Observatory ►►► Roll and Write Your Night Sky

0:00 hey everybody today R runs through Observatory but before we begin please turn on your subtitles to the klling on channel so that when I have an oops moment you'll know about it hey everybody Kimberly here and I am really excited to share with you my runr of Observatory this is a one to five player game that takes about 30 to 45 minutes to play and is a role in right game where players are taking on the role of astronomers and they are mapping the constellations they see on their own player sheet so if you would like to hear my final thoughts about this game you can just jump ahead in the chapter system in YouTube or click on that Tim stamp in the description below but let's jump into this run through so this game has constellations of varying sizes and you'll see here that the blue cards on the back right here show that they're going to be bigger constellations they are worth more points and generally all have to some degree some kind of bonus that comes with u finishing that card or mapping the constellation here are the green cards and they are a little bit smaller so their value is going to be smaller and sometimes they don't even offer a bonus in the corner because they only require a couple plot points of stars over here on the side we have our two player board I've got Lewis over here on my left I'm playing over here on my right I've got this start marker here and each round that we play everyone is going to be the active dice roller once passing in clockwise turn order and when

1:30 everyone's done that then you move to the next round pass that marker to the next player and then do the same thing again players are going to have this sheet right here that is their Mark uh they get to mark on their grid this is their sky line essentially they see all these stars that they're going to be mapping out here in this player area on a grid of 2 to six which means yeah you're going to see here that we've got ones ones are wild in this game I really like that I think that's fantastic a nice way to kind of um play with the uh ones are not the best role in in any given game down here are going to be abilities that you can unlock and earn in addition to some bonuses um this is the research section and then players are going to have cards that they draft in this setup phase so all players draw three big constellations three small constellations and then they keep four of the cards that they draw which I've already done for both of my players so let's get into that very first round I'm starting I'm going to pick up these Dice and I'm G to roll them now you'll see that there are three dice let me show you up close that are blue these are going to be the player dice that everybody essentially has access to every single round players are going to make a combination of two of these three dice to plot a point and the remaining D is going to be used as Research In addition the player who is the uh roller

3:02 in that particular phase is going to receive what's called a shooting star and shooting stars are going to be this particular die which was a one it's a wild for me so I can plot a point anywhere on my map and if it has any kind of number associated with it it is in that row or that column that matches but again I got the one which is really good so here's how I'm going to do it players are going to essentially just play on simultaneously once the dice are rolled which makes this game U Move Along at a nice clip I'm only one person playing two people here so I'm going to try to do that where uh we're going to be doing different things so for me in my turn I'm going to consider looking at Andromeda um is my biggest constellation if I start now and kind of get that one going perhaps it will uh bod well for finishing because I need to plot the stars in this particular configuration it's worth 13 points at the end of the game when I score it I mean I'm going to put it into a score pile face down when I finish it and then once I finish it immediately in the game I can plot any Star Point wherever I want so this is a really nice one and again these are going to be the plot points and the distance away and the direction they need to be for me to finish so that's five 6 7 8 9 10 plot points to get this Andromeda finished so maybe I should focus on this guy first then again I

4:35 have some other long ones or big stars that aren't that invest like you don't have to invest too much in so again these are all stars these are all constellations um uh delphinus this is Greek mythology oh I love this it's wonderful text down here but also context for any kind of educational setting this is a shooting star in the sixth column or the sixth uh row and it gives me five points and it only has five stars in it so maybe I want to start here get a bonus star that gets me going towards maybe some of these harder ones and the last symbol you're going to see is this research symbol so that's the research symbol and players are going to be able to check off a research um of their choice this is links and it's kind of long and and uh going in one dire it's like a diagonal long line now constellations are not allowed to cross each other so when you Place Stars down they're not dedicated to any particular constellation until you really start shaping it so that it fits that particular constellation so I'm looking at a one a two and a five I'm going to worry about my my uh my Wild shooting star after I figure out what I want to do for my combination so if I have a two and a five I can essentially go in this particular any one of those four spaces in the two5 or I can do the 25 going this way so I've got essentially eight plot points that I can

