A board games blog by Stephan Wessels

Board games you keep

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 20:32:09 -0600

Some games are obvious easy candidates for the must-have list. The others require some reflection and consideration. Here’s the list. I’ve included links with each game where you can learn more about them and even an on-line board game store where you can order your own copy. I’ve been purchasing board games on-line from Thought Hammer for years now and always recommend them, although I have no affiliation with the company. I just recommend them. Of course, some of these games can be purchased at your local hobby game stores and some can be found in “big box” department store like “Target”. I recommend you check local suppliers first because they help to keep this gaming hobby thriving.

Ticket to Ride
This one has to be included no matter what. It’s not a highly rated game when compared to the deeper strategy games. But this is “the gateway game”. It’s the game you pull out with the family when you want to introduce someone to modern board game design. It plays quickly, is easy to learn, and everybody loves playing it when introduced. I’ve introduced this game to several adults and families that have gone out and immediately purchased their own copy.

When we play the game we always include the USA 1910 expansion. It adds more destination card choices and the original game cards are replaced with much larger and easier to manage cards. Our family loves this game. We also “tricked it out” a bit by purchasing wooden train pieces -- including ones in purple and pink -- to replace the original game’s plastic train pieces. The original pieces are fine, but these wooden ones look cool and feel nice to touch. I purchased the wooden pieces at Mayday Games on-line but I’m not sure they still carry them.

One last note about this game. It has been a success story for the board game industry and stands out as one of the board games you can actually find at stores like Target now.

Escalation!
We often use this card game for quick fun. Again, easy to learn, and plays really fast. Everyone has a great time.

This is another of those games that doesn’t earn a high strategy game rating but wins for shear fun. Escalation! is another of those games we own that, when introduced to new players, they want to go purchase their own copy.

We played this game so many times that we have worn the cards down and have purchase several replacement decks over time.

Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition
No doubt about it, this is a heavy strategy game. It’s deep and takes a long time to play. It’s another family favorite. We have played this game over 40 times. The game is a rich immersive experience. You set aside a Saturday to play it, but it’s always worth it.

By no means is this an introductory game and it’s not everyone’s “cup of tea”. But we love it. There have been 2 expansions that have come out for this game over the past few years. Each expansion adds more interesting player alien races to choose and more options and ships. I find both expansions to be valuable and worth owning. It all fits in the same box if you remove the original box insert. We have “tricked” this game out a bit too by adding custom colored dice for each player to use.

Power Grid
This is a great “euro”-style game. Another family favorite. Power Grid is an economic game where players purchase power plants and resources (coal, oil, nuclear, etc.) to operate those power plants. Players must also make connections between cities to form their “power grid”. You spend money to buy plants, resources and city connections. You earn money by providing power to your cities. This is a strategy game and can get pretty involved for the players.

An amazing characteristic of this game which we have encountered many times while playing, is that the game almost always ends with a very close final score. The other feature I observe is that the game plays along casual until about the last two turns. By that point everyone is quiet and thinking through the options for their next turn. It’s cool to experience and part of what makes playing the game memorable for players. Like many “Euro-style” board games, you feel like you are engaged in the game until the very end.

Carcassonne
This is a classic tile-laying game. Players build up cities and roads from randomly drawn tiles. It behave likes a puzzle game and, depending on the players, either feels casual and light or highly competitive. You score points for completing roads, cities, and other game features. It’s one of my wife’s favorite games.

Carcassonne is another good game for introducing people to the hobby. There are seemingly infinite expansions for this game and we’ve purchased probably every one. We purchased extra player pieces for this game in new colors -- again including purple and pink.

I have seen the game Carcassonne for sale at Toys R Us and Barnes & Noble book stores.

Runebound (2nd edition)
This is not a game we play as often as we did when we first purchased it. However, it still gets pulled out sometimes even when we have new players visiting.

Runebound is a board game with a strong role-playing fantasy element. Players move their figure around the game board and encounter challenges to defeat. As they build up their skills and inventory of weapons, spells, and other tools, they become better prepared for the highest level of challenges in the game and win.

Our family also loves this game and we have “tricked it out” as well by adding custom colored dice for each player and we substituted the cardboard bits representing challenges with glass beads. The game looks very appealing while playing. Runebound is not a lightweight game, but also not difficult to learn and play. The one down side to consider is that a game can take a long time to play if there are many players.

Bohnanza
A game about bean farming seems an unlikely theme for family fun. But this card game proves to be both unique and fun.

One of the interesting game design mechanisms used by Bohnanza is that you are not permitted to arrange the cards in your hand. You play them in the order they were dealt. I know, that sounds really odd. But you have to try it. It’s fun, the artwork is silly and it’s another easy game to learn and play.

Eclipse
Eclipse has become my “new hotness” game. This game is a great blend of “euro-style” and “thematic-style” board game design. It’s an epic space game like Twilight Imperium but lighter and quicker to play.

I consider it to be an essential part of my gaming collection and a compliment to and not a replacement for TI-3. What makes this game stand out is the elegance of the design mechanisms. There are many clever elements to the game play design.

The ratings for this game in the larger hobby board game community is amazing. The game was introduced a few months ago and has already skyrocketed to a top 5 ranking. If you get a chance to play the game you’ll understand why too.

The only real problem with this game right now, in my mind, is that it’s impossible to find. The initial production run has sold out everywhere. You can find copies available for $50 to $100 over the standard retail price. The game publisher announced the next production run will be ready in May or June of 2012. That’s a long time to wait for as much fun as this game has been. If you can find a copy at the $85 - $100 price, get it. More than that, you’d have to decide for yourself. I was quite fortunate to get a copy as a Christmas gift from my wife.

I cannot say enough good things about this game. It may be the best new board game that came out in 2011. I’ll certainly play it whenever I can find a chance.

Shadows Over Camelot
We have introduced this game to families and it has always been well received. It’s easy to learn, and with the available expansion, handles up to 8 players.

