Huger put a post on the Star Chamber game forum suggesting that the similarity between the games would make Far Wilds worth a look. I have come and had a few games, enjoyed the experience, so thought I would return the favour.

There are those days when I want a sci-fi based ships and aliens game over the fantasy version. If you are the same check out the Star Chamber. I don't want you to think I am here trying to spam another game. I get nothing from it other than seeing a good game florish. Its hard to find these types of game, especially on a mac, so please don't get offended for me posting this here. If you go and look and like it, then please come back to this post and let others know.

SC has the same elements of strong board play, coupled with the deck building strategy as this one. You build ships and people and expand to take over planets, that let you build more ships etc....There are 10 races that have different characteristics that help to win the game in different ways. As here, you can try for free, and players will give you most of the commons for nothing. Players will happily play common only games to remove that power card effect.

Enjoy
Cheers
sox

http://starchamber.station.sony.com/

I'm slowly starting to get tired of fantasy-themed games, and have been looking for a promising sci-fi themed one for a while. I tried Star Chamber out and the game seemed awesome, even better than this (sorry Jed & everyone, this is still great). But there are even far less players than here, and no one else was logged in when I tried once. What's up with that? Did the player base just reach a tipping-point some day, after which people started - ironically - leaving because there were so few players? Why do so many people play inferior (of course this is only my opinion) games like mtg?

star chamber is great. there are a lot of crossover players here, and this is not the first SC post either, so you're in the clear

to answer HS's question: SC has been around for a very, very long time. I think I started playing back in 2002ish. It's been under a lot of different managements and SOE bought it out and killed it after a year so that the developers could work on SOE-themed card games like the EQ and SWG card games. There hasn't been a new set for SC for probably 4 or 5 years and so it's only natural that it would dwindle to next-to-nothing despite being a really great game. That said, it did also struggle a lot like Far Wilds does with players, but FW on a bad day has more players than SC had on a good day, even at its peak.

if anyone wants to buy an incredible SC collection off me, send me a pm

<--- Star Chamber refugee.

By far my favorite CCG ever, but as doiron said SOE more or less abandoned it.

Damn you Sony! (though I still like my playstations, but that's SCE, not SOE)

Its not all bad news. I have been playing SC since before the last expansion (pre sony days). To be honest the player base is pretty stable with a few coming and going all the time. Europe time evenings are sometimes quiet but you can usually see 5-10 people in the Mezz and get a game.

Sony in their wisdom seem happy to let it run on their servers - it just looks like there won't be much in the way of expansion. That said, there is a big card base and the players are very happy to give away the commons for free. That means new players can get a good set of cards for only the initial fee ($10 or so), and there are plenty of game options with the commons, and uncommon cards.

Word of mouth on forums like this also does wonders for bringing in new people - especially with how much these games have in common.

Huger got lots of free cards - if you see him ask him if he still wants them and come over and try it out!!

Cheers
sox

Tempting, but im swamped with games.
I have a spare Guild Wars acc that I dont ahve time for. :S

Sounds fun, wonder if that when it eventually gets taken down, can other users get the codes to host it themselves. Would be cool if it became abandonware and openly moddable.

Starchamber... also where I come from.

I went over to check it out.

Did the tutorials. Lost the "Jupiter campaign" 8 times in a row, and haven't been back since. The enemy starships are just plain better than mine. Is there something I'm missing? Also, I can't find a mac version of the game.

Personally I'm more of a fantasy fan anyway, but Star Chamber would be a fun back-up game if I could figure out how to not suck at it.

Heh, a common complaint about the game. The tutorial was a late addition and is really too hard to be a tutorial.