific to that faction, and 20 cards called Echoes- remnants of the ark that brought humanity to this world. Score ten Echoes and you win the game, but an Echo is always vulnerable in the meantime, whether it's in your hand or on the table. You'll defend your own Echoes with units and facilities you build, or steal them from opponents by attacking where you think the Echoes are hiding. Forge them yourself or steal them from other players- build or conquer, it's up to you.
The game is designed so that the backs of the cards are used as much as the front, since each card back is used to track construction progress from turn to turn, without revealing the card underneath. Citizens are represented by double-sided tokens used initially for building cards, but when flipped become lower class workers, who might power facilities, or become soldiers to fuel your dominance.
Sovereign is great as a 2 player game, but optimized for 3-4, with an array of cards that can be used to hinder or help opponents - encouraging fragile, temporary alliances. The game combines the best elements from worker placement games and CCGs, to create a dynamic hybrid experience where a society can rise and fall in under 2 hours, with over 300 unique cards.
- asymmetric factions with unique decks and abilities
- pre-built decks for easy entry
- optional deck building for customization
- combines worker placement, card comboing, and CCG aspects
- attacking leaders, forges, or other aspects
- can be vulnerable to attacks
- limited echoes to win
- factions, civilization building
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area Control — And you are trying to potentially find where they have played echoes down because it takes them around to essentially flip up the echoes and score it.
- bluffing — there's a little bit of intrigue in the game in that you can attack people on your turn, but you can you can decide whether you're attacking their leader or if you're attacking their forge or if you're attacking other aspects.
- Combat — there's a little bit of intrigue in the game in that you can attack people on your turn, but you can you can decide whether you're attacking their leader or if you're attacking their forge or if you're attacking other aspects.
- Deck Building — Each faction is going to have an asymmetric deck of cards, it's going to have different special abilities
- Hand Management — it combines combines card comboing
- Worker Placement — it combines worker placement
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Sorry this video is coming a little bit late this month.
- I have been on tour with my board game comedy show.
- Almost every single show has sold out so far which is better than I could have hoped for.
- So I hope to see you at those shows as well.
- This is a cooperative party game.
- The grid is smaller.
- This is a trick-taking game at its core.
- The twist of the game, the thing that makes it interesting and different from other games, is you will have sort of a background card and a transparency colored card. And when you combine those two things, they will create a different color.
- There is worker placement. There is hand management. There's a betting and bluffing aspect to the game.
- So yeah, that is 23 games coming to retail here in the month of June.
- I have been releasing episodes of It's All Funny and Games.
- Thank you so much. I'm Grant with Grant's Game Rex.