This is a cooperative game. That is, all the players are working together to accomplish goals and not lose against the game itself. The game is hard to beat.

The interesting feature of this game is that one of the players secretly plays the role of a traitor and tries to remain undetected throughout the game. The traitor is working against the other players. The tension and potential for mis-trust and deception make this a fun game to experience.

Shadows Over Camelot is another one of those games that when played have resulted in the other families playing to purchase their own copy.

Thebes
Also known as “Jenseits von Theben”, Thebes is a great introductory game. The game is published by Queen Games and they always do an excellent job with the production values. The board is attractive and the components are first class.

In this game each player is kind of like an “Indiana Jones” character, exploring ancient sites around the globe, seeking valuable artifacts. A very cool game design mechanism with this game is that each “site” has a dedicated cloth bag full of cardboard tiles. Most of the tiles represent sand, nothing of value. But also within each bag are the few precious artifacts. The players travel to these ancients sites and commit to digging for a certain amount of time. The longer you dig at a site the higher the odds of pulling good stuff out of the bag. The trade off is that you may also be wasting time needed elsewhere on the game board. And here’s the really cool trick. After a player “searches” through the cloth bag (blindly, without seeing the tiles they have extracted until they are done, and the useless sand tiles are the same shape as the artifact tiltes), they put back all the useless “sand” tiles. This makes it even harder for the next player to find anything valuable at the site. It is such a simple thematic element that just enhances the enjoyment of playing this game. Some folks feel this inclusion of a certain level of luck in the game diminishes it’s appeal. I disagree. A little bit of luck in a game is what makes it feel like fun to newer players. Our family loves this game and we introduce it to new players frequently.

Starfarers of Catan
The now-classic German board game Settlers of Catan has an official space-themed version with this entry. We actually prefer this game to the standard Settlers of Catan. The game has a very cool looking board and some amazing “mother ships” that each player uses to both produce the random event selections as well as identify the enhancements made to their space fleet (speed, freight capacity, and cannons to ward off space pirates).

The game plays very much like Settlers of course, where each player rolls dice to determine the resources they collect each turn. There is no direct conflict between players. This is not a war game. Each player tries to earn victory points by exploring, building and creating alliances with alien races. This was one of the early Euro-style games for our family and remains a favorite. It’s easy to learn but can take a while to play.

Dominion
In 2008 the game Dominion was introduced to hobby board gamers. It introduced a very simple and clever “deck building” game design mechanism that instantly became a huge hit. It’s really a card game but comes in a standard sized board game box. Many new deck building game designs have followed in the following years, but I still enjoy playing Dominion.

Like Carcassonne, there are several expansions you can add. Dominion is actually quite easy to learn, fast and (here’s the amazing part) addictive to play. It always happens. Whenever I introduce Dominion to new players and we finish a game they always want to play it again right away. It’s a good game. The only complaint I have about it is each player ends up frequently having to shuffle your card deck as the game progresses. In fact, you shuffle almost every other turn. Still, it’s fun and plays fast.

Race for the Galaxy
This is a card game. It’s got a little bit of a learning curve to it. Mostly that’s because each card has little icons festooned around the edges of the artwork and it take a little while to “get it”. But once it clicks for the players, which generally only takes one or two practice rounds, the game starts humming along.

It is a little bit like Dominion in that you are evaluating your card choices each turn, but this is a nice rich strategy game experience. This is another one of those games that has that addictive feel to it and you want to play several games in a row to try out other winning strategy ideas. There are 3 expansions available for this game and I recommend them all if you have played the base game and enjoyed it. The second expansion, and they have to be added to the game in order, even includes a provision for an automated “robot” player that yields a pretty good solitaire experience.

Pandemic
This is another cooperative game. Each player is part of a team working together to contain the outbreak of several diseases around the globe.

The board game and it’s components are top notch quality. And the game design is quite elegant, with several clever design ideas combined to make a thematic and approachable fun game to play.

There is an expansion for this game that provides for several options that you can choose to include in the game. I think the neatest component from the expansion is that it comes with little plastic petri dishes you can use to store the game’s virus cubes in. Very cool. The expansion also provides an optional bio-terrorist option where a player can be secretly working against the others. I think the game s challenging enough without one of the players as an adversary.

Wits & Wagers
I like this game quite a bit when I need a game that can be played with a larger group and has a “party game” feel to it. The interesting design feature of this game is that it’s a trivia game where you don’t have to know the right answer. Instead everyone places bets on a game board of what they think the correct trivia question answer is. You just bet on which answer from everyone’s guesses is the correct answer. You don’t have to know the answer, you just have to be willing to bet which other player does know the answer.

This game actually scales up quite well to very large groups if needed. You treat the game as if everyone is participating in a game show and working together on teams. Wits & Wagers is a very successful board game and has won many awards for it’s design. It’s a trivia game done right. I have seen this game for sale at Target.

Killer Bunnies
Let’s be plain and up-front about this. Killer Bunnies is not a strategy game. Not really. It’s a fun, easy to learn, silly little game about trying to keep your own bunnies alive while doing horrible things to the bunnies of your opponents.

The game is a card game and the artwork on each card is quite fun. We always have a good time playing when everyone is in the mood for a lighter “take-that” kind of card game. There are numerous expansions available for this game too and we purchased them all. Fortunately, we’re able to fit everything in one box.

We hadn’t played this game in quite a while and recently had some company over where I thought it might be fun to pull out and play again. It was as fun as we expected.

I’d better stop there. Of the games in my collection there are many more that I truly love to play and would want to include in any gaming library. But the above list is pretty good and accomplishes creating a must-have list for me. There are 16 games here. I’m sure I could add another 48 “must haves” if I keep thinking about it.

