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 its onboard fuel supply 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 1977 edition of Space War was sold in a rectangular box. The game was also published in ziplock format as Space War II. Based on the apparent similarity in the components between the two editions, it is unclear if there were any substantive revisions to the game or if the two editions simply involved a change in packaging.