6:05 mark one of for this 25 combination and I'm wondering if I want to start in a corner like that which would be really good I could also use my one wild to pair with something um that would yeah you know what maybe I should do that and I should save my five for research because One lets me go anywhere so I'm essentially going in this two column and I can say it's a 22 it's a 23 a 24 a 25 or 2 six going in any column or row that I want so perhaps if I'm doing um delin one thing to keep in mind too is you're allowed to rotate your cards you're just not allowed to in like invert them or U Mirror Image them in any way so maybe I want to start and this is the thing I do so I apologize if it's frustrating but I have to see things in the direction that I want them to be in so what if I say I have a 26 and I'm going to plot all the way up here at this far Far Point and I'm going to put my star in here okay so here's my star and I'm theoretically doing this where I go uh across so I'm going to go one two three across and one down so one two three across and one down is my next star and it's going to be this one this one that one and that one and I'm kind of trying to put this in the corner Corner over here that's my goal I'm I'm I'm working on it we'll see um so that's going to be mine for the one two I now

7:38 have to pick a five and put it into my research and research is you checking off a box and these are just going to be the abilities that you want in the game and in the priority that you want them so let me just show you these uh right now because there are two things that are going to trigger so I'm going to put this up close right here in our camera so the first thing you're going to see is lens lens allows you to magnify and focus your observation and once per turn you can use a single die as either uh or which whichever die it's the blue Dy or it's going to be the yellow d as if its value was up one or down one so that allows you to modify you can't change dice for other players but you're doing it for you and the way to earn this is by checking off every single one of these five boxes but but when you check off three boxes in any of these uh first four uh columns you're going to receive a bonus of either a shooting star of any value or another research Mark so you want to kind of figure out do I want the flexibility of having dice Pips going up or down by one what about writing a number in the space right up here in this box that becomes essentially your uh wild number whenever that's rolled you say that that gets to be uh anytime this number is rolled on any die you can treat it as any number you want that's really really flexible and super cool

9:09 the finder just gives you four stars for free just allows you to find four at any point in the game so you gain the finder and then you can cross them off whenever you'd like doesn't have to be right away and this bonus over here doesn't have to be used right away it's used when you want as long as it's been activated the last one down here is filter decrease light pollution every time you complete a constellation or an asterism which are the small constellations with an A on it I'll show you what that is they give you a bonus um if they give you a bonus you immediately get that bonus a second time so that's just really what's going on here is you figuring out okay so when do I want to get these really cool bonuses you want all of them from the start honestly they're all fantastic but which one do I want to go for and I think I might actually check off the five in lens and really work my way towards getting that flexibility of moving up or down a pip on one of the dice um every single time it's my turn to play so I have done my one two which I made into a six that's my wild one and a two and I plotted a star and then I got my research now I get my free this is a an entire star in and of itself as the shooting star bonus as the active roller for the round everyone gets to be active roller every single round so where do I want this I think I want to do this guy I want to do the one it goes three over and one down one two three and then one

10:41 down this is going to be the next star in my Del finis so I'm going to do this and of course you can do whatever you want with your stars to make them look really cool mine look okay Louis's always looks so much better but I am essentially one to stars in in out of my five and then I can get that really nice shooting star of a six and I can hopefully get these guys next time we'll see but then I get five points at the end of the game really really cool stuff so I'm going to keep that guy going sideways and now we're going to look at lwis he's been thinking this whole time he knows essentially what he wants to do he doesn't get this die but his combination of dice can be what he wants them to be as well and then this is going to be that a asterism that I was talking about they're small constellations and they give you a bonus in the corner they're very small don't need as many uh stars to make that Christmas tree cluster in this case and they will essentially be graded based on a scale so the more asterism cards you make the higher your scale for that ramp goes for scoring and I want to double check it is the yep 136 10 15 21 scale so if you do one you get one three you get six five you get 15 and if you get six you get 21 so that's just something to keep in mind the more of them you do