Perry Rhodan: The Cosmic League

Sat, 7 May 2011 16:51:04 -0500

This is a review of the 2-player board game “Perry Rhodan: The Cosmic League”, published in the USA by Z-Man Games. This is an English language edition of the German game “Perry Rhodan: Die Kosmische Hanse”. Z-Man Games published the game in 2010. It’s listed as a Card Game on their web site. “Perry Rhodan: The Cosmic League” is designed by Heinrich Glumpler. The game is part of the Kosmos 2-player line of board and card games.

The game is for 2 players, age 10 and up and is rated to play in about 30 minutes. I find it usually goes longer, but never more than an hour. The game retails for around $25 and can be purchased on-line for a little over $16.

Here is some flavor text from the publisher:

As commanders of the Cosmic League, the players use their spaceships to transport goods and passengers between the six planets. For this they receive a certain number of Megagalax (1 Megagalax equals 1,000,000 Galax, the currency unit of the Cosmic League). The players may spend the earned Megagalax to buy technologies to facilitate their tasks. But they must not forget the main objective of the game because the first player who reaches a total of 70 Megagalax will win the game.
A strategic two player game set in one of the most prolific and best selling universes in science fiction. Discover Perry Rhodan and the Cosmic League for yourself!

That bit about “best selling universes in science fiction” was news to me. But it just shows how much I didn’t know. The Perry Rhodan universe was created in 1961 in Germany and went on to generate over a billion copies in books, novels and magazines. Evidently it is the most successful science fiction book series ever written.

The artwork on the box and of the game components is by Swen Papenbrock, an illustrator for the book series. I must say that the artwork is quite appealing and well done.

Whats’s in the box?

Here’s a photograph I took before we played our last game. You can see the box and it’s contents.

The box has a nice insert with compartments to hold the pieces.

Included, there’s a large “Sun” piece that is used to keep track of the score. The game also includes 2 small cardboard chits, one for each player and representing their ship. They are used on the score track of the “Sun”.

The game also comes with a stack of 6 cardboard “Planets”. More about those in a moment. Next there are 2 cardboard ships, one for each player, mounted on little plastic stands. A D6 die is also included with the game.

There are 2 larger sized card decks, one for each player. Each deck is identical with the exception of the artwork on the back to signify which player owns the deck. One card from each of the 2 player decks has a lighter colored background. This is a handy way of identifying the initial card each player uses at the start of the game.

Here’s an example of some of the larger cards.

Lastly, theres a smaller sized card deck with various goods. The goods cards are 2-sided and have one kind of good on one side and another different good on the other side.

Above is a shot of the pieces on the table and a glimpse of the rulebook. The rulebook is pretty clear and has many illustrations. The glass colored gems are not included with the game and are an enhancement I added to aid game play. More about these later.

Game Play

I took photographs during a recent game session. They will be helpful as we discuss game play.

At the start of the game each player chooses one deck, and corresponding space ship. With the glass gems added, each player also take a set of those.

The Sun is placed at one side of the table and the 2 scoring markers are placed at Zero on the score track of the Sun. We’re using smaller gems, with the clear one for the lighter-colored player ship and the blue gem for the player with the darker “Death Star”-looking player ship.

The Planet discs are laid out in order, as seen below, moving outwards away from the Sun. In the below layout we didn’t really have them far enough apart for easy game play and ended up spreading them out before we actually began play. Each planet depicts 1 unique resource. This represents the demand for that resource at that planet.

The Goods cards are carefully shuffled. Adjacent to each planet, 5 cards are initially placed.

The cards are then laid out in columns to one side of each planet. There are 2 rules to observe while placing the Goods cards on each planet. If the Goods card depicts the same resource as shown on the planet, it must be flipped over to the other side. Also, they are grouped together if any match.

For example, you can see the outermost planet has only three types of goods available. Having a lot of one kind of resource grouped together like that makes this planet attractive for an early visit and loading of a ship container.

You can see that there needs to be enough space between the planets so that the Goods Cards are not crowded too close together. We ended up adjusting the spacing between the planets to make it easier to layout the Goods cards.

One more step before the game begins. Each player places their starting card face up on the table in front of them. This card shows a “Container” technology. The rest of the cards are shuffled and then each player takes 5 cards into their hands. Cards in the hand are never shown to the opposite player until they are player or discarded.

The youngest player gets to make an important decision before the game begins. They must decide if they want to be the starting player or not. The player who is not the starting player gets to decide which planet is used as the start position for each player. So it’s an interesting trade-off.

The ships are placed, the players have their initial 5 cards. The game proceeds.

Each player completes a number of actions and then turns game play over to the other player. On a player’s turn they can execute up to 2 Planetary Actions, 2 Intervention Actions and 1 Flight Action, in any order. Here’s where we use those extra gems.

I used a permanent marker and wrote letters on each gem. “P” for Planetary Action, “I” for Intervention Action, and “F” for Flight Action. The player can use these gems to count off actions as they are completed as an aid to remember what they have and have not done during their turn.

Planetary Action

A Planetary Action can be 1 of three things. You can choose the same one twice:

Load one Container with a Good, or group of same Goods. Once a Container is loaded with Goods onto your ship, the Container is sealed and cannot be opened until it is unloaded. The player’s ship must be landed on a planet to load Goods into a Container.

Unload one Container at a planet. Note the Planet must have a matching resource symbol when you unload a Container and that the entire contents of the Container is unloaded. Unloading Goods on a planet is the key way to earn points and win. You earn as many points as the value of the goods you unload. The player’s ship must be landed on the planet to unload a Container. Goods that are unloaded at a planet are then evaluated to see if they can become part of the resources available at that planet. When the Goods are delivered, the cards are turned over. If any of the turned over Goods cards are the same those cards are removed from the game. Goods that are not removed are then available at that planet and are placed on the table with the planet, following the same rules as at the start of the game.

