I love deckbuilding board games and my play group loves PVE board games, thus Astro Knights scratched both itches at the same time. Astro Knights borrows elements from other games like Marvel Champions, Aeon’s End, and Thunderstone Quest while still remaining a board game that can stand on its own. The main mechanic that separates itself from other deckbuilding board games is that the players do not shuffle their own deck, thus they can strategize in what they play by stacking their deck.
Astro Knights is a one to four player games where players team up together to fight and defeat the boss monster and its minions before the party of players are wiped, or their home base gets destroyed. The players are able to pick from a variety of heroes with different sets of abilities that assist in the game, and a specialty card that is unique to the hero picked by the player. The starting deck of 10 also contains the same type of cards which are “weapons” and “fuel”, the currency of the game, but may start with slightly different amounts.
Astro Knights features only three types of cards for the heroes to purchase, which are weapons, fuel and tech with each card having their own abilities and uses. Weapons are the means to attack the boss monster and its minions by playing it in the equip zone of the heroes, while tech cards are like action cards that can be used during the main phase. The play table consists of the central stack which are cards for the players to purchase with the fuel, the home base which the players have to defend, the turn order deck, the boss monster, and the boss monster’s deck (and the occasional side deck).
The phases for players is divided into three, with the first being the “Attack” phase where players can attack with the weapons that they have played the last round, choosing a target when attacking. The second phase is the “Main” phase where players are able to play their fuel to purchase cards from the central stack (like any other deckbuilding board game), play their weapon cards into their weapon zone to attack next turn, play their tech cards they have previously purchased, or “Overcharge” which is to play a tech card in the central stack without purchasing the card. Players can also spend their fuel to charge their hero abilities or upgrade their weapon slot to hold more weapons.
What We Like
Astro Knights is a typical deckbuilding game with PVE elements but with a twist on the turn order and no shuffling mechanic. These two twists make the game different and exciting every turn whereby there is added randomness, yet strategic planning in card usage. The turn order is decided by a deck of cards with the boss monsters’ turn and the players’ turn shuffled into a deck, and each turn, the top card is revealed to see whose turn it is. Thus, every few turns, the turn order deck is reshuffled to keep players on their toes as there is no telling when the boss monster’s turn is and whether the players are prepared to deal with it.
The non-shuffling mechanic of the game also plays a huge part in the excitement and strategy since the first cards being played goes last into the discard pile and vice versa. Thus, when the deck runs out and you flip the discard pile, the card that goes into the discard first is the topmost card.
There is a strategy in playing the cards and which card to put into the discard pile first, so the players can guarantee their strongest cards being drawn when their deck runs out. This also means that you have to attack with the strongest weapons first and buy the strongest cards first, as it goes into the discard pile first before any other cards. This “stacking” strategy is an outlier from other deckbuilding games which most of the time relies on the randomness of the deck.
The other thing that Astro Knights got right is the aesthetics and the art of every single card brings about the illusion of the game of heroes fighting a cosmic entity that is trying to end your planet. Each hero has their own powers and the art representing their roles in the game, while each cosmic boss entity has their own unique design with their own villainous powers, and each cards represents a futuristic space technology nicely. The board itself is well designed to place each section of the gameplay without interfering one another due to how each piece is placed.
What We Don’t Like
There isn’t much that I don’t like about the game, but one particular thing that does seems to be a weakness to the game is the number of unique cards to be purchased during the game. Most of the weapons only do damage with slight variation while the energy cards provide energy with slight variations and so on.
Even the boss cards are both minions and damage cards, with the only unique boss being the parasite that destroys hero cards. I would love to see more variations of cards and more ways to win the game other than beating down the boss monster. Though the game has variety of difficulties and heroes that can keep the game fresh each run, I am sure that the game will begin to stale once the game is played after five or so runs.
The second gripe that I have about the game is the amount of space that the game takes as there a lot of pieces to be put down in front of the players, from the purchasable cards, to the boss cards, and the players hero cards, so a small table will not suffice.
Another complaint that I have is the indicators used by the hero cards to indicate the health, weapons slots, and ability charge are tiny colored indicators that can easily be mistakenly dropped and hard to find. They could have used clip indicators like the Arkham Horror board game that would have made life easier and made the hero cards smaller in this way too.
Final Score: 8 out of 10 pies
All in all, Astro Knights is a great deck building card game that deserve its spot among the greats like Dominion, Resident Evil, and Ascension. I give this game a high 8 pies out of 10 pies that can be played and shared among all board game lovers out there. Hopefully the company comes out with more expansions and cards to add more variety to the game.