12:12 the more value they are and along the way they give you bonuses which is really good so what is he going to do he wants to do golly look at Ursa Major he said I am going big and maybe this is something he wants to start with it's going to take a lot of stars to get this Ursa Major done right oh my gosh this is a chunk a chunk chunk chunk of stuff so if he does this maybe he wants to take the five and the six does he want to do the five and the six I don't know cuz I say five and six cuz again your one is any value that you want maybe he wants to start in the corner and um map this starting off along the top so this is if it if he started here on this spot right here he would then be able to go up and then he would go all the way across the top let's have him do that and keep his card oriented in that particular uh place so the one two is going to be a 2 two and you could do any of the four in the 2 two and he is essentially going to do this guy so let's have him do this he's got this star in there uh and then he's going to do the five let's have him Mark the five now in his case he saw me kind of going for a lens and thinks that perhaps if he is going to be going for more of the smaller constellations he might want to get the

13:44 filter which gets the bonus uh a second time on every card you finish so he wants to try to finish these small ones and then get the bonus again essentially gaining a lot for very little investment so he's going to mark off the five right there and then that is going to be the end of my active turn it's still going to be the first round and then LS is going to take these he's going to roll them and then that'll finish our first round so let's see what we can do he gets a free four and then he rolled a six a six and a three so he is simply going to choose um where is he he can do a four along on this direction and if he does his Stars if he Maps it out right he wants to go up and then he has 1 2 3 4 five so 1 2 3 4 five he needs to have these fours right up in here so perhaps he wants to use his star to do one of these fours so I'm going to put the star at the end to kind of remind me where that particular constellation ends and just know all these have to be uh essentially part of that constellation there are so many stars here this might take a while but we do have eight rounds in a two-player game where each player gets to roll the active dice once before we move on to the next round so Ursa Major here Lewis comes he got his free star and now he's going to look at this

15:15 does he want essentially to go down here in the bottom corner in a 66 Grid or does he want to do um essentially here he's got 63 or he's got um yeah 63 so let's go down here gosh I don't know he's going to have to start perhaps a new constellation you have to have a couple constellations going at once and that is not a bad thing so if this is it perhaps he wants to start doing this one I think let's see if we turn that upside down let's turn that one upside down we're going to do it's called false cross um so he's going to do a 63 here and it's going to go from this one up here and then that one is going to go down to here so let's have that 63 will go here and the top two are the ones that he's working on right now which is not bad um so again I'm trying to get yeah this one going and it's going to go up and then that one's going to come down and go over so he did 63 which leaves a six let's have him keep going with that filter he is trying to make progress once he gets his third die in that research he's going to circle and take advantage of either a free star or a free research which might get you that much closer to getting your actual ability unlocked because you've been doing a lot of research oh it's so good now it's up to me I am looking at really

16:46 wanting perhaps that 63 so let me see if that works out for my constellation 63 is in this Zone it does not work out for my constellation yo yo yo so I need to go down here across and then down here and then that'll finish my delfinas so maybe I want to do another like let's do an uh another small one or an easy one over here because this is not going to get in the way of my other constellation now if I go across up here that's a 62 which isn't the case but let's say I do a 66 and I flip this over and run it all the way up the side now this is all about trying to fit your constellations into your Grid in a way that allows you to have growth I try to kind of you know organize my constellations to give me the most space possible especially when some of these big ones come out like this one I mean that kind of it looks like a a bow right yeah it looks like a bow with like an arrow in it to me um so I want to run this over here so that means that these two down here are going to be my six six but I only get to do one of them so let's do this one here here I did 66 for this one and then that leaves me with a three and I'm going to try to do lens I'm going to try to push through and get that guy done so I got to Mark and then I got to go down and you'll see here that each of us have three stars marked so for any