Buy a technology card. Each player begins with their score marker on 0 of the Sun score track. The Score also represents the wealth of each player during the game. To pay for technology, the cost of that technology is subtracted from their score. So at the start of the game, since each player is at 0, they are unable to purchase any Technology. Technology cost depends on the number of Technology cards they player has already placed in front of them. If you have one Technology card already in play, as everyone does at the start of the game, any new cards you buy with this Planetary Action will cost 1 point. If you have 3 Technology cards already in play, then each new Technology card you buy will cost 3 points. There’s no limit to the number of Technology cards a player has active and it’s another interesting game play trade-off since they can provide considerable advantages but cost points to add.

There are Technology cards that allow a player to add more Containers for Goods. There is technology available that allows a Container to be loaded or unloaded from orbit, instead of being landed on the planet. Other Technology cards give Flight advantages and “Replenishment” bonus -- more about Replenishments later.

As resources are loaded onto ships they are removed from the planets. You can see how there are less Goods cards on the above planets later during game play.

Above is a shot later in the game showing the distribution of goods between the planets.

Here, you can see the player’s ship in orbit around the outermost planet. The are 3 kinds of Goods available here. The grouped set is worth 5 points.

The above photograph shows the player has 2 Containers, both of which are loaded with the same kind of Goods. These were obviously picked up at different planets. When this player arrives at the green planet, with 2 Player Actions, both Containers can be unloaded for a total of 7 points. The player also has an Orbital Station Technology which helps loading or unloading Goods (one time per turn) from orbit.

Intervention Action

A player can play up to 2 optional Intervention Actions during their turn. Interventions are cards you have in your hand. Some Interventions give a player extra actions they can use, and some can cause direct interaction with the other player. Other Interventions are “Passenger” cards which allow the player to gain 3 points for delivering a Passenger to a specific planet.

For an example of the highly interactive actions, one of the Intervention cards a player may use will swap the locations of the 2 player ships. Another can swap the contents of a Container. A very good trick when played at the right moment.

Each player has the same deck of Technology and Intervention cards but since the decks are shuffled at the start of the game, extra variability is included in each game play session.

Intervention cards can be played at any time during a player’s turn. It is also possible for the opposing player to cancel an Intervention card coming into play. This is done if the other player has the identical card in their hand and wants to abort the action. Note that Passenger cards can not be canceled.

Flight Action.

A player can execute 1 Flight Action during their turn. This is where the D6 die comes into play. The player rolls the die and whatever number comes up represents the amount of flight energy available during the turn. There a cool game mechanism applied with rolling. If the player rolls a 1, the player gets to roll again and that 1 is added to whatever is rolled next. If the player rolls 1 again, that also gets re-rolled and added in. This process continues until the player rolls something higher than a 1.

Incidentally, 1 of the simple enhancements I’ve made to help speed up the game, and just because it’s more fun, is to add an extra D6 and just give one to each player.

Once a player has a total of flight energy available they can move their space ship. To leave a planet and enter orbit costs 1 energy unit. The same is true to land on a planet. Movement between planets depends on direction. When a player’s ship wants to travel sun-ward, it costs 1 energy unit to hop from planet orbit to planet orbit. When moving away from the Sun, the player ship uses 1 energy unit to move between planet orbits as shown by the diagram above from the rule book.

For example, if your ship is landed on the yellow planet, it would cost you 8 flight energy to land on the purple/blue planet. Whereas, leaving the purple/blue planet and landing on the yellow will cost 5 energy.

The photograph above shows a ship in the half-way point between two planets.

Replenishment

After completing your Flight Action, Planetary Actions and Intervention Actions, the cards in their hand are replenished. Each player begins with 5 cards in hand. As cards are played the count of cards in your hand are reduced. As a final step before turning over to the other player, the player can add cards from his draw stack to his hand. You can draw as many new cards as you have Technology cards already in play that say “Replenishment”. At the start of the game each player began with a Technology card that is a Container and also specifies 1 Replenishment. You can only draw as many cards as you have Replenishments available. There is a maximum hand capacity of 5 cards. If you exceed it you must discard some cards before your turn ends.

The game continues until a player’s score marker reaches the end point of the scoring track. The photograph below shows the scoring glass gems we use in our games.

Conclusion

You can see that Perry Rhodan is a “pick-up and deliver” game with a science fiction theme. The rules are simple and easy to learn. We found that we occasionally have a brief discussion about some particular nuance to the flight rules and intervention rules, but found that simple common sense applied thematically quickly helped us move along.

So what do I think of the game? It’s fun and perfect for lunch time play between two friends during the work week. The box is the same size as the other 2-player Kosmos board games and is relatively small to carry. The artwork on the cards is well done.

I have found that the game can pause while a player carefully considers their options and this could be the reason the game seems to take longer than the 30 minutes claimed on the box lid. So it can suffer a little from “analysis paralysis”.

The most common complaint people seem to express about the game is that the scoring track on the Sun can get a little out of hand. The cardboard chits for scoring, although not very large, seem sometimes crowded and make it difficult to see how each player is doing. I changed to using small glass gems and that helped, but we do give up the nice artwork found on the cardboard scoring chit.

I found that it’s easy to get confused during a turn, keeping track of whether Planetary Actions, Intervention and Flight Actions have been done, since they can be freely intermixed within a turn. We found that using small glass gem markers helps somewhat. We just slide a gem forward or to one side when we complete the associated action. It also helps the other player understand exactly what you are doing.

There is an “official” 3-player variant for the game. It looks interesting but I have not tried it. The extra glass gems I pack with the game make it ready if this opportunity presents itself.

Overall, it’s a fun game. I enjoy “pick-up and deliver” game mechanisms and enjoy just about every science fiction themed game I play. The game is inexpensive to own too. And it plays pretty fast, easily fitting into a lunch hour break at the office. This one is a winner.

Added a quick index to my published board game reviews

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 21:36:25 -0500

I haven’t published any new board game reviews. But I have added a simple alphabetical listing of the games that have been published here. Just click on the GAME REVIEWS link at the top.

