Astralis

Copyright 2021, Phil Leduc

“The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean.” – Carl Sagan

Components

• A hexhex8 galaxy game board (or hexhex7 for shorter games)

• Two colony ship pawns, one yellow and one cyan

• Two sets of 30 planet stones (or glass droplets) in yellow and cyan

• One hundred sixty-nine double-sided control tiles with yellow on one side and cyan on the other

• Sixty contested/conflict tiles in red 

Game Concepts

• Adjacency: Adjacency is orthogonal. Two hexes, with or without contents, are adjacent if the hexes share a common edge. Contents inherit adjacency. For example, a pawn is adjacent to a hex if the hex containing the pawn is adjacent to that hex.

• Explored: A hex is explored if it contains a planet stone or has an adjacent planet stone. Conversely, a hex is unexplored if it does not contain a planet stone and has no adjacent planet stones. Initially, the game board consists entirely of unexplored hexes. Explored hexes contain control or contested tiles. Unexplored hex do not contain a tile.

• Controlled: A player controls a hex either

  • by having a planet stone on the hex, or

  • by being the only player with one or more planet stones adjacent to the hex.

• Contested: A hex is contested if both players have one or more adjacent planet stones. 

• Surrounded: A hex is surrounded if all its adjacent hexes satisfy a given condition; for example, as when all the adjacent hexes are controlled or contested but not  a  combination of both. Note that hexes on the edges of the board are more easily surrounded. Interior hexes have six adjacent hexes. Board edge hexes have four adjacent hexes. And, corner hexes have three adjacent hexes.

Expand

When a colony ship pawn reaches its destination hex, 

1) the player may (optional) place a control tile own-side up and a planet stone on top in any one of the empty unexplored hexes adjacent to the ship pawn. 

Note that two planet stones can never be in adjacent hexes. The presence of the opponent’s colony ship pawn in a hex prevents planet placement in that hex. See Figure 3, Potential Planet Locations. Sometimes a player may not be able to place a planet due to the fact that there are no adjacent unexplored hexes.

Each planet has a zone of influence which extends to its six adjacent hexes. A player controls one of these hexes if he or she is the only player with one or more planet stones adjacent to the hex. A hex is contested if both players have one or more adjacent planet stones. Yellow and cyan tiles indicate which player controls a hex. Red contested tiles indicate neither player controls the hex. Any hex containing a tile is explored. Hexes without a tile are unexplored.

2) For each hex adjacent to the placed planet, if the hex is newly controlled, place a control tile own-side up in the controlled hex; and if the hex is newly contested, remove the opponent's control tile is replaced with a red contested tile.

3) If a player surrounds an unexplored hex with owned controlled hexes and the opponent's ship is not in the hex, that player can immediately place an own-side-up control tile and a planet stone in the unexplored hex. In the very rare case that an opponent's ship is in the hex, the planet is awarded when the opponent's ship departs. (Apps, such as Ai Ai, can do this even when a pawn is present.)

See Figure 4. Planet Placement Examples.

Extract/Exchange

4) If after placing a planet stone, a player surrounds an opponent's planet with contested hexes, the active player may extract the opponent’s planet stone, flip the associated control tile and replace the planet with his or her own. Then, each formerly contested hex is reevaluated, and if there are no longer any opponent planets adjacent to the hex, the hex's status changes to controlled. 

This replacement is in addition to normal planet placement. Conquering a planet is a significant gain and will often lead to winning the game... but not always. See the Sample Game below.

Game End

The game ends when all hexes either contain a planet stone or are adjacent to a planet stone, that is, there are no unexplored, black hexes remaining on the board.

An Astralis script for the Ludii Game System's Player version 1.3.14 was created. For those interested, the Ludii file "Astralis Final 2.lud" can be downloaded from the Game Files page. The game file offers options for board shapes and sizes and planet bonuses can be turned on and off. Without bonuses, Astralis plays similar to Pack-It with the main difference being controlled movement rather that free movement. Astralis is the more advanced game with more strategy, tactics, and more variance in results. Pack-It is simplier and very tense with scores that tend to be close throughout the game.

Designer Comments

As an avid game player and collector, I particularly enjoy conquest games. I own eight or nine copies of Risk (with various themes), Dust, Alpha Omega, Twilight Imperium and Eclipse to name a few. As a game designer, I have, for a long time, wanted to create a good conquest area-control abstract game. Astralis is my best attempt so far. Game play is simple -- move, place a planet, determine control -- but at the same time Astralis feels like a sweeping, conquest game. The blocking aspects and the possibilities of planet conquest make the game challenging and add tension. 

Komi is used in place of a 122* placement protocol. The komi of 3.5 points causes the lead to swing back and forth by 3.5 points, at least until one player makes a weak move. You can observe this phenomenon in the Sample Game above. 

It is important to note that each turn should be used to maximize your score. Gains of 7 points are normally optimal but gaining bonus planets and conquering planets can add many more points! To play well, study planet placement and how it relates to scoring. Other strategies include:

• using your ship to block and possibly deflect your opponent's ship, and 

• creating lines of owned planets to enable quick transit across the board late in the game. 

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the game mechanics in Astralis were inspired by ideas found in Radius by Rey Alicea, Partisans by Luis Bolaños Mures and Go (the venerable "surrounding game"). Thank you, Rey and Luis, for fine game designs. I would also like to thank Stephen Tavener for adding Astralis to his Ai Ai suite of games! And for his introduction of a contested graphic, which will makes it easier for players to see threaten planets and how many unexploded hexes remain on the board.

Variants

While designing Astralis, several variations were considered and play tested. Here are a few that seem worthy of mention.

Astralis:  Simplified Turns

This variant plays the same as Astralis but no control tiles are used during the game. At the end of the game, players place the control tiles in order to determine a winner. In this variant, the turns are simpler -- just move, place a planet, and check for bonus planets. However, players are more likely to miss bonus planet opportunities. There's more of a fog of war feel to this game.

Astralis: Dice Planets

Players may find it bothersome to place and count control markers. Alternately, players can use dice instead of planet stones. Each die's pip count will indicate the number of controlled hexes adjacent to the die. When placing a planet die, the die starts with six pips displayed. The pip count is reduced by one for each adjacent contested hex. In addition, each contesting opponent die is also reduced by one. When the game ends, players count the pips on their dice to obtain their scores. Note that these scores can be used but will be inflated due to the fact that some controlled hexes will contribute to the pip counts of up to three owned dice. The game plays easier but will also plays differently from the standard Astralis game. Players are more likely to pack their planets together rather than spread out. 

Beeline

In this variant, bee pawns move like Chess queens. Movement is blocked by flower stones and the opponent’s bee pawn. Upon arrival to a destination hex, the player may place a flower stone in an empty hex which is directly in front of the bee's path provided the flower will not be adjacent to any other flower. When players can no longer place a flower, the player with the most flowers on the board wins. The second player gets a komi of one-half point. This game feels like a race at first and then a maze game. Scores do not have much variability which is a con. 

Dispersed Go

In Dispersed Go stones can be distributed to any empty hex that is not adjacent to any other stone.  Each stone can have up to 6 liberties, as determined by its 6 adjacent hexes. A liberty is lost whenever any other stone is also adjacent to the hex. Like-colored stones are connected if they share a common adjacency to one of these hexes. A group is one or more connected like-colored stones. A group of stones dies and is removed from the board when all stones in the group have no liberties. This is fairly difficult to achieve because “eyes” can be easier created. (Eyes are hexes that the opponent cannot occupy or place adjacent to.)