18:19 any two-player game you are essentially going to have um uh a star per player plus your free one that you get for being the active player which totals three per round all right so we're going to put the dice back in the center we are going to move this marker on our player track and then we are going to pass this over to the next player and they're going to go now in rounds four five and seven you'll see that there are these kind of red um lit up bonuses at the beginning of each of those rounds players get to decide if they want a free star or a free research Mark and that symbol right here is the same one as you see down here on the side when players are trying to make progress and get three marks in lens Drive finder or filter now the one thing I haven't talked about is funding funding allows for multiple numbers to be placed down here and simply give you one point for each check mark at the end of the game in your funding section so that is just a place to dump some of your research to gain points that could be really really helpful at the end of the game there is no special marker here for round two so you're simply going to roll these dice and see if some of our players me or Louis can finish one of our constellations and we'll work that out all right so Lewis rolled a two and now he's got a two a five and a six for his roll he's looking at this false cross um which would give him nope he needs a six

19:52 to oh he needs a 62 aha so a 62 would give him the markup here but it would also give him the mark right here which is great um and then he would just have a two which could give him the other one and he would be one away from that and he needs a 53 to finish that one boy that would be really good let's do it I know this goty oh a two two a two two two two he needs a lot of Twos for that one he needs some Twos for this one too oh I'm going to do the shorty and we'll work towards Ursa Major I promise so he is going to take the 62 and he's got six and two and he's going to just put it right here now I know it looks maybe questionable but it is this one and this one even though they cross you can do them in any order that you want he's going to take that too and he's going to go here and get that second one and then again all he needs is to get this guy down here and he can have that false cross so he takes the five and he goes oh no I've already done a five in filter he can choose to do the five in lens driver finder or again put that five down here and essentially just gain a whole Victory point I want him to try one more of these bonuses it's hard to get everything so focusing your efforts in one part a couple particular you know research paths is smart and then the rest maybe you want to put down here into your funding so again he's done

21:23 that he did this guy he did those guys he did this guy so now I go and I'm looking at liking a 26 but again I want to get down here and I want to get a 35 that's not good for me down here 34 and then a 24 so I didn't get any of those numbers for my delphinius and then down here it's a 66 and then it's a 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 is a 46 and I didn't get a 46 either so I am definitely going to want to start either links or Andromeda because I can't continue working on any of these at this point so let's do um let's see here I have a 25 I have a 26 coming down I think I want to start that and maybe I'll go in this direction I'm going to turn it sideways and it looks like I can go one over here and I can still fit so I'm going to essentially place my star down here in a 26 and that's going to be this card right here so I want that particular and I'm going to have this in that column right there and it's going to essentially go up from there now I have to say that because I put that in the 2 six the five is left over for me as well and perhaps I could have raised this by one and done that

22:55 second dot into the 25 so I can use the six I will say though I've made my choice but those are the kinds of decisions you need to make is what remaining die is there to place into your research especially based on what numbers you want for your research which you could pick your research first if you want to you don't have to pick your star constellations I'm trying to work my constellations and make sure that I have stars that are doing something um any remaining stars that are not part of a constellation though at the end of the game are worth points so do keep that in mind but that means I'm going to pick a five and I'm going to go let's do this I'm going to start going towards the um number I can put up here that might give me a wild so that's going to be the end of my turn four again LS started so I'm going to pick up these dice this is that second half and we did not finish our constellations just yet but we are we are getting there so we'll see what we get all right so I got a four and then I rolled for everybody you're welcome some wild which is going to be nice now I will say that I took a three um for uh let's see here yeah I'd like to have a four for this a six or a two so if I use my Wilds I leave my three and then I'm not able to do this on the other hand LS could take that three for filter and be just fine and he could add

24:26 essentially any con stellation in any uh you know one one which is just wild wild so what am I looking at here I'm really close it looks like I can get a four and I need a four let's do it this is not bad oh I need a four over here as well gosh darn it if I don't want to I want to finish either delus or I want to finish Equus something like that so which one gosh I'm so close here so let's see let's see if I can do this guy cuz I really do need that for so this one's going to be a 53 and maybe I say this is my 53 let's do that and I'm going to keep working on this guy right here and then the next thing is my four and four is going to be this particular column and I want it to be this star or I want it to be that star so it's a 42 or a 43 I have a lot of twos right now so perhaps I want to actually start and and get that free Wild so I'm going to go here for my four okay and again I am working on this guy so I've got this guy coming down to here over to here down and then I need that one right there and I will be done but that means I have a wild left over so I want to go up here in this space and I think I want to check off my six which would give me a free star to finish or a search that would give me