Ad Astra

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 12:09:12 -0600

I don’t think I’ve published an actual board game review so far in all of 2009. Hopefully, this one will be worth your time to read. There have been many excellent games introduced in the past year. I selected this one for review right now because we’ve been playing it at home recently and I really enjoy exploring and playing this game. It deserves more attention.

This is a review of the board game Ad Astra. It is published in the US by Fantasy Flight Games. Here is the introductory flavor text about the game from the publisher:

In Ad Astra ("To the Stars"), you will guide one of the five factions of future humanity in its exploration of the galaxy. Wield powerful technology; reshape newly discovered planets to give a new home to man; and explore the mysterious relics of a long-lost alien civilization...
Who will be able to create the greatest star-spanning civilization?
The game is designed by Bruno Faidutti and Serge Laget. It’s rated for players aged 10 and up, supports 3 to 5 players and takes about 90 minutes. The game retails for around $60 and is available on-line for about $45. As of late November 2009, many on-line stores were out of stock but expecting new game inventory soon. I purchased my copy at a Friendly Local Game Store for full retail. I have also successfully played an unofficial 2-person variant for this game that worked quite well.

Before I discuss how the game plays, let’s begin by looking at what comes in the box.

What’s in the box?

Image made from a photograph by “Wedge1126” on Board Game Geek.

The first thing that will surprise you is that there really is no game board. Well, there is a Scoring / Planning board, we’ll get to that in a bit. Instead, the board is randomly created at the start of the game by placing stars and planets on the table. It will look something like this when it is setup.

Actually, a few turns have already taken place in the picture above, but you can see how the game “board” is intended to work. The stars are placed on the table, and the planets are distributed around them. The number of planets will be between 3 and 7 per star. There are always 9 stars, one of which is “Sol”, or “The Sun”. Here are the different star types.

The players begin at “The Sun” and then explore out to the other stars. At the beginning of the game all the planet tiles are placed face down, except for the planets around the home star system. There are 7 planet types.

There are several stacks of cards with the game, including resource cards, player action cards, and alien artifact cards. The resource cards match the planet types.

The three Ore types have official names in the game, “Xanthium”, “Yoyodium”, and “Zozodium”. We often get the names confused and have resorted to calling them “Graynium”, “Rednium” and “Gold” in the order shown above. The game does a wonderful job of using icons for everything so the actual names have no bearing on game play.

There are 5 sets of Player Action Cards, each with a unique race drawing and color scheme.

There is the Score / Planning board. More about how this works, later.

Each player gets a set of these cool looking plastic components.

The plastic components come in 5 colors: Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, and Gray. These are very “stiff” plastic pieces and feel a bit brittle, especially the starships. We were worried we might break one easily. However twice we have had a piece bumped off the kitchen table and hit the linoleum floor without any damage. Fortunately, the game manufacturer included an extra piece of each type in each color with the game. I’m not sure if they did this in case the owner loses a piece or breaks a piece, but that’s comforting to know.

That’s most the contents. There’s a First Player marker and the Alien Artifacts cards. More on those later.

What’s the game about?

Ad Astra is a game of space exploration and light civilization building. There is no direct conflict, this is not a wargame. As each player advances their race by building Starships, Colonies, Factories and Terraformers on planets they can score points. Since the undiscovered planets are face down, their resource output is unknown until a starship arrives in that planet’s system. Ultimately as each player accumulates victory points, as in many games, it’s really a race to score the most points before the game ends. The game ends when the first player reaches 50 points.

What is interesting about the game is how you have to remain flexible about your winning strategy. Your starting world’s resources are determined randomly and you don’t know where the resources you will need are located amongst the stars. And even though there is no direct conflict between players, what another player does can impact you. Sometimes you even count on it.

With each turn there are varied and sometimes agonizing decisions to make. Makes for a fun game.

Game Setup

Each player chooses one of the 5 colors and collects all their plastic pieces, race Action Cards, and corresponding scoring token. All scoring tokens are placed on the 0 position. There’s also a color coded player aid available for each player. It’s 2 sided. On on side there are useful diagrams explaining the resources needed to build everything and on the other side are detailed texts explaining each of the possible Alien Artifact Cards that a player may discover.

Next the nine stars are placed around the table. It doesn’t matter how they are distributed. The planets need to be distributed after the stars are placed. For the home system, “Sol”, there needs to be one planet for each player. Each player randomly selects a resource planet and places it face up around “Sol”. They place one of their Factories on it. If an Alien Planet is pulled as a starting planet it is discarded back to the random stack and the player chooses again. It is possible for more than one player to have the same starting planet type.

Now the rest of the planets are distributed amongst the other stars. They are placed face down and are placed with 3 to 7 planets to each star. Every planet must be placed.

The game comes with 2 “optional” Alien Artifact cards: “Omnibus Rebus Responsum” (The Answer to Everything - a salute to “The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) and “Magnum et Antiquum Arcanum” (Great Old Secret). These 2 cards can sometimes change the game ending conditions a little wildly, so the developers included a note that they were optional. I have yet to include them in a game so I cannot speak about their impact or value. The Alien Artifact cards are shuffled. The Resource Cards are organized into stacks and one of each kind is given to every player. Every player begins the game with 1 each of all 6 resource types.

Finally, each player places one of their starships out in deep space (anywhere on the table that’s not a planet or star). The players choose a starting player and give that person the First Player token.

Since this is a review, I want to point out that the First Player token is a cardboard chit about the size of a penny. In the picture of the box contents shown earlier, it’s that tiny little red chit sitting by itself in one of the box insert compartments. It looks so out of place compared to the rest of the components. Needing to rectify this situation, I purchased a small plastic space ship figure that could be used as a First Player token instead. Here’s a picture.

It’s a piece from a Star Wars miniatures game. This particular one is Palpatine’s Shuttle. I purchased it from a Friendly Local Game Shop and selected it because of the sharp angles on the piece - they look consistent with the rest of the designs in Ad Astra. I believe I paid around $3 for this piece, so you may not choose to do something similar.

