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Selling printable Star Realms round logs as downloads: the log your buyer trusts when an outpost eats the combat

A printable Star Realms round log lives or dies on the one claim nobody can prove from a finished table, because the whole game runs on one record nobody keeps: how much of a turn's combat went into an outpost, how much reached the opponent's authority, and what the authority totals actually were before and after the attack. The match ended with Rowan taking the game, and by the time the table argues about it nobody agrees on whether Rowan's 6 combat really had to chew through Morgan's outpost first, whether Morgan's authority really fell to 48 or to 44, or whether Morgan's outpost was really destroyed at all. A log sheet that records each round's combat generated, each outpost's defense, and each player's authority before and after is the only record that settles those arguments, and it is a record no one at the table is keeping, because the players are busy counting trade and combat at once, the bases are busy staying in play turn after turn, and the game is busy ending the instant one authority total hits zero.

Star Realms, for the seller who has never played it: a two-player space-combat deck-building card game in which each player starts with 50 authority and a personal deck of eight Scouts and two Vipers, and wins by reducing the opponent's authority to zero. The first player draws three cards to start and the second player draws five, and after that each turn draws a fresh hand of five. On a turn a player plays cards to gain trade, combat, authority, and other effects, then uses trade to buy ships and bases from the central trade row of five cards, plus the ever-available Explorer pile, with every purchase going into the discard pile to be shuffled back in later. Ships are discarded at the end of the turn, but bases stay in play turn after turn until destroyed or scrapped, which is where the arguments start: an outpost base must be destroyed before combat can be used to attack its owner's authority directly, so combat spent on an outpost never reaches the authority total behind it.

The log your buyer actually needs has one row per round, not one total per game, because Star Realms arguments are always about a single round's split. Each row records the combat generated, the outpost in play and its defense, how much combat went into the outpost, how much reached authority, and both authority totals before and after. The outpost column gets its own space, because outpost-first is the rule players get wrong: combat does not split freely between an outpost and the authority behind it, it must destroy the outpost first, and a log that shows only the final authority total will restart the argument instead of settling it. The authority-before column gets its own space as well, because a game that ends at zero is always argued backwards from a total nobody wrote down.

Here is the worked round the log is built to settle, with every number checked. Rowan's played ships and in-play bases generate 6 combat. Morgan has an outpost base in play with defense 4, and Morgan's authority stands at 50. Outpost-first applies, so 4 of Rowan's 6 combat goes into destroying the outpost, leaving 2 combat to reach authority, and 50 minus 2 is 48. Without the log, that single round is two arguments at once: whether the outpost really had to be destroyed first, and whether Morgan's authority is really 48 rather than 44, the total if all 6 combat had gone straight to authority. With the log, it is one row. Note the knife edge the log protects: had Rowan generated exactly 4 combat, the outpost would have been destroyed and Morgan's authority would have stayed at 50; and had Morgan's base been an ordinary base rather than an outpost, Rowan could have sent all 6 combat straight to authority instead, taking it from 50 to 44 and leaving the base standing, which is exactly why the log records the base type and not just the numbers.

For the seller, the pitch writes itself, because the buyer is not buying a scoresheet, they are buying the end of the argument. A Star Realms pair argues about exactly this kind of round every match, and the game is famous for outposts that quietly eat combat while both players watch the authority totals, which means the log gets used, argued over, and used again, which means the buyer comes back. Sell it as a pad of fifty, one full game per sheet with a row per round and the outpost-first rule pre-printed at the top, so nobody has to remember mid-game whether combat can skip an outpost. Price it like a card-game accessory, not like a board game, and show the worked round above on the listing images so a buyer sees in five seconds exactly which argument the sheet settles. The game has a loud, loyal two-player audience, so the listing should speak to the pair that just lost a match to a disputed outpost, not to the collector.

This log is an unofficial fan-made accessory. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the publisher, and Star Realms is a trademark of its respective owner.

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