Space War is a strategic space conflict game. The 2-4 players each start with a single home planet and must accumulate resources to build ships, capture additional planets (obtaining more resources), and eventually conquer the other players' home planets. There are three types of ships that can be built, plus immobile (but transportable) star bases. Somewhat unusually, players must keep track of each ship's fuel and weapons, and have a ship stop off for refueling when it gets too low. The deck of cards adds events and such to the long version of the game. The components consist of a board, 4 record sheets in plastic folders, crayons for the record sheets, a reference chart, a set of rules, a deck of cards, and 4 sets of pre-cut counters. The game was also published (presumably with revisions) as Space War II.