Anyway, it’s just “feels right” to pass this token to a player when they are going to be First Player next round.

Image by “lordzogat” on Board Game Geek.

While I’m commenting on game components, I need to say that I think the artwork and pieces are great. Even the rule book is first rate - quite typical for Fantasy Flight Games. It’s full of examples and diagrams and it continues with the space exploration, galactic civilization theme with it’s artwork. I do believe the player aid could be improved upon. There’s not quite enough information on each once to make playing quick for beginners. Fortunately there are several fan-made player aids available on the Board Game Geek web site. My current favorite player aid to use is by Sterling Babcock (nick: Solamar) and can be found here.

There is one other very interesting quality about the rule book that deserves attention. Included along the left side column of pages in the rule book are a series of notes about the game designers. They are calling this the “Nexus Design Series”. Within these notes, the game’s designers are introduced, including a game ludography for each one. If you’re a fan of these designers, or maybe new to them, it’s wonderful to read something about the designers who created the game you are playing. It’s also amazing to me that the notes includes descriptions of other games by the same designers. What’s amazing about that to me was that several of the referenced game titles are produced by competing game publishers. For example, Mystery of the Abbey, a wonderful game also designed by Bruno Faidutti and Serge Laget , is published by Days of Wonder. As a fan of these “Euro” board games, I was happy to have this additional background information about these designers. Well done.

Playing the Game

Okay, we’re all setup. How does the game play?

Ad Astra is played in rounds, with each round divided into 2 phases: Planning and Action. At the end of the round a check is made to see if someone has won, and if not another round resumes. Players also need to ensure they do not have an excess of 10 Resource Cards at the end of the round. The player having the First Player token is always the start player in each round. That token can change hands between the players multiple times within a round.

Planning Phase
Each player will secretly review his own Action Cards and decide which ones he will use this round. The cards are placed face down, by player turn order, on the Score / Planning board. If there are 3 or 4 players, the slots numbered 1 through 12 are used. With 5 players, all 15 slots are used. Here’s an interesting game mechanic, the players can place their card on any open slot on the Score / Planning board. This does not have to be the earlier slots. In fact, as we will see soon, sometimes it’s advantageous that your Action Card goes on the last or later open slots. Once all the players have placed their Action Cards the planning phase ends and the action phase begins.

When the Action Phase commences, each card on the Planning Board is revealed and resolved one at a time. Everyone in the game gets to participate in the action the card defines. Also, the player who played the card, identified by the race color of the card, gets a special “benefit” from the card.

To understand what’s going on here we obviously need to review the Action Cards. Here’s a typical set.

Image by Scott Everts (“ScottE”) on Board Game Geek.

Note, every player has the same kinds of Action Cards, but the details on some of the cards are different by design. Let’s look over a few cards carefully first.

This is a Production Card. During the Action Phase this card will cause resources to be produced. There are 2 resources identified on this card: “Water” and “Yoyodium” (aka “Rednium”). The person who owns the card can choose which one of these two will actually be produced. There’s a faint grey line between the two resources, indicating the player must choose one. Players having production units on planets producing the selected resource type will receive resources.

You can see one strategy here is to ensure the resource you choose benefits you the most. The other resource types are found on the remaining Production Cards the player has. Here’s the interesting twist. While everyone will have a Production Card that has Water and Yoyodium, they will not likely appear together on anyone else’s card.

This is a Movement Card. It specifies which star systems are available for entry. Note that there are icons for 2 star systems on the card. In this case there is no grey line. Both system are active. However, as with the Production Card, the mix of which two star systems is not the same for all players’ Movement Cards. In fact the interesting twist here is that for any given player they will have movement cards for only 6 of the 8 other star systems in the game. That is, they can only choose 6 systems with their card. They are dependent on another player choosing the “missing” systems for them to have access.

We’ll go over other details about these Action Cards when we review the Action Phase. The important concept here is that everyone has the same set of Action Cards for planning, but the mix between them is different.

Action Phase
One by one each Action Card is revealed and resolved with the person owning the card gaining an added benefit. Let’s briefly review each Action Card.

Production
We’ve touched on this one already. For the card shown, the player can decide between Water or Xanthium. If a player has a unit that produces on a planet of this type, that resource is added to the player’s hand.

If a Starship or Colony is present, 1 resource is produced (for each). If a Factory is present, 2 resources are produced. Because of building rules it is not possible to have both a Factory and Colony on the same planet. However it is possible for a planet to contain both a Starship and a Factory. In this case, 3 resources of the selected kind are produced.

MOVEMENT
This card was also described previously. For the card shown, both the small red star and yellow spiral star are activated and can be visited by the players. The player that owns the card moves 1 Starship to either star system first. Note, a player can choose to simply move out to deep space instead with any Movement Card action. After the owning player moves their Starship, the other players in clockwise order around the table may also move 1 Starship to either star system.

The benefit the owner of the card gets comes in last. The owner may then move all other Starships they may have on the board to these selected systems.

There is one aspect to movement that’s a little tricky to get right for new players. Movement costs Energy Resources. It breaks down line this. When moving a Starship from deep space to any star system, there is no Energy cost. To move from a planet out to deep space costs 1 Energy. If your starship is already on a planet and wants to move to another planet within the same star system, it costs 1 Energy. However, if you want to leave the planet you are on to go to a planet on another star system, it costs 2 energy.

If the player does not have sufficient Energy Resources they may not be able to move.

No two players can ever be on the same planet. When a Starship first enters a given star system, the player secretly examines each face down planet to decide where they may want to land. Once chosen, that planet is flipped face up so everyone can see it.

If it is an Alien Planet, the player immediately receives an Alien Artifact Card. The planet is turned face up. If the player visits an already face-up Alien Planet they do not receive an Alien Artifact Card. A player can build a colony or factory on an Alien Planet but it does not produce resources. There are some scoring benefits for building there however. Alien Artifacts Cards details follow below.

