Polaris

• Designer: Simone Luciani and Andrea Mainini
• Publisher: Fractal Juegos
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 40-50 min
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Looking north, you see a bright star that doesn’t change its position as the night goes on… It’s the star at the north pole: Polaris.  In Polaris, you’ll have to position your Stars in the night sky to form constellations and accomplish the game’s objectives. 5 scoring phases will be played, which will get shorter and shorter, where the different moon phases will be vital to know where you can place your stars in each of them. On your turn, you’ll only have to perform one of three possible actions: Draw Cards, Play Cards, or Take Shooting Stars. Whoever earns the most Victory Points at the end of the game will win. Contemplation of the night sky has been an essential part of our culture on this planet. Its constellations have brought us together since our dawn to tell the great stories that define us.

To start, build the circular night sky board by putting the six pieces together; around this place the ring of 5 Lunar phase pieces.  One goal card is randomly selected and placed above each of these Lunar phase pieces.   The basic action deck is shuffled and a market of four cards is dealt out above the scoreboard.  The Advanced action deck is shuffled and two cards from this deck are placed in the market as well.  Each player gets a random personal goal card given to them as well as a starting hand of 3 basic action cards.

Play is taken in turns around the table – in each turn, the active player chooses to do exactly one of the three options:

A] Take an Action Card – take an action card from the Market and add it to your hand. Basic action cards are free, but Advanced action cards cost a Shooting Star token. You are limited to a hand of 5 cards.  Refill the market from the matching deck.

B] Play Action Cards – play any number of action cards from your hand – so long as they all have the same lunar phase at the top of them.  (You can always pay 2 Shooting Star tokens to ignore the lunar sector on a card).  Then, place the things seen on the bottom halves of those cards on to the board.  Stars can be placed in any empty space in the corresponding area of the board.  Most spaces do not cost anything to place on.  The red spaces which share the border between two sections of the board require a Shooting Star to be spent to place there.  A few white spaces reward the player with a Shooting Star for placing there.   The links can be placed between any two star spaces.  The card may specify the orientation of the link to be placed.  Some cards award Shooting Star tokens.  After playing and resolving the card, discard the card unless it has a Dawn icon on it.  Cards with Dawn icons are placed in the spaces under the scoreboard (room for six cards).

C] Take 3 Shooting Stars – You can choose to not play nor draw a card and instead that 3 Shooting Stars from the supply. 

After the player has taken their action choice, there is always a check to see if a Scoring Phase has been triggered – this happens if all six of the Dawn spaces under the scoreboard are filled.  The player who triggered the scoring phase takes the telescope chit.  All other players get one more turn, and any cards played with Dawn icons on them in this round are simply discarded.  

Now, score the goal card above the New Moon lunar phase.  Players each score points based on how well they fulfilled the criteria.  The player(s) who achieved the goal the most times get a 3VP bonus.  Finally, the player who gathered the telescope chit gets 2 extra points.    Then, the ring of Lunar Phases is rotated clockwise so that the New Moon now points to a new Goal card.

The game continues in this fashion until all five of the Goal cards have been scored.  Players now score additional points based on the size of their constellations as well as penalties for any stars which have not been connected by links to others.  Players also score their Personal goals and take VPs for unused Shooting Star tokens.  The player with the most points wins.  There is no tiebreaker.

My thoughts on the game

Polaris is an interesting middle-weight game with an astronomy theme; though in reality, it’s really a fairly abstract game.  Place your bits and connect them together; trying to meet the ever changing public goals.

I really do like the way that lunar phase ring rotates around the board.  This not only provides you with a new goal at each stage of the game, but it also changes the section of the board that your cards will play on.  This allows you to do a bit of planning for future stages of the game, but it also adds in a bit of time pressure to play your cards at the right time.

There is a fair bit of uncertainty in the length of each scoring phase of the game – as it is up to the frequency of the cards with Dawn icons played by the table.  Though I haven’t counted, it feels like about ¼ to ⅓ of the cards have Dawn icons on them, so it can definitely sneak up on you.  Of course, the game knows this, and it gives everyone one extra turn to play in the current phase before the lunar phase ring rotates – but, an unexpected rotation can really throw off your plans.

The individual actions on the cards are all quite simple. It’s really just placing stars and links for the most part.  The strategy here is working on drafting cards that can be played together (to give you efficiency when you choose to play cards) as well as finding places to place your elements in the right places.

Players will have plenty of options on how to play – there are common goals as well as personal goals to score. Additionally, the game rewards players for larger constellation groups, so that’s always a decent strategy as well.

The game plays out quickly, and again, the speed of the game can be somewhat variable depending on how quickly players play the Dawn cards.  The astronomy theme helps give a bit of story to the game, but in the end, it really is a fairly abstract affair.  For me, this has been an great find from SPIEL 2024, and one which I think will continue to be played in the upcoming year.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale
• Neutral.
• Not for me…