Plasma
Red · Thermal
Burst damage and aggression. Overloads enemy Systems by cooking their batteries — at a cost to your own hull.
Can’t — Cannot heal or draw unconditionally. Lives on the front foot or not at all.
Turn one
Full power, every round
How it plays
Build the ship. Out-fly the pilot.
A fast, two-player dogfight where the only luck is your own. You bring a ship, a locked set of reactor cores, and a 40-card deck — then it comes down to reading the captain across from you.
The round
A round is a dogfight, not a pair of solo turns.
Reduce the other ship’s Hull to zero, or run their deck dry. Every round runs the same four beats, and inside the Engagement you trade single actions until you both break off.
Instant
Shields, on either turn
Open
Energy you can both count
Every turn
A puzzle to solve
01 · Refresh
Power up
Both reactors return to full and Shields reset. The same energy as last round — no ramp, no waiting, no scaling.
02 · Engagement
Fly
Alternate single actions — fire, install a System, manoeuvre — answering each other shot for shot.
03 · React
Answer
Out of turn, Reactions respond to the stack at instant speed. The exchange never stops moving — real timing windows you can read and bait.
04 · Break
Disengage
When you both pass, the round ends. Reactors refresh, initiative shifts, and the next dogfight begins.
Where the depth lives
Why a duel keeps you guessing.
Hollowstar is built around a handful of ideas that make every single turn matter. Master these and you master the fight.
01
A reactor that never misfires
Your cores are locked the moment you build the ship, and the reactor delivers the same energy every round from turn one. No bad draws, no dead turns — you always have your full toolkit. The only question is how you spend it.
02
One long exchange, not a turn
You act, they answer, you answer that. Reactions fire at instant speed on a shared stack, so a round is a continuous dogfight of feints, traps and counter-punches — never two players taking solo turns.
03
Defense is always live
Any energy can become shields, instantly, on either captain’s turn. Every attack is thrown knowing the other ship can brace — so a duel is an exchange of skill, not a race to alpha-strike first.
04
Break the engine, not the board
Your Systems persist and power the ship; they can’t be shot down, only outplayed. And each core dismantles an opponent differently — overload, disable, drain, deny, or erase — so no two answers ever feel the same.
05
Every splash is a real choice
Add an off-core to your reactor and you trade away your primary core’s ceiling for reach. The cost is honest and the payoff is real — your reactor becomes a thesis about exactly how you want to fight.
06
Timing is the whole game
You don’t wait turns for a big play — you wait for the moment inside the turn, when the captain across from you has tipped their hand or burned their energy. Reading that opening, and baiting it, is where mastery lives.
The five cores
Five toolkits, defined by what they can’t do.
Pick a primary, splash with intent. Each core is as much about its weakness as its strength.
Tachyon
Blue · Temporal
Foresight, disable, phase-prevention and rules-bending finishers. Rewards holding a full hand.
Can’t — Cannot repair hull or destroy Systems outright. Wins by control, not by force.
Fusion
Green · Stellar
Recharge economy, hull repair, salvage from the trash, and disruption of enemy charge.
Can’t — Cannot void or hard-remove. Folds to permanent answers it cannot match.
Ion
Yellow · Electric
Efficiency, initiative, card velocity and going wide with drones. The death of a thousand cuts.
Can’t — Cannot land a single big blow, and cannot heal. Wins on tempo or loses to the long game.
Graviton
Purple · Singularity
Discard, mill (a real deck-out win), clean unconditional removal, and void — exile that never returns.
Can’t — Builds no board and cannot answer a swarm. Must end the game on its own clock.
The three hulls
The chassis sets your pace.
Lighter flies first and holds more cards; heavier carries more and survives longer.
Interceptor · Light Cockpit and a prayer.
Biggest hand · First strike · Fragile
A blur in a dogfight — low on armor, drowning you in options. The lone ace: ~10–15 metres, one or two souls aboard. End it fast, or not at all.