Build
This is how a player adds items to planets and creates new Starships. When this card comes up, the owning player begins by building one item. It can be anything that can be paid for. Each of the different items have a schedule describing the resources required on the player aid.

After the owning player builds one unit, each other player in clockwise order around the table may build one item. After the other players complete their portion of the Build Action, the owning player is permitted to build any additional units desired, provided enough resources exist.

The Starships, when built are placed in deep space. This has the benefit of being able to land on a planet in a later Movement Action without spending any Energy Resources.

A Colony can only be built where you have a Starship. Colonies produce goods on the planet.

A Factory can only be built where a Colony already exists. Once built, the Colony is returned to the player’s supplies and can be used again.

Terraformers have restrictions on where they can be built. They can only be built on either a water or food planet. When Terraformers are built they score immediate points as a bonus.

Trade
Resources are kept secret in a player’s hand unless this card is played. The owner of the card is the only one permitted to perform a trade action. However, the first step is that all players must reveal their resource cards on the table face-up. The owner of the trade card can then negotiate a deal with any of the other players. The other players are not required to agree to the trade. The owning player can also trade with the bank at a 2 to 1 ratio. That is, for example, the player can trade 2 Water Resources for 1 Energy Resource. Trading between the other players is not permitted.

Scoring Action Cards
Each player has 3 different Scoring Action Cards.

When these are played, the owner of the card gets to decide what gets scored.

The first card shows having a Terraformer icon on one side and a stars icon on the other. If the player chooses Terraformer, then all Terraformers are scored for all players, giving 3 points for each one in the game. The player having the most Terraformers gets an added 3 point bonus. If the player chooses Star Systems (the other icon), the players score 1 point for each system they have a presence in. The player having the most systems also gets a 3 point bonus.

The second card shows a choice between Colonies / Factories, and Starships. If the Colonies / Factories is selected, players score 1 point for each Colony and 2 points for each Factory. The player scoring the most gets a 3 point bonus. If the Starships are scored, players get 2 points for each Starship in play. The player scoring the most for Starships also scores a 3 point bonus.

The third card shows two choices again. The first choice has an X / X, and the second choice shows an X / Y. The scoring proceeds a little different for this Score Action Card. Ordinarily, when a Scoring Action Card is played, the owning player scores first, then in turn going around the table, the other players score. For this card, the player to the left of the owner scores first, rotating around the table with the owner scoring last. The reason this is done is do that the owner has an opportunity to score an advantage. Here’s how the X / X and X / Y scores are calculated. If X / X is chosen by the owning player, the first player to the left looks at the resource cards they are holding and decides how many identical resource cards they are willing to discard. 1 point is awarded for each resource discarded. This continues to the next player who then decides which identical resources they would like to discard, 1 point per card. Eventually it comes back around to the owning player and that player makes the same decision. And just like for the other Scoring Action Cards, whichever player scored the most points gets a 3 point bonus. Now it becomes clear why going last is an advantage. When it comes back around to the owning player to discard they can evaluate the highest count of identical resources witnessed discarded by the other players. If they are able to they can discard just 1 more to get the 3 point bonus.

The X / Y Scoring Action Card gives points for each different resource that a player discards. Again, the owning player goes last and whomever scored the most gets a 3 point bonus.

When a Scoring Action Card is played, the owner of the card immediately gets the First Player token. They will be the first person to place an Action Card on the Planning Board in the next round. It is possible for another player to also play a Scoring Action Card later in the round. In this way the First Player token can move between players within a round. This is one of the reasons a player may choose to place a face down Action Card on the last available planning slot during the Planning Phase.

One other rule about Scoring Action Cards. At the end of a round, the players gets back all the cards they placed. The exception is Scoring Cards. A player’s Scoring Action Cards are set aside until all three of that players’ cards have been played. Only then will the player get the Scoring Action Cards back into their hand.

Alien Artifact Cards
These cards can be very valuable. The player aid contains a nice summary about each card. In some cases there are multiple copies of specific Alien Artifacts in the deck.

These are the standard Alien Artifact Cards. I think of these guys as “rules breakers”, giving the player a specific advantage. In some cases the card is played immediately, in other cases the player holds the card until the proper moment.

These are the “optional” Alien Artifact Cards.

Variants
There are a few things we do when we play that may fall under house rules. One of the rules we use, and it’s not stated explicitly in the official rules, is that a player is permitted to peek at the face-down planets in any system where they already have a presence. I don’t prefer to make this a game about memorization. Since the player has presumably already examined all the planets in a star system when they first arrived there, and if they placed a Colony, Factory, or Terraformer on a planet there, or if they still have a Starship parked on a planet, we allow the player to peek again to help remember what other planet types are present.

Related to the assistance with memory, we’ve even taken to allowing a player to peek at his face down Action Cards on the Planning Board after they are placed. Sometimes you just forget. The only thing your not permitted to do is change a card once placed.

The last variant to discuss here is how we accomplish a 2-player game. It’s surprisingly fun. We reduce the number of places on the Planning Board to 8, giving each player 4 cards to place. The next tweak is to allow better trading options when there are only 2 players. We build a small deck of resource cards, seeding with 4 of each resource, shuffled. This small Trade deck is placed face down and the player may do a 1 for 1 trade against this blind deck as an additional option. Lastly, there is a special consideration when working with only 2 players that impacts setup. Since not all player colors can “reach” all 8 external star systems, we need to be sure that the 2 races used cover all 8 between them. I found that using the Red and Yellow races covers this nicely.

Conclusion
Obviously, I quite enjoy this game. It’s a nice blend of several modern Euros. The game reminds me of Starfarers of Catan, Race for the Galaxy, and a bit of Warrior Knights. It’s not difficult to learn, but I would rate this in difficulty as being a little steeper than a gateway game like Ticket To Ride. It usually takes a full round for things to sink in. And I also believe that the game offers a lot of potential for trying out different strategies. In fact, I think that new players will not often discover what it takes to play with whatever you were given at the start of the game. Experience helps enjoying the game.