25:59 closer to getting lens as my bonus really really tough choices here I want both I want both so bad I'm going to take the fre star and I want to do it now cuz I kind of want to like get this get this thing going so I'm going to circle this because I got my third one and then I'm going to check it off as my star and I'm just going to take that star right here just going to go and say I want to finish so I'm going to draw this constellation right where it goes and then I'm going to say I essentially finished this and I get a six star I get a six star in any uh which is great for my column to continue Equus um yes and I did it this way but that's okay you can rotate those cards so I'm going to put this in my pile um face down and I'm going to get that six so that's going to be a card I score at the end of the game and my star is going to be in the six column because I want to finish this one so let's do the 6 six because that's a tough roll I'm going to do that here and I'm essentially wanting to cross that over and then I want to get that 64 so I can finish this one right there that's exciting that's really really exciting so I did the star I did this I did that I got my bonus I mean yes so now Louis is looking at these because I was the active roller

27:29 and he really really really wants to finish the cross so his cross gets him here and that's 53 so let's have him do that and he will just say this is his five this is his three and he's going to go right there and just cross is going to go cross and it's going to go cross down and he is going to finish as well but let's make sure he gets his research of whichever what he wants and that's down here for his filter he is going to essentially do the same thing but I'm going to have him do make the other choice so let's have him grab that four I think that he's got a lot of he needs two dice if he keeps his twos he can continue making Ursa Major and he doesn't uh oh he doesn't want to spend him down here so let's yeah not the four let's have him mark off as a two because he's going to keep those as his dice that's right aha I almost did the wrong thing but he gets three and that gives him a research he's going to choose the other option and then that makes him mark this one right here uh and now he is one away from getting filter as an ongoing bonus or yeah which means that he gets to score those uh constellation bonuses a second time so he's going to say I finished false cross we did false cross we did he did it upside down but that's okay and now he's going to receive the bonus down here which is another research mark and it is an a for as ISM so it's going to go on that 13 6 10 15 21 scale so we're

29:03 going to put that over here but he's going to gain his research and there we go he now has filter he's got filter so every time he completes a constellation or an asterism that grants a bonus he may immediately gain that bonus a second time and it was only after one card was finished and so that's a really good time for the rest of the game what an ability okay that was the end of uh round two so we're going to check do players have four cards in their area no so we are going to look at the person who asked the first player marker and LS is going to draw first from any of the face up cards or from the top of either of the decks so he's looking out there thinking I have a really big one going I have an asterism I just got one he might want to take the the great Diamond because it's another asterism for that scale and he's now going to get double the bonus which means when he accomplishes this after four stars he get two research so this is a really good one for him to have and honestly it's not necessarily getting in my way because I don't have any of those cards and there's not going to be any for me to necessarily pick so this is up another asterism came out sickle that's a good one for him okay so that's his and now I'm going to choose as well every player gets the same number of constellations to pick from and I'm

30:33 looking at this guy starting down at the bottom um this one's almost finished I think I need a small one to balance out some of the big ones so I'm probably going to come up here and this is not worth as much if I'm not ramping up and I see this one pix this for three and it might be able to kind of sneak in somewhere like this this because it's uh nice along the top there I mean that that actually would work really well and again this the dots in the center are where you Mark if your constellation is interfering with another constellation so you can even cross over near where it is and not cross through it and it still counts so I think I'm going to take this small one I'm actually going to turn it just to remind myself that that's the direction I think I want to go with it and then I'll replace this and so now we will go to the next round and we are going to move this marker over here and I'm going to pick up those Dice and I'm going to roll them I get a three for free I've got a one a four and a six so that's a wild and then oh boy let's see here I want this one it goes 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 a 4 six are you kidding me that's so good but before I pick that I think I might make that my four well it's a wild I can make this a four you know what I mean I'm going to do it I'm going to do it right

