Components and Setup
The “board” for the game is a 5 x 5 grid of square, double-sided tiles depicting different patches of night sky (stars, moons, comets, asteroids, etc). Each tile has different symbols on each side, and the pairings on either side of the tiles are always the same (i.e. a tile with 3 stars on one side always has 2 stars on the other side); an icon depicts the flip-side symbol on each tile face. The tiles are sturdy and visually appealing, but some of the symbols aren’t sufficiently distinctive for a game that involves a lot of visual scanning. Using different colors on the tiles would have helped.
Each card depicts an “old one” from the Cthulhu mythos, although the game uses slightly altered parody names for many of these, so Cthulhu becomes “Cthulhoo” but Hastur is still Hastur. The cards also feature cute, cartoony artwork by François Launet. The cards are glossy-finished and reasonably sturdy. Each player starts with a hand of 5 cards.
Gameplay
Each turn, players may move tiles within this grid by “invoking” (playing) 1 card from their hand, and may “summon” (build) 1 card to a personal tabelau by maneuvering specific combinations of tiles into particular configurations. Each card allows a player to do 1-3 of a particular kind of tile manipulation when invoked: flip tiles, shift a row of tiles, or swap 2 adjacent tiles; the cards invocation abilities are depicted by icons in the upper left of the card. The old ones on the cards are ranked into: great old ones (4 VP), greater servitors (2VP), lesser servitors (1VP), and minions (0VP). The more powerful the old one, the larger and more complicated the combination of tiles needed to summon it. When summoned, great old ones and servitors provide victory points, and allow players to increase or convert the tile manipulation actions provided by their invoked card each turn. The servitors also reduce the configuration needed to evoke a particular great old one by 1 tile; using this discount causes lesser servitors to be discarded. Minions provide special powers, some of which can impact the tableaus of other players; however, compared with most Steve Jackson games these powers are fairly mild. These powers are depicted by icons on the bottom of the card. Players may only summon each of the 4 great old ones in the game only once, although there are multiple cards for these. Players may also have a maximum of 6 summoned old ones in their tableaus. After invoking and summoning, players may discard 1 card before drawing up to a hand of 5.
Game End and Winning
The first player to reach 10 or more points by the end of her turn wins instantly. This can be done by summoning 5 greater servitors, or 4 greater servitors and 2 lesser servitors. However, in practice it is hard to win without summoning at least 1 great old one.
Game Design and Strategy
This is a fairly abstract Eurogame, although the theme is not a bad fit. Most of the playing time is spent scanning the state of the grid at the beginning of your turn to see which of your 5 cards you can summon. This aspect of the game is vaguely reminiscent of Set, or Sudoku. The game is not a brain-burner so much as an eye-burner. In particular, trying to summon a great old one usually makes a player spend a long time scanning the grid. The game is not terribly long, but there is a significant amount of down time for its length. Although the tile grid manipulation feels like a puzzle game, the grid actually functions as a common resource pool for all players. I thoroughly enjoyed my games of The Starts Are Right, but in each of the games I played there was one player who had a bad time. I think the main action of game is quite enjoyable, as long as you are fairly good at visual-spatial tasks; players who are not will be kind of miserable. I found the game to be most enjoyable as a 2 player, and I would even give the 2 player version of the game a higher rating for substance. With 2 players, it becomes feasible to maneuver the stars you need into position over 2 turns, making the game much more strategic. With 4 players, whatever you do one turn will probably be undone by the time your next turn comes. Thus in multiplayer games the strategy is mostly about getting the servitors down to get the discounts on summoning the great old ones. Playing with fewer players also makes the game’s down-time more reasonable. It is tempting to hold on to all your great old one cards to try to summon them, but they provide the most invocation actions as well. It is pretty easy to cycle half your hand each turn, so it isn’t hard to get more great old one cards. It is also tempting to ignore the minion cards, since they don’t provide any victory points. However the minion powers increase your ability to manage your hand profoundly.
The game is good looking overall, and has good quality components. I like the card art, although a serious Cthulhu theme would have worked just as well and might have been more consistent with the game’s feel. Unfortunately, the cartoony artwork in combination with the Steve Jackson brand are probably going to steer away many of the people who would like this game. Which is too bad, because I think the game represents a potentially positive new direction for Steve Jackson’s company to take, making Eurogames with just a hint of that old, aggressive Amerogame feel. Its also nice to see Steve Jackson using somewhat better production values.
Summary
This is a good looking game, with good quality components, that players will either love or hate depending upon their facility with visual-spatial tasks. Although it looks like the next edition of Munchkin from the outside, it is actually an abstract Eurogame, centered around a puzzle mechanic that functions as a resource management mechanic, also involving hand management.
