Among The Stars

The U.S. release of Among The Stars is about to hit store shelves from Stronghold and I wanted to talk about it. I've gotten in a single play with my copy and while I don't particularly like 7 Wonders, this game actually is pretty damn good. I enjoy Card Drafting as a mechanic, and my problems with 7 Wonders are lack of interaction and obfuscated, awkward scoring. 7 Wonders always feels boring and like work for me and I never feel like I have any sense of control over my end state.

Among The Stars is drafting, but the theme actually comes through. Your space station develops naturally as you make strategic decisions. The spatial element is the most interesting aspect of the game has you need to organize things in a strategic matter, while dealing with tactical problems as you select what card to draft. The fact that some cards/station sections require power supplied by power plants makes for an interesting wrench thrown into the equation as you have to elect to build power plants on your turn instead of building a card you draft.

The power plant element is cool for two reasons - the first being that power plants can only power sections of your space station that are up to 2 distance away (orthogonally only). So if you develop your station in a spread out, haphazard way, you will need to waste more turns building power plants. The second reason building power plants is interesting is that you select a card to draft, and then discard it instead of playing it to build your power plant (power plants are in a separate public stack). I love this because it lets me toss cards simply to deny other players, as well as benefit myself. It feels like I'm actually impacting their station.

The other way the game imposes interaction between players is with a series of conflict cards that function like take that cards. If you draft them you don't build a section of ship, but instead play the conflict card. They can be pretty powerful but timing is of importance. You also get to see conflict cards that you pass to your neighbor in the draft and wince as you hope they don't take one. Pretty neat.

I don't own 7 Wonders, but I could see this replacing it completely for someone who was actually a fan, as this is simply better in almost every way (theme, interaction, strategy).

Cool game, check it out.

It was surprising to me how much placement can modify what you're willing to draft.

I've owned this game for a while and haven't played with the conflict cards yet. After reading this post, I will give them a whirl the next time around (though which ones, I could not say). My largest gripe at this point is with all the stuff I own for it, it takes longer to set up and tear down than I'd like. That's my own fault for having so much crap for it, though.

i've played a few games of it, one of my friends has it and loves it. I do hate 7 wonders, but find this ok. I don't think its incredible, but its playable enough. It might come with knowing the tile deck better but I've never really felt that my tile placements were really gripping decisions. You do have to plan ahead a little on drafting.

If you want to, you can even draft what's in the deck (aside from the special cards).