Boardgaming: Ad Astra and Tsuro

[yendi]

Made it to Pandemonium for the first time in a month. Gaming opportunities have been few and far between this year (I can literally count the number of invites to game days/nights I've received this year on one finger), and it was nice to finally get out and play something. Equally nice, of course, was getting to hang out with ckd, both before and after gaming itself.

While we were browsing Pandemonium pre-gaming, we saw a copy of Ad Astra on the shelves. ckd pulled out his iPhone and checked the reviews, one of which compared it to a combination of Race for the Galaxy, Settlers, and RoboRally. That was enough to convince us it was worth looking at, and since ckd had enough store credit to buy it, that was our game for the night.

That comparison that hooked us? Completely correct. The Settlers element is evident out of the box: There are a bunch of galaxies with planets in them, and each planet has either a resource (food, water, three kinds of ore, or energy). There are individual action cards that apply to everyone (but give a bonus to the person playing the card), as in Race. And the action cards for the entire round are played face-down and players choose where in the sequence of twelve actions they want to play there cards before seeing the other actions. Thus giving you the RoboRally element of having screwed yourself over unintentionally.

Of course, there are a whole bunch of unique mechanics, including alien artifacts that change the game dramatically, scoring cards as actions, ways to reward both diverse resource gathering and hyper-focusing on one item, and more. One play isn't always enough to judge a game, of course, but I've got enough of a sense of the mechanics to say that I'd gladly play it again.

Oh, and there's an optional card that allows you to win the game if you finish with exactly 42 points. :-)

Although Ad Astra was the only game we played, browsing the shelves revealed one more bit of good news: Tsuro, one of my all-time favorite games (and my favorite game that I don't already own) is back in print! Yay!

Comments

[omnia-mutantur.livejournal.com]

I want everyone in the world to play Tsuro with me.

I usually try to cajole all our houseguests into doing so.