32:04 now because I think that's just such a good good opportunity I've been waiting for it and I get to finish this one so I'll make my mark down and then I get a one which is any of my choice so let's do the two I'm one away from getting lens I'm one away from getting lens that's really really good and now I get a three so I think that this guy might be coming down into the three Zone perhaps um this over here might work up into oh it's a three yes yes let's do that okay I got to do this now this is really tricky for my brain this is where things start getting questionable so this star is this one right here and it goes up by one and then it goes up here so that's going to be that first star are yes so I'm going to put it right here for my three done I'm going to put one here this one's going to come across that one's going to come down okay fantastic so if you need to move your cards move your cards that's going to be my three and I already took my research so now Louis is going to take a look at these right I got that wild and he had his um delightful uh cross right that his false cross and he's looking at this Ursa Major let's make make some progress if we can H maybe not let's do that so a four and a one is a wild and we want to

33:35 get all the way across here because we need those twos let's just chugga chugga all the way yeah we're just going to make progress right so that's the four wild leaves a six and he is going to mark this in the drive he's really close to getting the bonus and then once he fills all of those in he gets uh that drive bonus of having wild die I mean fantastic it's really moving along so that was me I'm the start player and now we are going to roll the dice and lwis is going to be that start player he got a six and then a two and a five and a five so where does that six go he's got a six down here possibly he could just work on some of those asterisms the great diamond or the Christmas tree cluster could be really really good for a six the five and the two are a five and a five is out here in the middle of nowhere but the five two goes here not good 25 goes down here not the best so maybe we want to start over here and get something else going let's do in the bottom corner here I'm going to move this Christmas tree cluster this direction so let's have it go here and he can either go down he can go this way he can go that way with it but if we start right here this could be one of the stars and that's the

35:06 55 and then he marks the two right here and drive giving him one of those two bonuses again he doesn't have to decide now but it might actually be a great one to rush because then oh he should have started the great Diamond to get the double research bonus because he's really researching super hard and fast right now that's actually really good but you know what just because I said this one that could still be going this way we could still be doing the great Diamond down there I love it so still the two um we marked it and now the bonus ah the bonus uh let's let's grab the free star let's grab the free star and we'll try to finish this gu so we go over we go over and we go down let's do the same 66 H I don't know some of the doubles seem a little bit more challenging so that's going to be that free star and then oh I just said a 66 but let's have him do the other one in the six here's his free s and we're going to go right here in this particular column and we're going to try and we've essentially got three we just started the great diamond and we are he's three close to it uh fantastic I mean really really good so that's his and then now I get these guys 55 52 those are my only options and it doesn't finish my four so G not the

36:39 greatest this guy this guy is this one over here so having a 52 is pretty good let me do that so 52 this goes up it goes over this one goes here so that's this one let's do 52 like this I mean seriously folks I got to do that or else I'm not going to see it um it's going to be a little hard for me so 52 and then I get the five so I've done 55 I'm going to actually start putting it down here in funding I'm going to start just chunking the rest of my numbers if I've got them up here just going to start filtering them down into funding for those bonus points at the end of the game so nobody was able to finish uh a constellation this round so that is going to be it he did his is we've done our round we'll move to four and now we get the bonus so this is going to switch over to Lou he's going to roll the dice and at the start of this round we each get a bonus oh rats hang on a sec I'm going to before the bonus you saw it I finished this and I did not essentially take my card out so this I did finish so I'm going to essentially put this in my pile and I'm just going to grab a new one and I think perhaps I might go again for some of these small ones um to balance out with some of these bigger ones or maybe maybe it's time to do something cool like this let's do Dorado let's do

