Back in the summer of 2011 – which, for those of you who don’t like to do math, was nearly fourteen years ago – I reviewed Z-Man Games’ “weird & wonderful cross between a dexterity game like Carabande or Catacombs and a space civilization game like Twilight Imperium or Starcraft: the Board Game.” (Yes, my exact words to describe the original edition of Ascending Empires.)

Unfortunately, the game went out of print pretty quickly – and it was relatively difficult to find. Meanwhile, I put Ascending Empires on my top 100 games list that I publish every couple of years… and it has sat somewhere between #23-#32 on every one of those lists – including the 2024 top 100 list. I really love the game.

And then last year Play to Z decided not only to reprint Ascending Empires, but to reimagine and tweak the rules and ratchet up the quality of the components via Kickstarter. Based on my aforementioned adoration of the original game, I was an easy mark for Zev Shlasinger (the head of Play to Z) and plunked my hard-earned gaming cash down on the new edition (and sprung for the single piece neoprene board add-on)..

When I did a rulebook comparison prior to the KS campaign, I noted that it looked like there was (in the words of Charlie Peacock) “a whole different, a whole lot the same.” * Now, with five plays of the new edition under my belt, I think that statement sums it up pretty nicely.

To Flick or Not To Flick, That Is the Question

My description of Ascending Empires in the initial paragraph of this review (and my original review) has a couple of problems with it – both in describing the original edition and the new Zenith Edition:

1. It’s really a space empire-building game with flicking rather than a flicking game with a space theme. (Flicking is used simply for movement – and unless you’ve managed to ramp up your tech, you don’t actually want to run into other people’s ships.)
2. Though it is a space empire-building game, it has a playing time of about 75 minutes… which is roughly 1/4 of a game of Twilight Imperium & 1/3 of a game of Starcraft: the Board Game.

Both movement and combat are dependent on flicking – but with an occasional exception, most of those flicks are short hops rather than attempts to cross the board in a single jump. While there are times when you want to ram the starship of another player (this can be a cost-effective way to get rid of some advanced enemy starships), losing your own ship is costly and so finesse is important. 

So, Exactly How Does This Thing Work?

Players begin with a warpgate to their home system (which, thanks to some kind of unexplained technological marvel and/or diplomatic agreements, can not be attacked by other players), a small army of soldiers/settlers and a couple of starships. In turn, players begin to explore the board, settle planets, build stuff (outposts, cities & research stations), advance their tech levels… and, as time goes on, attack other space empires. Various actions give you victory points (destroying starships, capturing planets from other players , improving your tech & interacting with relics or mission cards) during the game, while building up your infrastructure & expanding your empire is worth points at the close of the game. The player with the most points wins.

Many space empire games have long player turns where you do all of the things listed above – but Ascending Empires limits players to one action per turn, which has a couple of neat effects on game play. First, the game moves along at a blistering clip – once you’ve got a game or two under your belt, there is very little downtime. Second, players have the opportunity to react to the actions of other players (or the perceived plans of other players) quickly… while it’s not a real-time game, the quick turns & ability to react makes it feel that way.

OK, a gamer-y aside: I just typed the sentence: “The player with the most points wins” after describing how to get victory points & it has occurred to me that this is one of those moments that belongs in the Department of Redundancy Department. Who else is going to win? The guy who has the least points? Sheesh. Alrighty then, moving on…

As well, players are limited on their resources: to launch a ship, you have to return a soldier to your supply. To land on a planet, you have to do the same with a ship. To build a colony, city, research station or mine, once again your soldiers go marching off to your supply … and since you have only 2 starships & 4 soldiers to start with, the management of those finite resources is a key part of how your space empire develops. (Building cities and starbases gives you access to more soldiers & ships in supply… thus allowing you to expand at a greater rate.)

Just One Action?

Yep – that’s what I said. (Ahem, wrote.) But that simple choice between the four main actions leads to so many interesting possibilities!

