I'm an ex-gal civ player who currently plays a lot of StarChamber, and have for over a year.

Gal Civ is an awesome single player game, and I enjoyed it very much. I still fire it up when I feel like a bit of single payer challenge. But in the end, however good the gal civ AI is (and its one of the best i've ever seen), it cant beat playng a human

From what I remember, many peoples gripes against MP online games were:

1. Impolite, immature idiots who will call you a newb and insult you. The Starchamber community, though small (perhaps because its small) is the politest i've ever seen - I have NEVER been insulted by any player on there, and recieved only helpful advice (and 100's of free common cards to play with!) when I was new.

2. Long games, and people randomly dropping. A SC game takes, on average, about 30 minutes, varying between 15 mins and 1 hour i'd say. Its very rare someone drops in this time.

It is a very strategic, and very deep game. I would love to see some gal civ players join the community!

Edit: i'm not trying to remove players from gal civ, SC more compliments gal civ than replaces it. The single player SC game is rubbish compared to gal civ, as the AI is hopeless. When you feel like a stategy game against a person though, check it out!

Strange... it sounds like MY game and yet I've never even heard of it!

You can download it via Matrix Games, which supposedly would give you 'matrix games only' benefits like extra cards and such, or you can download it from sony.

Is the matrix version indeed more feature packed?

Sure sounds like a game I should try! Can you play this PBEM as well?

Do you have to pay for the best decks?

To Clarify:

If you want to build the very best decks possible you will have to spend a decent amount of money yes. But those that have such decks generally play them only in tournaments (and only in those that let you use all the cards in the game at that - there are plenty of tourney formats that impose a level playing field in terms of cards). however, rare-less decks can compete with all but the very best decks in the game, so the divide is not as big as in many card-based games.

If you want to have a good range of cards, with which you can build a good variety of decks and play fun casual games with, you have to spend only a little (maybe $30). You can specify casual games which only allow 'common' cards if you want to ensure a level playing field in terms of decks. There are MANY very good common cards. Mostly though, in casual play, you do not see the most powerful decks and rarer cards are more often used to give greater variety, not greater power. The community has a kindof self-imposed code of conduct in terms of what decks appear in casual play

After having spent a few weeks now with the game and its community I urge all players to come and take a look!

This gem of a game is not really well known, but provides so much fun! Not only that, but the super-friendly community helps a lot as well.
There's a Newbie Tournament setup right now where new players can accept a challenge in a friendly environment to let them learn the game and even win extra cards for their collection. I'll elaborate a bit more:

The Newb Open is an ongoing event hosted by the SC playes community (not the company) to encourage new player advancement in knowledge and card collection. It consists of handicapped matches for players who are still learning the game with donated prizes (valued cards) for new player wins in an "open challenge" format. Example: A new player beat a veteran player who had posted a Newb Open challenge. The match took maybe 30 minutes, the vet played a pre-built 'starter' deck, the new player ran a deck of his own creation. The new player won the match and two cards!

It sounds like an advert, which I do not mean to. Just call it enthousiasm.  But seriously, anyone who enjoys GalCiv 2 is bound to enjoy SC as well and it would be nice to have more people come and peek in over there!