38:12 this guy this is good it's a shooting star five seven points it's got six stars in it yes okay so this is going to come to my area and I'm going to flip that over and now we just double check nobody else got any he's still working on that he still got his cross over there um this guy I'm still working on over here okay so now we're good so now we get to have this bonus I'm going to start just the start of round four which I'm super super excited about clearly this guy goes down and then across I'm just going to grab a free star right here unless no I'm going to grab a research this is mine this is my bonus for the start of round four I'm going to grab this right here and it gives me me lens every time once per round the dice are rolled I get to pick one and modify it up or down by one yes I needed that I needed that research now what does Ls need does he need the research or does he he was going to get the bonus research when he finishes the great Diamond so let's give him a free star to get the great Diamond to get the bonus you see how this is going to work okay here's this free star for again the bonus at the start of round four oh my gosh did he finish that and he is going to essentially be able to finish this gaining that research um twice because of his filter ability and this is immediate so we are going to give him

39:43 that bonus uh he's going to put it in his pile for the asterism chart and he is going to get check off research check off research and now he gets to uh essentially putting number up here and that number is going to become wild for him let's make it a four maybe or fives have been rolling a lot I try to pick a number that works well for what uh what's being rolled but also what he doesn't necessarily want to put in the places that he wants which is up here so he can finish Ursa Major so because Louis did that at the start of the round we don't actually get to draw cards until the end the reason I Drew this one to replace was because I had forgotten to do so uh before we got to that stage of the game I didn't trigger it whenever we started round four I'd actually finished my card in round three so this is going to end the run through for now we got to three out of the eight rounds plus that little bonus at the start of round four players are going to tally up their points at the end of the game they will look at the cards that they have finished completed and look at the points in that top left corner that's going to be their tally plus their asterism score on a scale of 1 3 6 10 15 and 21 players receive one point for every funding check mark that they have and they also receive one point for every two unused stars in their star

41:14 chart that's not dedicated to a constellation and the player with the most points wins the game okay everybody you want to hear my final thoughts they are coming up right now hey everybody it's time for my final thoughts on Observatory but before we get to that please remember that this was a paid Kickstarter preview and with that out of the way here's what I think Observatory is a game for players who really want to maximize dice rolling and player abilities this is a roll and right game where players are astronomers and they're mapping the night sky looking at constellations and marking them down in their star charts and the thing about this is that whenever you're the active player in a round you roll all the dice for every player to pick from and make a combination of their own with the exception of the shooting star die which is yellow as the active player this is your die and your die only and it gives you a star in a particular column or row matching the number and the cool thing about this game is that ones are wild I think that's fantastic so ones kind of have a little special feel or flavor in Observatory so the other players are going to take the three remaining dice as is the active player and they're going to make a combination of two and then they're going to have one and the combination of two is going to be us a grid point where it meets so for example it might be 25 so your grid on your star

42:46 chart in front of you which is every player's individual sheet shows that two and five goes this way and that two and five goes this way so you're going to have four different plot points to pick from in each uh intersection of your numbers and you get to make a star there and you're making a star in a space that allows you to essentially complete a constellation that has three four five uh 10 stars in it it could be a small one or it can be a big constellation and you are going to do that and then everyone just does it at the same time so this game is simultaneous but it also makes that start Play player in each round whenever you get to be that start player really special so you have a set number of rounds for the player count uh this does play one to five and there's that solo one uh where you're essentially playing for essentially the highest score and then every other uh player count is going to allow everyone at the table to be um the start player for each round rolling all the dice and gaining the cool one before you move on to the next round so every player gets to act first in each round so it's really really cool it's fast this game takes 30 to 45 minutes to play and is abstract so for me that's a challenge um I inevitably get some kind of star misaligned at some point and have to kind of change my

