Ad Astra

Description

In the distant future, Homo Sapiens has slowly colonized its solar system and over the course of centuries has evolved and adapted, diverging into five new races, suited to life in different planetary environments.

But danger threatens as the life-giving star for all five Homo Sapiens subspecies, Sol, is dimming, beginning its final descent into oblivion and wiping out humanity with it, unless new worlds can be found in distant galaxies.

Will you lead your people out of darkness and into the bright future of a new galactic empire?

In Ad•Astra, three to five players will take on the roles of one of five human subspecies and explore the galaxy in search of new planets to mine for resources or settle on and terraform into habitable worlds. Also hidden in the furthest reaches of unexplored space are the relics of dead alien civilizations - technology which provides massive powers - the reward for those brave humans who dare the depths of the galaxy.

Competition for resources will be fierce and only through a certain amount of cooperation and trade amongst humanity's factions will one player be able to rise above the others and forge a new galactic empire!

Ad•Astra features the design talent of Bruno Faidutti (Citadels, Red November) and Serge Laget (Mare Nostrum, Mystery of the Abbey) and presents an easy-to-learn board game of surprising strategic depth.

Players must carefully program their actions each round and manage their resources in order to build colonies and factories on alien worlds to extract the precious resources for building and trade.

Ad•Astra is a different game every time you set up. At the beginning of the game, the planets are randomly allocated to each star and hidden from view. You will have to explore star systems to find out what planets are out there for you.

You will need different resources in order to build your galactic empire and you will need to build starships, colonies, and factories in order to extract the various resources from the newly explored worlds.

Starships give you flexibility. Colonies are good for when you are ready to put down roots on a planet, especially if you plan on scoring big points later in the game by terraforming the world.

Given your limited number of colonies, factories, and starships, you will probably not be able to produce all of the resources you need - but fortunately, trade is a very strong factor in the game. As in any trading game, you can leverage rare resources into big profits for yourself and get whatever you don't have when you need it. If you can monopolize the production of a single resource, you are well on your way to galactic dominance. Be careful, though: monopolizing too early in the game may be a bad move, especially if there are still unexplored planets that produce what you're trying to control. If that happens, you could find yourself sitting on top of a lot of untradeable goods. Watch what the other players are producing and try to stake out a good production niche for yourself.

Resource cards

The most challenging part of the game is the Planning Phase. In this phase, you will place three of your eleven Action Cards somewhere on the planning board, four in a three-player game. There will be twelve to fifteen spaces open on the planning board and each of the actions placed during the round will resolve in order, starting on the first space and proceeding to the twelfth or fifteenth space.

In turn order, each player will place one Action Card on the planning board, on any open space. Once a space has an Action Card on it, no other card may be placed on it. Each action chosen gives the player who chose it the first chance to to take the action, whether it be movement, building, producing resources, or scoring.

You can place your Action Card on any open space, but all actions must be resolved in order. You might find yourself in a tight bind if you absolutely must have one action come before or after another and you find the spot filled by another player's card.

Since all players get to take the action associated with the Action Card, watch the other players and see if you can guess which action they are going to take, if they take an action you want, you can save one of your actions and hopefully get more out of turn. Watch out: they might be thinking the same thing you are and you could both not get the action you want when you want it!

Plan each turn carefully and watch what the other players are doing. That is the path to victory in Ad•Astra.

WINNING THE GAME

The end of the game is signaled when all of the planets have been revealed or when a player reaches at least 50 points as a result of scoring action, at which point the round will complete and the player with the most points wins!

Ad•Astra features easy-to-learn rules, but figuring out the right strategy and timing that will lead you to victory, based on the layout of the board that can change every time you play is the real challenge.