Our next megagame is Watch the Stars on Saturday 28 March, in Auckland.
Watch the Stars is based on the classic Watch the Skies megagame, drawing inspiration from the Mass Effect video game series and other sci-fi and space opera stories.
We had a very successful run of this game in Hamilton in August 2025. A recap of that game is available here. We then ran the game a second time in Wellington in November 2025. A recap of that game is available here.
Ticket prices will be confirmed at the end of January, but are likely to be around $20-25.
Game Situation
Humanity has reached the stars, only to find a galaxy wide civilisation has already settled most of the worlds habitable for an oxygen breathing species. While humanity has been granted membership in the Galactic Council, it struggles for acceptance from the five elder species.
The great mystery in the wider galaxy is what happened to a precursor race known as the Forerunners. They vanished over 50,000 years ago. Xenoarchaeologists often find interesting relics in the ruins of this civilisation, and there is a lot of trade on the black market.
In recent months there has been a string of raids on colony worlds. This has caused a serious crisis as the identity of the raiders is unknown, and everyone is blaming each other, although the finger of suspicion is pointing most often at the humans.
Game Play
Based on experience, we are only going to try and get through eight game turns, allowing about 40 minutes for each game turn.
There are four main subgames in Watch the Stars:
- Leadership: each team has a leader, responsible for strategy, resource allocation, and special forces (the WRAITHS).
- Diplomacy: representing teams at the Galactic Council, trading commodities with other factions, and gathering information.
- Military: responsible for defending their team against threats, and intercepting the raiders.
- Scientific: responsible for investigating the forerunner mystery, unlocking tech advances for their teams, and representing their team at the galactic science conference.
One team of players will be playing the Raiders. Exactly who they are and what their aims are may be uncovered in play.
Player Map
Players will get to explore the Red Zones (Core, Black Gate, and Magellanic Cloud) during the game.
Game Briefs
Uploaded on 20 November 2025. These documents will get another editing pass before March.