Master of Orion: The Board Game blasting off in early 2017

The tabletop spin-off to 1990s sci-fi strategy video game franchise Master of Orion is set to arrive at the start of next year.

Russian publisher Hobby World revealed Master of Orion: The Board Game earlier this year, and has now announced that it will team up with Cryptozoic to bring the game to the West.

Based on the art style of this year’s video game reboot, Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars, the tabletop version will pit two to four players against each other to expand their reach over the galaxy and develop their human or alien race’s technological prowess.

Players juggle food, fleet, production and loyalty tracks, gaining resources and spending actions each turn to construct new systems and battle with rival factions.

The roughly hour-long game ends when one player’s loyalty hits zero, one race has five cards in the four different systems or eight rounds have been played. It’s then a classic case of counting up victory points to determine a winner.

Designed by Ekaterina Gorn and Igor Sklyuev, it will be interesting to see how the officially-branded game fares in comparison with much-lauded sci-fi 4X strategy title Eclipse, which has often been nicknamed ‘Master of Orion: The Board Game’.

A specific release month is yet to be confirmed, with Hobby World and Cryptozoic sketching a launch period for ‘early 2017’ in the US.