I recently once played a game, for example, without ever having a single planet that produces Energy. Yet it’s easy to believe that unless you find Energy Resources early in the game you will lose. Not true.

Another strategy that is often not obvious upon initial plays, is how to anticipate what the other players are doing and playing successful Scoring Action Cards early and often.

Although the game is rated to play in around 90 minutes, it’s been my experience that you should plan on 2 hours per game until enough experience develops with the gaming group.

High points for me are theme, replay ability and the wonderful opportunities for indirect player interaction that is quite subtle and sometimes abrupt. The components are first rate. The rule book is well written and, considering the higher prices of many newer board games nowadays, I think it’s another good value.

For me the downsides are that there can be some analysis paralysis. When players are in the planning phase this can sometimes happen. I’ve also seen AP during the Trade Action, while a player evaluates exactly what best to do.

Another downside for me is kinda silly, but I think that First Player Token is out of whack. Obviously, I resolved my frustration by purchasing a fancy miniature to use instead.

And lastly, out of the box, the game is designed for only 3 to 5 players. I would like to have seen rules making it possible to play with only 2 persons without any special variants.

I also think it would be possible to have expansions for this game in the future. Here’s hoping that happens.

Ultimately, “Ad Astra” gets a nice thumbs up from me.

TI-3 Storage

Tue, 1 Sep 2009 18:38:48 -0500

Twilight Imperium III is a favorite board game with our family. Readers of this site have probably already figured that out. We play with the Shattered Empire expansion as an integral part of the game. And we have “tweaked” our components a little bit by adding extra colored dice sets.

Recently there was some discussion about how gamers store their copies of TI-3 and if they put the expansion pieces in the same box. We do, and I realized that it would probably be helpful to provide some photographs of how I organize everything. I also want to explain some of what I think are helpful ideas that we have incorporated into the storage strategy. This helps with ease in setup. Some hobbyists organize everything when a game ends to better prepare setup for the next game. I’m one of those individuals.

Here we go. Everything is inside the original box.
A look inside. Obviously the original box insert has to be discarded to make this work.
The first thing you will notice is that there are Plano-style plastic organizers. Notice that all the System Tiles, the large hexes, are stored on-edge alongside the larger storage organizers in front. The instruction manuals for the base game and expansion fit easily off to one side. I also store some self-printed materials, such as rules for a 2-player game variant, underneath the instructions.
With the instructions removed you can see that all the smaller cards are stored in the original holder from the base game. Now you might reasonably be asking how that is possible since the expansion adds a substantial number of cards. Where are all the extra cards? More on that in a moment.

When the player Race Sheets, Wormhole Nexus tile, cards box and scoring track are removed, another storage box is revealed.
The storage box is obviously a smaller one and rotated crosswise in the box. You might ask what the plastic bags are doing in there.
These are wooden cubes. They are not part of the base game, of course. When we play the 2-player variant (instructions can be found here), the pink and black wooden cubes are used to count “votes”. These cubes came from an original Risk board game.

Here the box with just the 3 storage organizers and System Tiles is shown.
There are actually 2 of the larger storage organizers stacked on top of each other, on the left. Here’s how I use the first one.
There are some interesting details here to learn about. In this box there are 4 of the plastics color sets (green, orange, blue and red). With each color set we added 4 sets of D10 dice. We had some fun picking out cool dice colors that match the 8 fleet colors. You can’t see the dice too well in the picture. Here they are.
There are 4 of each color. 32 dice in total. The black dice are from the original board game and we store those with the black plastic ship pieces. The next set are a kind-of blueish-violet, for the blue fleet. The red dice are for the red fleet. The silver and brown marbled dice are for the gray fleet. Green dice for the green fleet, yellow for yellow. The marbleized purple is for the purple fleet, and the orange dice are for the orange plastic fleet. Obviously you don’t need any extra dice, and certainly not so many colors. But we love this game and having these cool dice just adds to the fun of playing the game.

Some of the extra cardboard chits are stored in 2 extra bins in this first tray. Let’s look at the second large organizer and then discuss a little bit about how and why we have the game organized this way.
Four more plastic fleet sets are stored in here. Grey, black, purple and yellow.

Remember that when playing TI-3 the player color is unrelated to the chosen Race colors and flags. However, there is a technology deck for each of the 8 fleet colors. For this reason we just store the technology decks within the same compartment as the related plastic fleet pieces. There’s plenty of room for the fleet, dice and cards within each bin. In some cases the cards are underneath the plastic, so not always easily visible.

There are 14 races available for play in TI-3, if you include the Shattered Empire expansion. We use the remaining 14 smaller compartments to store these. For each of the 14 smaller compartments we store the specialized chits, Home World Planet card(s), Trade Agreements and (if you have the expansion) the Race Specific Technology card.

Using this storage technique allows each player to easily find the pieces and cards they need for whatever color they have chosen, as well as all the Race specific components. At least for this part of game setup, it’s relatively quicker.

Here is the third organizer.
The Trade Goods and extra Fighter and Land Force counters are stored in compartments as shown. We put the Space Mines and Shock Troop chits in the same bin. The Strategy tiles are stored in another bin. Lastly, the Bonus Markers, Speaker Token, and 1 clear Glass Bead are stored in a bin. We use the Glass Bead to count off game turns when playing the Age of Empires official variant from the rules. Age of Empires variant is a house favorite and I think lends to more strategic planning by the players. I recommend you give it a try if you are not familiar with this optional rule.

Everything fits in the original box. It sits just a little bit higher when the lid is on.
Okay, if you’re a fan of the game, I hope this article gives you some good ideas if you are considering storage options for your own copy of Twilight Imperium III.

Have fun playing.