Double Star (board game)

Double Star is a science fiction board wargame designed by Marc Miller and published by Game Designers' Workshop in 1979. It simulates interplanetary warfare in a binary star system, where two stars orbit each other and each star has a human colony orbiting it. One colony is of Chinese descent and the other Arab. Each colony feels antipathy toward the other and also needs something the other holds, which is why war begins. The game is for two players who alternate turns in an I Go, You Go system. Each unit spends movement points either to advance one hex or to turn sixty degrees. Players organise their ships into task forces in cone, wedge, cylinder or globe formations, and they can fling asteroids at the enemy planet to act as kinetic bombs. Because ships take several turns to cross between the systems, offensives must be planned well ahead, and several scenarios allow games from a few hours to several sessions. Contemporary reviewers compared it with the more complex Imperium.