• Move – You can flick your starships twice, attempting to move them into better positions to blockade enemy planets, outnumber enemy ships (and destroy them), and set yourself up to discover empty planets. In addition to the flicking, you may undertake any number of operations, which include
  • launching a starship *
  • landing on a planet *
  • discovering a planet *
  • repositioning your starship that is in orbit
  • using the power of an alien artifact to flick that starship again
  • Operations marked by an asterisk (*) cost movement points in the original game
• Deploy – You can deploy 1 or 2 troops or starships from your dashboard to your warpgate (ships) or to planets you currently occupy (troops).
• Build – You can build one structure per turn on a planet you control: outposts, cities, research facilities, and starbases.
• Interact – You can fulfill mission cards or interact with relics (found by discovering planets).

Three of the four main actions (Move, Deploy, Interact) can be boosted by the use of energy resources – which are created by building cities and starbases. Replenishing your energy supply can be augmented by the development of certain technologies.

At the end of each turn, you resolve any attacks that you’ve set up (on purpose or accidentally – hey, stuff happens!), resolve any end-of-turn effects from your technology levels, and finally check to see if the game end has been triggered.

And then the next player is up!

Blinded Me With Science

The basic technology system from the classic game is unchanged – though many of the technology effects have changed. When you build a research facility on a planet, you gain a level in that color of tech. (Unlike the classic game, this happens immediately.) 

Component-wise, the new version uses tiles for technology rather than a larger dashboard, which allows for variant sets of technologies to be created.

Shiny New Stuff

There are a bunch of new elements in the Zenith Edition of Ascending Empires – I’m not sure I can do them justice, but I’m certainly going to try:

• Starbases & Advanced Starships
  • In the original game, you could pump up one of the tech lines in order to get a Battleship (which was the equivalent of two starships in battle). In the new edition, each tech line has its own starship – some are good at building structures, others have offensive or defensive capabilities.
  • Along with that change, you can now build a starbase which increases your defense of a planet and also frees up starships to be deployed. (Starbases are not destroyed by ramming, which makes them even more difficult to defeat.)
• Energy Tokens & Boosting
  • Empires begin the game with a single energy token… and receive another one each time they build a city or starbase. Energy tokens can be used to boost Move, Deploy, and Interact actions – allowing you more flicks or deployments or interactions. (Build cannot be boosted.) 
  • Energy is reset in a variety of ways – both through building cities/starbases and by certain tech functions.
• Discovery Tokens
  • Undiscovered planets host Discovery tokens, which can either be events or relics. Events are triggered immediately while relics wait until a player uses an Interact action to kick them into gear.
  • Relic tokens “discovered” by robots (yes, there can be alien robots) are placed in the Relic Archive and can be picked up by players.
• Mission Cards
  • The first player to fulfill each mission card marks the cards with two cubes of their color and will receive the first place reward at the end of the game. All other players who complete the mission receive a lesser reward.
• Terraforming Relic Planets
  • Relic planets can be terraformed by building a research station on them… and they become the color chosen by the player. (And, yes, this does affect their technology level.)
  • There is a limited number of terraforming planet tiles – so each type of terraforming can take place a single time during a game.

Extra Shiny New Stuff

All of the “shiny new stuff” above is in every game of Ascending Empires: Zenith Edition… but there are also a number of modules/rules variants available that players can choose to use:

• Ancient Libraries
  • Located through Discovery tokens, these make planets more valuable by giving you endgame points for troops in the sector – but they’re worthless for defense. (Ancient Libraries themselves are never destroyed – but everything around them can be.)
• Megastructures
  • Built using energy on Alien Artifact planets, these have powerful effects but can be stolen from you by marauding empires (aka other players). Only one type of Megastructure is available per game out of three possible.
• Guardian Warships
  • Used in games with smaller numbers of players or added via Discovery tokens, these hulking warships give you more things to attack and earn points & energy. But these alien vessels also gum up the “flicking” lanes for movement.
• Sublight Movement
  • A variant rule that allows you to do movement without flicking – but reduces the things you can do with slow-moving starships.
• Empire Cards
  • There is a set of empire cards that are drafted – they provide asymmetric starting powers.

Have Your Cake And Eat It, Too

The new edition of Ascending Empires also includes the alternate dashboard and the rules to play a slightly revised version of the classic game… albeit with the niftier pieces and the neoprene mats. I’m guessing some folks will like the original game better – but I deeply appreciate that Play to Z is making sure we have both options available.

