<![CDATA[What’s in a name? A proposal to adjust the digital competitive naming convention]]>A large number of players are participating in competitive Star Realms via the digital application. Since the beginning of the early Fan Created Community Tournaments or the Board Game Geek Leagues, it’s been challenging to define a specification that lets everyone know what version of the game is required to participate in a particular event.

The folks at ProStarRealms.com have done a great job building out a simple tool to explain how the naming can work and it’s done pretty well up to this point. As more and more expansions come to Star Realms and the app, there’s going to be an ongoing struggle to properly communicate versioning for digital play.

What follows is an expansion on a discussion with Brad Elkey (IGN PanicFire) and represents a proposal for a new naming guideline. With hope, this version will “future proof” the naming against future expansions and modifications.

The new naming proposal works simply like this:

Major Expansions / Minor Expansions / Extended Expansions

The key item here is the names are separated by the backslash “/” to indicate a break. This is important because it’s now obvious that letters are very likely going to have to be reused.

Major Expansions

These include:

Star Realms Base (V)
Colony Wars  ( W )
Frontiers (F) – Assuming this correctly represents Frontiers when released.

Minor Expansions

These include:

Year 1 Promos (1)
Year 2 Promos (2)
Bases and Battleships (B)
Fleets and Fortresses (F)
United: Command (C) (K)
United: Assault (A) – when released

Extended Expansions

These include:

Gambits (G)
Cosmic Gambits (C)
Events (E)
Heroes (H, H2, H3 as they continue to release)
United: Missions (M)

Example #1

VW/1BF/EHM

The above example would include:
Core Set
Colony Wars
Year 1 Promos
Bases & Battleships
Fleets & Fortresses
Events
Heros (original)
Missions

Example #2

V/B/HH2

This usage would include:

Core Set
Bases & Battleships
Heroes
Heroes: United

This is just the beginning of the conversation, but do we think this can help properly and consistently communicate the formats while providing flexibility for the future expansions?

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