- Hull17–19
- Crew1 berth
- TempoFirst strike (round 1)
Lancer · Medium The freighter that fights.
Balanced · Flexible · A famous silhouette
No glaring weakness and a tool for every fight — the freighter-turned-warship, ~25–50 metres and three to six crew. Steady through the duel, lethal in good hands.
- Hull20–24
- Crew2 berths
- TempoMiddleweight
Bastion · Heavy Big enough to have departments.
Most hull · Most power · Slowest
Slow to wake and impossible to finish — the gunship, ~80–150 metres and fifteen to forty crew. Survive the opening storm and the late game is yours.
- Hull24–28
- Crew3 berths
- TempoSlowest to act
The cards
Three cards, three jobs.
A Starship sets your chassis. Systems install into your Bays and stay. Tactics are one-shot plays you fire and forget.
Lodestar v2
RareStarship · Lancer · Meridian
22Hull
4Cores
5Bays
Activated Mark Target Tap ship, 1 Energy
Your next Weapon System activation this round deals +1 damage. Look at the top 2 cards of your deck; reorder them.
Older than the war. Still keeping watch.
Meltdown Cannon
Legendary 1
System · Weapon
9Attack
2Charge
−3Self
Activated Tap, 2 Charge
Attack for 9 damage.
Bastion only
Fire it once and pray the hull holds. It won't, twice.
Conflagration
Legendary 1
Tactic · Burn
8Attack
−3Self
Attack for 8 damage.
The last word in the liturgy.
Deckbuilding
Lock your cores. Build your forty.
40
card minimum deck
3-of
copies of any one card
252
cards in Set 01
15
ships · five per class
Choose a ship, lock the cores your reactor will run, and build at least forty cards — up to three of any one. Every off-core you add lowers your primary core’s ceiling, so the deck is a negotiation between reach and raw power. Then you fly it.
The vocabulary
Speak like a captain.
The words that come up most across the table.
- Shield
- A per-round damage buffer. Made via the universal 1 Energy → 1 Shield (instant) or by card text. Resets each Refresh — it never carries over.
- Charge
- A System’s private battery. Activating a System spends its own charge; at 0 charge it goes Offline until recharged.
- Offline
- A System at 0 charge. It stays in its Bay and untaps normally, but can’t use its charge-fuelled ability until recharged.
- Bays
- The reactor-fed slots that persistent Systems install into. Finite — play a System with all Bays full and you Overwrite one.
- Overwrite
- Playing a System when every Bay is full. The replaced System is Destroyed to the Trash (recoverable).
- Reactive
- A System ability usable at instant speed in the opponent’s window — point-defence, shield conversion, phase-out. It does not cost your action.
- Disengage
- A binding round-pass: you take no more turns this Engagement but stay live at instant speed. Disengage first and you hold initiative next round.
- Dodge
- Negate the next attack entirely — no damage, no on-hit effects. The premium Ion-flavoured answer.
- Overload
- Plasma’s removal idiom — destroy a charged, untapped System by cooking its battery. Condition-dependent.
- Prescience
- Tachyon keyword — +1 damage per N cards in hand. Foresight is power; holding answers makes you hit harder.
- Supercharge
- Fusion keyword — add charge above a System’s maximum, uncapped. The charge-engine fantasy.
- Superheat
- Plasma keyword — spend extra main energy this round to amplify an ability. A flexible burst outlet on a flush turn.
- Reap
- Graviton keyword — if the opponent has 20+ cards in their discard, this attack deals +N. Mill and the hull clock reinforce each other.
- Void
- Removed from the game entirely — unsalvageable, never to the Trash. Graviton’s premium, and how Crew die.
- Primed
- A System that enters untapped and may act the turn you play it, skipping the usual spin-up tap.
Build the ship.
Out-fly the pilot.
No luck to blame. Just you, the energy, and the read.