Image Courtesy of CaptainJaxThis review continues my series of detailed reviews. I have tried to cover every aspect of the game and as such you may prefer to skip to the bits of most interest.
Summary
Game Type - Board Game
Play Time: 45-90 minutes
Number of Players: 2-4
Mechanics - Tile Placement, Network Building, Set Collection
Difficulty - Moderate (Can be learned in 30-45 minutes)
Components - Very Good
Release - 2008
Designers - <PERSON> -( Gumball Rally, Silk Road)
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<PERSON> -( Border Reivers)
An Overview
Reiver Gamesare a smaller niche gaming company hailing from the UK. What I like about them is that they aren't prepared to follow the popular trends and pump out Fantasy themed games. Games like 'It's Alive' and 'Carpe Astra' show their desire to be a little unique and put something new and fresh on the table. I like that.
Thematically, Carpe Astra is set 10,000 years in the future. The Emperor grows weak and without strong guidance the Empire is crumbling. The time to strike is now and it is the Guilds that hold the key to power in the Galactic Senate. Influence the Guilds and real power can be had.
In truth Carpe Astra is a bookcase sized card game where the theme could have been almost anything. But to their credit Reiver Gameshave taken a few extra steps to support the theme such as character backgrounds and the names of each guild tie into the characters somewhat. A weak theme can be dismissed when playing a game, but I don't seem to do that with Carpe Astra, which suggests there is just enough here to avoid the 'tacked on theme' feeling.
Kudos too for the title as it works very nicely with the aim and theme of the game.
The Components
The first thing that you expect from a smaller publisher is the potential for 'average components' as cost is usually a factor. Thankfully this is not so with Carpe Astra. 299
The components are all professionally manufactured it would seem, with the guild counters and Guild tiles being particularly sturdy and well illustrated.
Onto the bits...
The Board (Guild Tiles) - The board is modular, being made up of numerous Guild Tiles. Each Guild Tile uses a connected double hexagon design and each end features symbols to represent 2 of the 6 Guilds that must be influenced. The tiles are nice and sturdy but I really like the iconography used to represent the Guilds. The icons are logical and represent the names of the guilds (Military, Traders, Priests, Engineers, Settlers and Politicians) and they are also colour coded to help with quick identification. The coolest feature of the artwork though is that the icons are artistically represented to give a feeling that they are hologrammatic (have a glowing effect) which supports the notion that we are 10,000 years in the future.
In all there are 15 Guild Tiles and no game seems to use more than half to 2/3rds of them.
[/b] Image Courtesy of Grimwold
Character Tiles & Cards - Each player receives a Character Tile, which is added to the board in the set-up phase. This tile plays an important role in the game play but more on that later. Each player also gets a Character Card, which offers a short backstory to support the theme of the game and a Turn Summary/Scoring Summary card, which helps when first learning the game.
Image Courtesy of <PERSON>
Agent Markers - Each player has access to 5 agent markers. These are wooden octagonal pieces like that used for goods in Puerto Rico and they are colour coded so it is obvious who they belong to.
[/b] Image Courtesy of <PERSON>
Senate Tile - A single Senate Tile is provided and acts as the centerpiece of the board in all but 2-player games. This tile evokes images of the Senate from the newer Star Wars movies and it can become an important refuge during the game.
[/b] Image Courtesy of <PERSON>
Support Tokens - These triangular tokens are very well designed. Their shape is striking enough but they also feature the colour and iconography of the Guild Tiles to make it obvious that the two components are connected. It's little design features like this that make a game more intuitive to learn.
There are 36 in all, 6 for each Guild. In the following image a sample of the Support tokens can be found in the top left of the counter sheet (Traders and Priests).
Image Courtesy of Grimwold
Money Tokens (Credits) - Nice yellow tokens are used to depict the wealth required to gain control of the Senate and ultimate power. 84