Celestia

Product Information

The theme is inconsequential, although the art is beautiful and has drawn comments from various members of my family. There’s some level here of playing the odds–you can see how many cards the captain is holding and judge whether the captain holds the exact combination required. In the game, players take on the role of explorers traveling through the clouds in an airship, encountering a variety of challenges and obstacles along the way.

For such a simple game, with relatively little direct player interaction built into the game there ends up being a lot of table talk.If a player thinks the Captain will fail, they declare they are leaving and they disembark from the Aircraft, moving their pawn and drawing a card from that city deck. The further along the island chain the greater the reward, but also the greater the risk and Celestia is all about balancing your chances of getting to the next island against grabbing the treasure where you are. They say that it is a great 20-minute game for a decent sized group of people, and it is easy to play.

But it's a dangerous journey, and you'll have to fend off pirates and murderous flocks of birds as well as the machinations of the fellow crew. The “alternative route” card allows a reroll of the dice of the captain’s choice after all passengers have spoken. It's made me see another side to my friends (they're all great liars) and has caused secret alliances to be formed. Alternate Route -- A player onboard can allow the captain to reroll any or all dice, after all players' decision or the captain's announcement. During the journey, each adventurer can try to pull out of the game with fabulous objects or by changing the trip—but as soon as a player earns treasure worth at least fifty points, they win!As passengers have already made their mind up, they can’t change it even after the dice have been re-rolled! For example, you might jump ship early not because you think the captain can’t make it but because you’re next in line to be captain and either don’t have or don’t want to spend cards. Before the captain gets to play any cards, the rest of the crew have the option of staying on the ship, putting their faith in the captain's ability to fight off the avian nightmares, or jump ship and grab some of the treasure from the island they are currently on. At that point, you can assure the other players you have cards with symbols matching the dice rolled. There are special power cards to understand, a different and sometimes challenging semicooperative flow to consider, and deeper gameplay decisions.