Astra

Looking up into the night sky can have us all contemplating the vastness of the universe as we gaze at those far off twinkling pin pricks of light. If you fancy yourself as the next Galileo or Copernicus, Astra might be the game for you.

Astra comes to us from Mindclash Games, the company behind heavyweight big hitters like Trickerion (very much on my want-to-play list), Anachrony and newer arrival Voidfall. But unlike its complex cousins, Astra is aimed at an audience who want something a little less taxing and time consuming. This is a game of discovery for 2-5 players and its suggestion of a time limit of just 20 minutes per player is pretty much on the money.

Astra sees you take on the role of a star gazer, looking to discover new constellations in the night sky, and ultimately be rewarded with the most fame throughout the astronomical community.

Setup

The first thing you notice is that this game is beautiful. I’m likely to say that a few times in what follows below, because the simplicity of the cards feels perfectly wrapped in the gorgeous illustrations throughout.

You’ll place a Sphere board in the centre of the table, choosing the one that matches your player count. These spheres have little markings on that tell you where to place new constellation cards as you draw them, so that they’re arranged like a stellar flower in the centre of the table.

The rulebook tells you how to assemble the deck, placing the “game end” card a certain way down, again depending on the number of players you have. You’ll turn the top card over to create a discard pile, and place the Sphere marker on the corresponding element (fire, water, earth or wind) that shows in the corner of the discarded constellation.

Each player gets a journal board, dry erase pen and places eight of the beautiful stardust pieces in their pouch. Everyone also gets a final scoring card that has a guide on one side, and a scoring grid on the reverse which is unique to each card, as well as a turn summary card if you want one. There’s a small setup and rules variant for a two player game, that I won’t dwell on or explain, but I’ll just say that the rulebook makes it sound fiddly, when it’s actually very simple and intuitive so don’t be deterred by it!

Finally, deal out the constellation cards around the Sphere board and you’re ready to begin.

Feeling Starry-Eyed

I guess Astra is an area control game, if you want to strip it back to a dominant mechanism. The main focus of your turn will be either spending stardust to ‘observe’ stars within any of the face-up constellations, or ‘resting’ to replenish your stardust supply and activating your spent constellations.

To observe, you return stardust equal to the number of stars you want to mark off, and beginning with the starting star on any card, use your dry-erase pen to mark off adjacent stars. At the end of your turn, if all the stars in a constellation have been observed, you get to claim it, and any other players who helped your discovery select a boon from the choices at the bottom of the card.

Immediately it feels like you want to rush in and discover as many things as possible, as each card has a number of points to bump up your fame, and abilities you can call on at the start of a round.

But those boons can be pretty valuable too, giving you a handful of stardust, increasing the size of your pouch so that you’re furnished with more stardust after you rest, increasing your wisdom (which allows you to have more discovered constellations in front of you) or just giving you a one-off amount of fame.

There’s also something simple and obvious in the design of these constellations, as the placement of each starting star means you never have a single linear path to complete, with branches meaning you come up against natural limits to what you can observe on any given turn, and potentially letting your rivals grab the glory at the death.

I like to be able to bring in a comparison with another title, however stretched or tenuous, because it makes me feel clearer about understanding how play works, and it can be helpful (in the less tenuous examples) for others too. But this really isn’t like anything else I’ve played as a tabletop game. Board Game Geek gives you about 30 ‘also liked’ games, but of the ones I’ve played (over 20) none of them are like this. The closest I came to was that old pencil and paper game of Squares, where you have to take a move, but you’re constantly trying to draw the best line that gives your opponent the fewest squares to make.

You’ll often find yourself looking up into the metaphorical sky, staring at a set of constellation cards with a couple of stars left, but on diverging paths so you can only mark one, potentially handing the advantage to other players. But all isn’t necessarily lost…

Telescopes Out

What good would an astronomer be without a telescope? Fortunately, Astra just so happens to have some telescope tokens that, when used correctly, can make a big difference to how you observe.

Using a telescope token allows you to either switch to observing a different constellation in the same turn, or to switch to observing stars on a different path in the same constellation. This can give you some real options in how you choose to play, potentially allowing you to back opponents into corners with their own choices, or letting you steal the fame for a discovery from under someone else’s nose.

