There are three editions of Mag Blast, and I can only compare the second and third editions. They differ mainly in that the artwork is cartoony in the third edition and gritty in the second edition, while the flagship races in the third edition are new, although some of the special abilities are similar. The text on a couple of the action cards have been improved, as well as the carriers having laser turrets in the third edition, making them a little bit more useful.

In Mag Blast each player has a flagship representing a different race with a special ability, like the ‘Lizix’, who immediately draw two cards after one of your ships is destroyed. The flagship has four coloured zones corresponding to the top, sides and bottom of the card and a damage value of 8. At the start of the game you place one ship card in each zone, which have a damage value of 2 to 12.

The zones are important to combat, because when you attack an opponent with a ship in your green zone it can only attack a ship in your opponent’s green zone. Some ships can move, and you can place more than one ship in the same zone, so you can overload a sector. When all the ships in a particular zone are destroyed you can target your opponent’s flagship through that zone, if your flagship is destroyed you lose.

As well as flagships and ship cards you get a big deck of action cards, most of which are blast cards, split into Laser Blasts for 1 damage, Beam Blasts for 3 damage and Mag Blasts for 5 damage. They are colour coded to turret symbols on the ship cards that indicate what kind of blasts each ship can use. During combat you choose a ship and play a blast card fired from that ship against an enemy ship in the same zone.

The other event cards upgrade your ships like the ‘EMP Cannon’, or allow you to cancel a card like ‘Temporal Flux’. There are quite a few ‘Direct Hits’ that allow you to play a second blast card, or to play another action card like ‘Boarding’ that allows you to steal the ship you fired at. There are also ‘Space Dock’ cards that repair damage and ‘Reinforcement’ cards that allow you to draw a new ship.

Reinforcements are essential, and some of the action cards have coloured symbols on them indicating that you can discard them in order to draw a new ship. At the start of your turn you can discard as many of your cards as you want and draw back up to your hand size of 5 cards, so sometimes it is a valid strategy to do this over several turns simply to get some new ships to protect your flagship.

Two player games are fairly straightforward battles, while three to four player games have a bit more strategy, depending on whether you combine to flatten one particular player or keep the weak players alive so that you can concentrate on the strong players. In five to eight player games you can only attack the player to your left or right, at least until players are eliminated and you are back to four players remaining.

The playing time for Mag Blast can be misleading, because 10-20 minutes is only typical for a two or possibly three player game. A four to five player is more likely to 30-45 minutes, and a six to eight player game could be one or two hours. In a higher player count the early part of the game can be really slow, because it can take five minutes to get round to your turn again.

Mag Blast is very good for a trash talking game session, but it has the potential to cause a lot of argument over why one player targeted one opponent instead of another. It depends on your group really. Sometimes you get beaten horribly and it feels as if you can’t do anything about it, other times everything goes right for you. There isn’t really much skill involved in Mag Blast, but it is still a fun game.