44:17 plans because I thought I saw the way that the star was going in the chart and I thought I counted but you know it was a little challenging so for me I like to actually rotate the card the orientation of the way I'm drawing it in my map and you can so this is the way it's presented to you but you can do it this way or this way or this way uh so you can actually shift and rotate those cards because you are putting it into a grid that again is a 2 to six and each one of your rows and columns has two uh rows or columns in it which creates that opportunity for you to have four plot points at an intersection so I like how this is balanced with large constellation cards and small constellation cards requiring fewer stars in the smaller ones and there is another clever system or or mechanism in these small constellations that's called asterisms and they are labeled a and they always have a bonus that comes with them even though they are small they're easy to do they give a bonus because the way that you score those particular cards at the end of the game is on a scale of how many you complete so if you just complete one it's worth one point but if you complete six it's 21 total points so you can see how you're going to have even more points so it's like 3 point something points per card so the value keeps going

45:49 up in that 136 10 15 21 scale it's interesting the large ones are hard and they're usually require more Dice and more you know star mapping and they have sometimes really sprawling um star configurations and you have to be really careful and economical with your choices because you cannot ever have your constellations overlap each other in your star chart you have to give them their own space in the sky to be seen without any crossing over so when you are picking your dice you are selecting one that goes to a particular star um uh axis where it's like your five and your two goes to one space and you get to pick of those stars in there this star to map and then your remaining die goes to research and that's what everybody is going to do too you pick two to make an intersection and the remaining die is going to be your research and this is where the game is really cool too I mean I like the balance between the large and the small constellations and the bonuses that you get when you finish them but down here you've got lens Drive finder and filter and you get to essentially make progress in research giving you an ongoing bonus or a special ability in the game and all of them are valuable every single one of them is worthwhile One lets you fudge a die by up or one um once per turn another one gives you a die number that's a wild for you so when

47:21 it rolls you get to say oh this is actually a two instead of a five there's another one that just gives you four free dice uh placements it's like shooting stars you just get four free ones anywhere you want just go grab four you can do them all now you can save them for later and then the final one is that you get to get your bonuses in your cards when you finish them again so you get them twice so you can see how every single one of those abilities is really really helpful and valuable and desirable so that's a nice choice for players to essentially go for that but it takes five research prog ress of a 2 3 4 5 or six value to gain that so it takes a while to get the ongoing bonuses and in the meantime when you get three marks in those particular places of any value you get a bonus you're like hey grab a shooting star for free or just make more progress in research and you're like cool so you feel like you're getting things on your turn at a nice consistent pace and you're finishing as many constellations as you can but there's only a certain number of stars that you can map in the game so you can't do it all and players have four to pick from in their personal player area that they divy out and they figure out where they want to put and what they're going to work towards and what they're not and what they're prioritizing so it's very individual you can see how this can be a solo game a one-player game because while players

48:51 are rolling the dice for everybody it's just the luck of the role and when you're the active player you get to roll the shooting star die and it's yours but you also get to do that when it's your turn uh to roll the dice as an active player in the round as well and so it's nice and juicy but there's no interacting there's no interfering there's no Take that there's no I get this and you don't get that because you know this could be um akin to the um um G Gung clever right that's so clever games where um I'm essentially taking dice away and then you're only allowed to have what's left um on the dish and not what I took nope in this case you roll the dice they're all there everyone gets the middle dice the blue dice you know the the yellow D is just the special one so it's like you get something but you're not taking it away from anybody else and and that's nice this game comes in a nice small box and is really quite thematic for as abstract as it is I think it it actually pairs quite well your mapping Stars your mapping constellations these are constellations and the constellations have their name and they also have an entire background that gives you context and gives you information so it's pretty educational too crater crater is the latinization of the Greek crater a type of cup used to water down wine and has been associated with the god Apollo and I'm like cool it's really neat so nice nice work

50:24 here and a ton of cards so you are not going to see the same constellations again and again and your strategy might change based on the dice based on the abilities that you research and based on your start hand card I mean like there's just a lot here to continually dive back into as a roll and right game um in the abstract field a lot going on with Observatory I think for me the only issue is it's abstract and sometimes I can't count and I can't make make my stars line up but that's that's a me problem that's not necessarily an observatory problem so a nice game to share really easy to get into and to play in about half an hour's time all right folks that's going to be it for me this time I'll see you next time bye