Description

Far in the future, humanity makes contact with a distant, dying alien race, the Sectridians, whose survival depends upon a constant influx of a rare substance known as primordium, found only in a remote section of an asteroid field close to the Sectridian home world. Unfortunately the Sectridians lose the ability to acquire the primordium for themselves, because the asteroids become infested with another hostile alien species, the monstrous Raptezoids and their horrific mother, the Hive Queen.

Encounters with the Raptezoids prove deadly to the feeble Sectridians. Thus, they are forced to abandon their primordium rich asteroids and, consequently, begin to die off. In a final desperate act, the Sectridians send a distress signal throughout the galaxy, hoping another benevolent alien race might come to their rescue. When their demise seems all but certain, a few rag-tag human factions receive the Sectridian cry for help, and, greedily sensing an opportunity to cash in on their plight, agree, for a handsome fee, to mine the Primordium for the Sectridians, battling the Raptezoid scourge in the process. These human factions also learn that, by gathering and selling specimens of the Raptezoids to a few curious members of an enigmatic scientific community sprinkled among them, they can earn a small, yet not insignificant, additional profit.

It is not long before the lust for wealth sends these mining factions into conflict with one another, as they each seek to claim more and more asteroids for themselves. Ordinary space miners, most often equipped with nothing more than their trusty pick-axes, have to quickly learn to become soldiers as they are sent headlong into bloody battle against the armies of other mining factions. These conflicts become known as the Primoridum Wars, and rage for several years before the Sectridians suddenly, and mysteriously, disappear.

You will play the leader of one these human factions. You will expand your primordium mining operations throughout the asteroid field, wage war against your opponents, fight the terrible Raptezoids, and gather Raptezoid specimens. At the end of five rounds, the player with the most wealth wins the game.

The Primordium Wars is a quasi 4x, tile placement, resource gathering, and worker displacement game where players place tiles representing various structures onto their asteroids in order to increase their primordium mining operations. It is also a game in which combat plays a significant, though secondary role, where players attack each other in order to claim more resource producing asteroids, or to disrupt their opponents' operations. The game takes place on a modular board where, in each round, players slowly shift the asteroids around on the game board, subtly, or often drastically, changing the strategic situation.

In each round, players will first acquire, in a bidding phase, tiles that represent the items needed to expand their mining empires such as: Various asteroid modules to build on the asteroids (mining facilities, orbital turrets, pulse cannons, science laboratories, etc), various starship upgrades (warp drives, sniping lasers, stealth devices, etc), miner and mercenary reinforcements, build points for building new starships, and grav technology for tethering asteroids together into clusters (a core mechanism that greatly increases mining production, and expands the functionality of most modules built on the asteroids).
Players will then deploy their newly acquired items onto their asteroids and starships, take turns moving their pieces deeper into the asteroid field in order to expand their mining empire, and battle other players, Raptezoids, and the dreaded Hive Queen.
At the end of each round players will collect their income from their mining operations and Raptezoid specimens, and a new round will begin.