OUR REVIEW

Race through the solar system!

Kosmonauts

Thrust! Thrust! ... That was too much!

Russian designers, a Portuguese publisher, not necessarily a classic combination in the board games community, but only another outcome of the rapidly advancing globalization whose incredible fast development cannot be overlooked and which gets more and more varied all the time.

The designer duo of Nadezhda Penkrat and Yury Yamshchikov has hitherto been unknown to me. The publishing company mesaboardgames has attracted attention within the last two years with Vintage and Caravelas. Caravelas is - like Kosmonauts - a race game without a big chance factor. Have it been ships in Caravelas that sailed the Seven Seas its space ship in Kosmonauts that we board to visit all those beautiful planets orbiting our sun.

The board is separated into hexagons and shows our solar system with the sun in the middle of the board and eight planets that orbit the sun in marked orbits; the recent degradation of Pluto from a planet to a piece of rock has been already taken into account here. Some squares are also marked on the board. Planets are embodied by wooden discs that move from hex to hex in each round. The planets are accompanied - in the same rendition - by Halley’s Comet. Players choose together where to place the planets at the start of the game.

Each of the two to four players takes a rocket (a player board), filled with propellant (represented by red and yellow wooden cubes) and three grey cubes representing energy shields; this rocket is represented on the game board by a colored marker which is placed on Earth at the start of the game.

Next to the board one places the chips representing victory points and the pile of event cards. Now each player is given three target cards. Those cards score extra points when the player reaches the planets shown on the cards first (1 card) or second (2 cards).

Now all we need is a starting player and we can begin to play.

The game is played in rounds, the starting player changes in each round.

The first phase of each round is the event phase. The starting player chooses one of the three event cards in the open display, which always affect all players. In general, there are two kinds of event cards. They either influence the trajectory of rockets by adding thrust in one direction or another; or they give players propellant or cubes for energy shields or take those things away. Those cards can also be positive as well as negative, sometimes even in relation to the current position and the direction for the next target. Basically the rule is effective that all bad events can be neutralized by discarding an energy shield cube. Some positive cards cost you such an energy shield cube in order to allow you to use them.

Then the rockets of the players fly! For flying each player has a control panel. In this control panel you can place three propellant cubes on the six direction hexes to give thrust for the rocket. For each yellow cube the rocket moves one hex in the direction indicated. The valuable red hyper propellant cubes move the rocket forward by 2 hexes. You need to remember that we move in space and therefore there is nothing that would slow down our rockets, with the exception of planets. Therefore the thrust cubes from last round remain in place!

When you reach a hex with a planet you can land on the planet and take the most valuable victory point tile still available for this planet (for each planet with the exception of Earth there are for tiles yielding 1 to 4 victory points) and you also remove all propellant cubes from your control panel.

As an alternative to moving players whose rocket has landed on a planet can choose to stay and refuel. Then you can refill the storage tank of your rocket with one red cube and all possible yellow cubes up to the capacity limit.

Then all planets move along their orbital path to the next spot marked for them. Players can also land on a planet in this phase when the wait for the planet to arrive at such a marked spot.

The game ends at the end of that round in which a player has visited all planets but one and has returned to Earth. All players who manage to do the same in this round are rewarded for this with a chip of value. Then all that remains to do is to add your victory points and we have a winner. All in all this takes about an hour. Ion the internet you can find expert rules who make the game a bit more difficult, but also shorter (yes, really, that’s not an error!)

The only thing one could criticize is that the movement is rather predictable in this game. The only incalculable facts are introduced by the event cards, and they should not be deemed to be negligible. Furthermore, interaction with other players prevents uniformity or boring phases. Especially the target cards for second place, which yield the remarkable amount of four victory points, are not really predictable, because who knows when finally one player will decide to be the first visitor to a planet. To really be the second one on this planet then again is also a question of a bit of luck.

The game is pretty and clearly structured and the rules do not leave any questions unanswered. They are quickly explained and - provided there are no great thinkers at the the table - you will play an entertaining race game. On top of this Kosmonauts has a bit of a potential to be used as an educational game for conveying the basic facts of astronomy: Solar System, Planetary movement and Conservation of Momentum, all is there and implemented agreeably correct.

Markus Wawra

Players: 2-4

Age: 8+

Time: 60+

Designer: Nadezhda Penkrat, Yury Yamshchikov

Art: Filipe Alves, Gil d'Orey

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Mebo/Mesaboardgames 2012

Web: www.mesaboardgames.pt

Genre: Race game

Users: For families

Version: de

Rules: de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Clearly structured

Nice, functional components

Entertaining, mostly parallel and thrilling

Simple and easily understood rules

Compares to:

Caravelas, Hase & Igel, Formula 1 and other race games

Other editions:

In Russian at RBG/Rightgames

My rating: 5

Markus Wawra

A fun and entertaining race game with a medium playing them which can be recommended to the casual players as well as to the experienced player!

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0