Castle Dice review

It's a light dice game, produced through Kickstarter. Seemed fun enough that I'd play it again several times, but not deep enough that I need a copy if a friend has it. (Comparable to the base 7 Wonders game in difficulty and amount of time.)

Players have 7 turns to get victory points from building Castle cards and turning in animal sets for random chance cards. Every turn, players take certain dice based on the turn, and add several of their choice.  (Players make this choice based on Castle/Village cards in their hands, and what they hope to build with the resources they get that round.)

Village cards increase or adjust your production. Castle cards are primarily VP, sometimes with a minor game effect. You might guess that Castle cards are more expensive to get out.

Once everyone rolls their dice, they take any dice-killing barbarians out to add to the players' own turf. In turn order, players then draft one die at a time, adding the appropriate resource to their bank. (3 wood from the wood die, increases your wood stock by 3, then discard the die for the round.) The 4 different animals let you break the rules in small ways, or you can turn in a set of 4 (different) to get a chance card. After all of the dice have been drafted, players build their cards from their hand - and any leftover resources might be raided by your barbarians (a brown barbarian would only raid for 1 wood).

The game goes fairly quickly. The player interaction is limited to counter-drafting - very indirect. The chance cards seemed like a fairly light return, but then again, the random draws from Castle and Village decks make it difficult to have a consistent hand of building what you want to build.

It would be interesting to see what would have happened if players could choose which specific "Village" card that wanted to draw. For example, if you wanted to build soldiers that turn, you could draw soldiers. (Same for farmers, merchants, workers.) Heck, maybe even be able to choose to draw "wall" cards vs. random Castle cards.

The game, as-is, is very light on strategy. I think it'd be fun to play with kids who are getting into board games, as the reading is light and there is a luck factor that isn't overwhelming.

Ad Astra Review

I finally fit in a game of Ad Astra. I saw it on a friend's game table once, and thought - it has exploration, trading...great! This is for me...but maybe I should play it before buying another space game.

We played a 4-player game - it can handle five. The core of the game is playing your action cards into order. Maybe you want your exploration card put early in the turn order, or a production card placed at the end of the round. This is the actual game, not the giant space board that covers most of the table.

You start with a factory in the home system, and a spaceship in "deep space" (one space away from every system). After everyone has placed action cards into the order hopper (12 spaces, 4 players - we each put in 3 cards), start by revealing the card in the first position.

Ah, Red played Explore a small yellow system or explore a large red system. Red gets to move one of their spaceships to one of those systems, or jump a spaceship from any system to deep space. If you move into an unexplored system, you get to choose which facedown planet you take. Everyone else gets the same movement option, then Red can move more ships.

The next card might be a Production card by Blue, where the Blue player chooses which mode of the card happens - produce resource A or resource B. Everyone gets that resource, if they have spaceships, colonies, or factories on that resource from a planet.

The action card types are Explore, Production, Build, Trade, and Score. (Build lets everyone build one thing, based on their resource cards in hand, and the person who put it in can build whatever; Trade lets that player and that player only to trade with other players, or 2-for-1 with the bank.)

Score cards are modal as well - choose to score all colonies/factories or spaceships. Whoever gets the most points from a score card also gets 3 bonus points. Each player has the same three different Score cards...and you only get them back after you've used all of them (preventing a player from playing the same Score card every turn).

The Explore part is weak. Trade is weak. Build is unexciting. Production becomes a question of if you've overlapped with other players or if you specialized in a resource. (Some or all/nothing.) Score cards are a reflection of what you've done on the board (again, some points or all/nothing).

They have a light alien/chance card effect, but the alien cards were pretty weak. Ad Astra looks really awesome, but the action takes place elsewhere. I'll probably end up playing it again, but probably not for several years.