MLEM: Space Agency BGG ↗

MLEM: Die Astrokatzen · German edition · (2024)

Your rating: 8.0

My BGG Comment

SPIEL 2023. pretty good push your luck dice game by Knizia with an incredibly cute cat theme. Might buy when it becomes available in shops. It was sold out on Saturday afternoon or I might have jumped immediately. In the game one person is the captain each round. This person gets to roll dice to see how far the rocket flies. Every player puts one of his 8 cats in the rocket and off they go. Dice have 1, 2, 3, 4 and Flame symbols on it, with 2 being no there twice. You begin each flight with 8 dice I think. Which dice you can use depends on the spot the rocket is in. It shows which numbers are available and if Flames can be used and how many steps each Flame is worth. Flames are great because if you use them you get to keep the dice. All other dice are taken out of the pool after use. Also if you use a number you have to use ALL the dice that show that number. You then add all the numbers of all the dice you want to use and that’s how far the rocket flies. If the rocket ends the turn next to a moon or a planet, players–starting with the Captain–can decide that their cat wants to stay. You get more points for moons and planets further up (obviously) but if the rocket crashes, your cat returns home and you get no points. You crash if you ever roll no matches for the spot you are in. With an ever shrinking dicepool this is almost inevitable unless everyone decides it is enough. The game ends either after the rocket crashed 11 times or when one player has placed all 8 cats on moons, planets or in the galaxy. The cats have different abilities, like the cat that can get out +/-1 spot higher lower. Or the cat that can provide a single “1” die once, or the sabotage cat that takes a dice with them when they get out or the cat with the satellite that starts the rocket a few spaces further along the track… I am assuming that there is a solid mathy model under the cute space agency so there is some strategy and not just random luck pushing going on. Crashing is fun though. And so is sabotage.