Celestia

Product Information

If the captain cannot face all the events, he plays no "Equipment" card at all and the aircraft crashes with all its passengers. None of these players receives any "Treasure" card. The current journey ends at this point and a new one begins. Caution: The captain shall NOT play the "Equipment" cards immediately after rolling the dice. He must wait for the passengers to decide whether they want to stay aboard or not. Amelia, Orville and Ambroise each have 8 cards in hand. They place the aircraft on the Wind city (1) and their pawns in the aircraft". Leaving game design to one side, the game’s components are robust and well made. The airship I mentioned at the start of the review looks great on the tabletop, manned with meeples. It even comes with some spare parts. After many uses I’m thinking of gluing mine together as it is starting to fall apart a little. I really wanted to enthuse about Celestia: A Little Initiative. I have added it to our base game; the rowboat, rules and handful of cards fit into the standard box.

So how does having a little initiative help? What if you don’t trust the captain and prefer to go it alone? This is one of the biggest bargains in board-gaming – you get a beautiful 3D ship made of cardboard, a big pile of cards, and a really fun game, which is the important bit, really. It's usually available within our price range, though it's price fluctuates, and it's occasionally slightly over – forgive us, because it's so good. You claim routes by collecting cards, for example, you'll need a set of all pink cards if you're planning to claim a route that's pink. You can only take two cards on a turn, though, and everyone can see what cards are available, so you can try to predict what other people up to (so you'll have to pay more attention than you might have initially expected).Grappling Hook -- (Promo) Any player not on the ship may play this after the captain's announcement that the ship won't crash. That player may rejoin the ship but must give up the treasure they got when they disembarked that round. Lightning is about to strike the aircraft. The captain can save the crew by diverting the electrical discharge. The way to achieve this is with each round, all players have one of their five cards upright and visible to the other players at the table. One player will use the letter cards they can see to spell out a word, placing down tokens that specify where in the word each letter comes (1st, 2nd, etc). This word becomes a clue to all the other players about what the letter in front of them might be – if you can see that I have spelled a word that starts 'CR' and then the third and final letter is the card in front of you that you can't see, you could safely assume that it's a 'Y'. However, a third player has the 'C' in front of them, so they're looking at a three-letter word that ends in 'RY', and will be wondering if the first letter is a 'C' or a 'T' or a 'D'. But that's okay – because next round, a new word will be made that might cement which of those options it is. Oh, you're the toughest adventurer, we all know that. You can definitely defeat a dungeon full of monsters, no worries. But can you do it without your shield? Yes? Okay, without your sword? Well, maaaaybe?

Each loot card a player receives from an island has a score value, with farther islands having higher value loot. The game ends immediately when a player acquires 50 or more points of loot. There's so much game in this box! Honshu is a pretty little game of building a pretty little Japanese town. Each turn takes place in two phases: first, you'll choose a card from your hand, which has six squares on that represent different zones: housing, resources, factories, parks, lakes, and empty brown land. Everyone puts their cards in the middle, and whoever's card has the highest value written at the top gets to choose which cards they want from everyone's options – then the second highest, and so on.

New Journey

If they answer whether they believe you or not, and they're wrong, then the card goes face up in front of them permanently. If they answer and get it right, then it goes face up in front of you. The aim of the game is avoid having four of the same kind of pest in front of you, because that's an instant loss, and the game is over – there's no winner here, only a loser. Orville is a great captain. He has a "Compass" card and a ''Lightning arrester'' card. He plays these two cards and he and Amelia continue to the next city. Ambroise watches the aircraft fly away since he got off.

The expansion promises a little initiative, but it is almost impossible to use it if the cards do not come up. Indeed, on average, the rowboat might be used just once or perhaps twice in an entire game. In fact, there is not enough initiative in my opinion. To counter this, in our family we have a new house rule in that discarding two cards of the same type would allow a player to make use of the rowboat. At least the rowboat will get used, and the penalty for doing so is a weaker set of cards before a player can get underway. Captain : This player leads the aircraft during the current turn. He will have to overcome the events to reach the next city. In Celestia, a revamped version of Cloud 9, you board an aircraft with a team of adventurers to perform many trips through the cities of Celestia and recover their wonderful treasures. Your journey will not be safe, but you will attempt to be the richest adventurer by collecting the most precious treasures!

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The setup is a bit fiddly to explain (this is true while you're teaching it to others – although it's extremely easy to play, there'll need to be some patience in the explanation), but the gist is: each player has five cards face down in front of them, which spell out a word. The ultimate aim of the game is for every player to be able to say what their word is, without ever having looked at the cards. Mixed among the equipment cards you need to progress are five types of special power cards. The crew or the captain can play these cards to help or hinder the current voyage. The turbo card acts as a wild and can be used to quell any type of hazard the captain needs to overcome. The Ejection card allows the captain to eject a crew member out at the skyship's current location. This can be used to get rid of a crewmate and force them to take a lower rank treasure or to help a crewmate if you are going to fail and are feeling especially kind. (This is not the way I would use it that's for sure) Ejection -- A player onboard the ship may forcibly eject another non-captain player on the ship, before the captain's announcement. That other player must disembark (and take a treasure as usual). After each round, the gaps in the path left from treasure taken so far are squeezed up, bringing the higher-value tiles within reach, making dangerously deep dives even more tempting. You know how the song continues….. On each turn, players can choose whether to jump off to safety or whether to push on, in the hope that the captain has the ability to get to the next destination. It is a question of deciding if a player wants to take the certainty of lower points or risk a big score and glory, or “Nil point” if the captain fails. “If I Go There Will be Trouble”

Sushi Go! is a game of building a delicious sushi meal out of adorable pieces of food with faces! It's extremely cute (if you don't think about it too hard) and super-simple. Everyone starts with a big hand of cards, from which you take one and pass the rest to the player next to you. Every player does the same, so you'll be given a new and slightly smaller hand that you'll again take one card from before passing it on – this continues until you've run out of cards, then you'll add up the points from the cards in front of you, and go for another round. You're all aboard a fantastical flying ship going from island to island, and each turn one player is the captain, who rolls some dice to see what the obstacles you'll encounter on the journey. To make it to the next island, the captain needs to have cards in their hand matching the symbols on the dice – they'll discard them to move on if they can, otherwise the ship crashes. The game is easy to learn and play: you get points by claiming routes through New York with your colour of taxi. You'll draw cards that show you two destinations, and if you can connect them, you'll get big points. If you can't, you'll lose big points. The problem is that other people are also trying to make connections all over the board at the same time, and if they claim a route you need before you snap it up, you'll have to go the long way around.For each "City" tile, Shuffle the correspondingly numbered treasure cards and place them in a face down pile next to the "City" tile.