And, since it’s like Play to Z knows me, there’s also a solo mode included in the box with six different scenarios of increasing difficulty… which can be played as a campaign.

My Thoughts

Let’s start with the positive changes to the design and production from the original game. The neoprene mats (or mat, if you sprung for the one-piece add-on like I did) are a marked improvement over the puzzle cut boards from the original edition. The spaceship discs have rounded edges which make them less likely to “pop & roll” – which I think is a feature while Dan Thurot (SpaceBiff) mentions as a possible bug in his excellent review of the new edition.

The player dashboards are an improvement on a number of levels – and not just because they are dual-level with those nifty little wells for pieces. By moving the technology lines off the board, there is room for more player information on the costs & powers of various pieces as well as using empty wells to make scoring easier at the end of the game. (The original game dashboard is on the reverse side of the new dashboard.)

I’ve now played with both sets of technologies – and haven’t found either of them to be vastly preferable to the other, but I do appreciate the variety. They are slightly toned down from the original game – which has led to a weird twist in our games: we’ve been building less research facilities. It’s possible that the addition of the relics (on Discovery tokens) allow some of that kind of tech-y behavior in a one-off way and may be siphoning off some of the desire to fight for a particular planet type.

There are two sets of changes to the action system that I think are splendid – first, the creation of the free Maneuver actions. Being able to discover & land on a planet (or launch from a planet) without spending “flicks” opens up the game. The ability to reposition starships in orbit also allows for better aim when attempting space travel as well as smarter defensive positions. The second innovation is the energy system – the capability of boosting your actions lets you attempt make more powerful attacks and/or be ready to respond to incursions into your corner of the galaxy.

The addition of artifact planets – which allow starships in their orbit a free movement flick – is another way that the game design has been opened up. These same planets are the locations for the Megastructures – giant alien technologies that take lots of energy to activate but reward players with powerful abilities. (So far, we’ve played with the Megastructures twice – and the current win/loss record is 50/50 for the player who ramped them into gear. I like the variety they add to the game – but I’m not sure if they can be a distraction from actually doing things that help with winning the game.)

My one game of the easiest solo scenario went – let’s be honest – badly. (The robots are evil.) It works fine… and I have plans to try again soon.

The Discovery tokens are a mixed bag – while I can see how they help spur exploration and offer ways to increase game speed, they are going to favor a player with experience who is able to best utilize them. There are variant rules for changing the mix of relic and event tokens in the Discovery pool. We’ve found that adding ancient libraries & guardian starships had a double positive effect – it lessens the number of relics in the game (making their discovery a bit more valuable) and offered a couple of new ways to harvest points.

Speaking of Discovery tokens, this is one of my two criticisms of the game production. Putting the key to what the tokens can do on the back of the rulebook is a good idea – but in a four-player game, it would be nice to have multiple copies of this information included.

My other gripe is about the nature of the plastic trays for player pieces – someone should have tested them as they went into the box, as they currently collapse into each other a bit in a manner that could have been fixed with a slight redesign. (It’s a small gripe – generally, the storage system is really quite good.)

Finally, I’m not sure I love the Empire cards. I’m not sure that they are well-balanced… primarily because many of them are highly situational in their effectiveness. It’s not a big deal – they’re a variant that you can just as easily leave in the box.

Overall, I’m ecstatic to have a new and better version of a game I already loved… and my old copy has been handed down to my eldest son so it will continue to see play. Due to the high price point, I’d suggest trying before you buy – but I’m not disappointed in any way to have this in my collection.

May the flick be with you, always. Flick long & prosper. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Mark Jackson
• I like it.  
• Neutral. 
• Not for me…

* ”A Whole Lot Different (Whole Lot the Same)” is an amazing song from Charlie Peacock’s first album back in 1984 (Lie Down In The Grass). The version I’ve linked to above was recorded in 2020 with a plethora of Sacramento-based musicians as an homage to friends/bandmates who’d passed away… and it’s even better than the original. His newest album (Every Kind of Uh-Oh) was just released in 2024 and is excellent as well – yes, he’s had a 40 year career. Here’s the single from that album: “Turtle in a Chinese Food Box”.

As noted, I did not recieve a review copy of this game… I plunked down my own cash to back the Kickstarter.