Star Eater Review — Star Wars, Without Star Wars

About Star Eater, from BoardGameGeek:

Star Eater combines innovation, stylised scifi action and gorgeous illustration to create a uniquely satisfying and strategically competitive experience for 2-4 players. You play as the commander of a gigantic Capital Ship, with multiple weapons and systems to manage as a supplemental force of on-board Corvettes. Each faction has unique Capital ships to choose from, each with customizable weapons, corvettes and utilities tailored to specific roles. Before the game begins, Commanders will customize their capital ships and corvettes to suit their playstyle and strategy. Star Eater uses an inertia based movement system. Each turn a commander can fire the capital ship engines to gain, bleed off, or redirect their momentum. Acquired momentum is tracked with tokens and each turn the momentum will continue to affect the capital ships movement turn after turn until it is removed. Each turn, both players will place face down: an engine Dial with a setting selected and 2 command cards. When both players agree that they are ready, they will reveal their engine dials at the same time, then apply the relevant momentum to their capital ship. All capital ships on the board are then moved according to the momentum they possess. Once movement is complete, the players reveal their command cards simultaneously and play out their effects. Most commands attract cooldown which removes them from the game for a set number of turns after use. The amount of cooldown attracted by a particular command is determined by the components that commander has chosen to outfit their capital ship with. There are 8 command cards, each of which will activate one component of the warship; main and broadside weapons, point defense turrets and shields, emergency engine power and various special abilities. Controlling corvettes is also done via command cards. Capital ships are composed of many sections. Each individual piece of the capital ship has its own armor rating, and the ship as a whole has an internal structure health. To damage your opponent's structural health, you must strip away their armor and then land shots in the resulting gap. When a capital ship runs out of internal structure health, it is destroyed and their opponent wins. -description from the designer