But, as this game ebbs and flows (and it’ll feel like that a lot), you can only get telescope tokens as part of choosing a boon from another player’s discovery. It’s kind of space-based speculating to accumulate I suppose.

Ptolemy There’s More!

That’s the best Ancient Greek pun I can come up with…

Just as Ptolemy first recorded the first 48 astral patterns we call constellations today, before taking your main observe or rest action, you can first use the power of the constellations you’ve discovered.

These typically allow you to do something like mark a single star in three different constellations without spending stardust, or mark any one star for free whilst also ignoring the rules around marking adjacent stars. There are also powers that you resolve after your turn, such as getting a stardust rebate if you’ve only marked common stars. These can help bump you along the road to fame and fortune, but to get the most out of them, you need to use the powers strategically, as once you’ve spent them, it can take a while for them to reactivate…

Rest Days

Your other main action choice in Astra is to rest. Here you’ll follow three steps, the first of which is to replenish your stock of stardust to the number showing above your pouch on your journal. This is a meagre five by default, though card boons for assisting in discoveries can help you boost this.

You’ll then look at which element area the Sphere marker is currently occupying on the board. If you have any spent constellation powers that match that element, you (and only you) can reactivate them for use on a future turn. You then move the marker one step clockwise to the next element.

Every fourth movement of the marker also discards a card from the deck, bringing the end-game a little closer.

There’s definitely strategic elements to this. I’ve played a game where I used all my constellation powers and rested as I could immediately activate them again. I’ve also played games where an opponent rushed to rest themselves as it meant all my constellations remained exhausted – a devilish ploy that saw me lose by the odd couple of points, where that reactivation would have made the difference.

Who’s The Next Hubble?

Scoring is a bit… interesting, and I still remember my first ever game of Astra where a lack of attention to the rules meant I was soundly beaten, so I’ll try and cover it well here.

There’s a fame track running around your journal board, and if you’re taking points as boons, you’ll mark these off as you go. You’ll then score points equal to the size of your stardust pouch, and the total amount of wisdom you’ve crossed off throughout the game. Simple so far. You then get a single point for every three stardust you have left, as well as a point for every two stars you’ve observed on the undiscovered constellations on the table. A bit more maths, but we’re OK so far.

Next you’ll count the fame points on all your active constellations. That word active is really important and can definitely leave you languishing if you’re not careful. This is where taking the rest action strategically (either to aid your own score or hinder someone else’s) is crucial. You could very well end up in a situation where you’ve spent all game boosting your wisdom, discovered the maximum amount of constellations, but only score for one or two of them because you’ve been unable to reactivate them.

Lastly, you’ll turn over your scoring grid card and put a cross in every element box from left to right for all the elements on your constellations (regardless of their active or exhausted state). Maxing out on discoveries of a particular elemental type scores you 11 points, whilst diversifying into different types scores fewer points, but may be more attainable. This can feel fiddly, or even be a bit “out of sight, out of mind” as the card sits face down on the table for the length of the game, but checking it and adjusting your strategy can help you get some big points at the end.

When everything’s tallied, the person with the most fame is victorious, and ties mean victors share the spoils.

Final Thoughts

I like this more every time I play it. The artistic direction throughout is just beautiful, and then colour and feel of the stardust is really something. Turns are actually pretty quick if you’re not over-analysing where you think you might be leaving the door ajar for an opponent and it’s just fun to be putting little marks on all these dry erase components.

I think there’s some moments where you’ll feel your luck is out, especially when trying to rest to reactivate constellations, and I can’t work out how much of that you can influence with a lot of future planning and paying attention to others. It feels mean to work so hard for the discovery to not be able to score for it. But the truth is that discovered constellations aren’t worth a ton of points themselves, it’s the combinations on the scoring grid that brings in the big scores. But it’s hard to be the person who discovers something, and it feels like it warrants more of a payoff on its own.

Overall, I think Astra is great. It’s not like anything else I own or that I’ve played – it’s certainly very different from any other flip/roll and write game, and, as I’ve said, it’s beautiful.