by RockyMountainNavy, 20 December 2024
What can I say? Space Lion: Divide and Conquer (Solis Game Studio, 2023) is a simple lane-battler card game. Use your seven-card Army with a Leader (Lion) to win battles to your left, center, and right. Each Army is built around a unique theme that gives them an asymmetric feeling.
If Space Lion is that simple, why does the box say each game is 30-90 minutes? Why would the difficulty on the box say “Medium High?”
The components of Space Lion are simple. The rules to play Space Lion are simple. The strategy needed to play and win Space Lion…is not that simple.
Space Lion: Divide and Conquer is a card battling, dueling game for 1-5 players. The artwork is very much inspired by Japanese anime. Each Army has 14 cards; one set of seven cards are “troops” and rated from 0 to 6 strength. The second set are “Lions”—leaders or elite elements—also rated from 0 to 6 strength.
When forming your Army, you take your troops and (with one Army exception) pick which troop you are going to replace with a Lion. Players then Deploy their Army one card at a time with the following simple rules:
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- You may Discard a card from your hand to use its Deploy effect.
- You may place it face-down in one of the battlefields.
- You may play it face-up to use the Lead ability on the card.
Deployment continues until all players deploy four cards or all pass.
Space Lion now moves onto Battle. The player holding the Priority Token (passed between rounds) choses the order to resolve battles. All battling cards on a chosen battlefield are turned face up, Battle effects are resolved, and the player with the highest end strength in the battlefield wins an award. Battlefields with solo cards remaining after the battle is over see that card sent to the discard but groups of cards are destroyed. Battles are followed by a Clean Up phases were discards return to your hand, destroyed cards move to the discard, and the Priority Token is passed so a new round can begin. First one to a certain number of awards (based on player count) wins.
Simple.
Strategy for (lion) kings
While the rules for Space Lion are simple, the asymmetric powers of the various armies ensures that players need a carefully considered strategy to win. Perceiving that strategy is what consumes the most time in a game of Space Lion. Given the simple rules and the generally easy to understand asymmetric powers, I was sure that the designers of Space Lions overestimated the time needed to play and the difficulty. After playing a few hands against the RockyMountainNavy Boys I am convinced that Space Lion is a game of “simple complexity;” that is, a game that has simple rules but demands complex strategic thought to play.
Not so simple.
Dinner duels
When I first saw Space Lion I immediately wondered if the game would make a good filler for the time before dinner. In the RockyMountainNavy household we occasionally find ourselves with a bit of time before dinner is fully ready but at the end of chores or other obligations. That is the perfect time to pull out a simple filler game for some friendly play. With Space Lion, the 2-player duel to four Awards can be played at the lesser time given—about 30 minutes. As the player count increases you probably need to add about 20 minutes for each additional player which moves Space Lion out of the filler category and turns it into a short family game.
Simple and thinky
Space Lion: Divide and Conquer is a very easy to learn, easy to teach, easy to play, dueling card game. To win, however, requires real thinking as to the strategy needed to win. Can you make your inner strategy lion roar? Find out with Space Lion: Divide and Conquer.
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