First Thoughts: Andromeda’s Edge

Okay, let’s cut straight to the chase and admit that I really, really like this game. ‘It floats my boat’, or, maybe, ‘sends my rocket into space’ would be a more apt phrase.

I played a game and a half, the half being abandoned because we didn’t have enough time to finish and a week went by, too much to return to a game in play. The second, well, I had my backside handed to me by Yasmin, who grocked the game far quicker than I did and ran away with victory.

So, what is Andromeda’s edge all about?

Well, this isn’t your average eurogame with a space sticker slapped on top—it’s a sprawling, interstellar sandbox where every decision feels like it echoes across the galaxy. You start by choosing a faction, each with its own quirks and asymmetrical powers, then build out your space station using modules that grant new abilities, resources, or scoring opportunities. Think engine-building, but with a turbocharged reactor core.

Each round, you’ll send your ships to various planets or orbital zones to gather resources, construct modules, engage in skirmishes, or activate powerful abilities. But here’s the kicker: once your ships are spent, they return to your station, triggering all the juicy combos you’ve built up. It’s a delicious loop of planning, deploying, and reaping the rewards of your cosmic empire. Add in area control, variable objectives, and a tech tree that feels like it was pulled straight from a sci-fi epic, and you’ve got a game that’s as crunchy as it is thematic.

It is a complex game. In fact its a 4x game – Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate – which immediately suggests a game that is deep, complicated, and going to take all day to play. Well, it is, and it isn’t!

Its deep, its complicated, but it can be wrapped up in less than 2-hours in a 2-player game.

The rules take some getting your head around, as there’s a lot you can do, and it took (at least for me) halfway through our second game to grasp how the mechanisms worked together and to be able to develop a viable strategy. Once I did figure it out, I was impressed with how clever the game was.

There are a lot of ways you can go in terms of strategy and we barely scratched the surface. You can concentrate on Tech trees, you can try and dominate the known galaxy with your buildings, you can become a force to be reckoned with, you can concentrate on building out your station, and, if you’re feeling lucky (or foolish), you can try and concentrate on all of these things at once!

I really appreciated the diversity in what you can do and I could see how the replayability of the game would be immense and fun to explore.

There’s so much I just didn’t have chance to properly delve into that I feel ‘first thoughts’ are barely that. More like ‘tentative steps!’.

It’s also a mighty fine production, though a bit of a table hog, and there are plenty of small counters to muddle around. But it does look great in play.

I can’t wait to play Andromeda’s Edge again and start to work out the nuances of each faction, to grasp the multitude of ways in which to develop my station and make the most out of each and every turn. The depth of the game is sure to keep me interested for many long evenings to come. I think this will be a real winner!