{"id":536,"date":"2012-05-01T08:56:38","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T08:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/?p=536"},"modified":"2018-01-05T17:02:28","modified_gmt":"2018-01-05T17:02:28","slug":"sic-itur-ad-astra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/blog\/2012\/05\/01\/sic-itur-ad-astra\/","title":{"rendered":"Sic itur ad astra"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Explorez la galaxie, d\u00e9couvrez les myst\u00e9rieux artefacts laiss\u00e9s par des civilisations depuis longtemps disaprues, d\u00e9barquez sur des mondes inhabit\u00e9s pour en exploiter les ressources naturelles, construisez des bases, des usines et de gigantesques vaisseaux spatiaux, terraformez et colonisez les plan\u00e8tes lointaines.<\/p>\n

Le th\u00e8me et le look de ce jeu pourraient faire croire \u00e0 un grand jeu de conqu\u00eate \u00e0 l’am\u00e9ricaine. Ne vous y trompez pourtant pas, Ad Astra est un “eurogame”, un jeu “\u00e0 l’allemande”.<\/p>\n

Histoire du jeu<\/strong><\/p>\n

Depuis longtemps, Serge Laget et moi voulions faire ensemble un “gros” jeu, exp\u00e9rience que nous n\u2019avions pas renouvel\u00e9e depuis Myst\u00e8re \u00e0 l\u2019Abbaye, malgr\u00e9 quelques \u00e9bauches vite abandonn\u00e9es. Serge est tr\u00e8s branch\u00e9 science-fiction ; je suis rest\u00e9 un fan des colons de Catan. Un soir, au t\u00e9l\u00e9phone, tout cela se m\u00e9langea pour donner un cahier des charges relativement simple : un gros jeu d\u2019exploration et de d\u00e9veloppement d\u2019un empire spatial, b\u00e2ti sur un syst\u00e8me de ressources fa\u00e7on Catan.<\/p>\n

Quelques jours plus tard, un vendredi soir, Serge d\u00e9barquait \u00e0 Avignon, et nous nous m\u00eemes aussit\u00f4t au travail. Serge, en connaisseur des poncifs de la SF, insista sur la possibilit\u00e9 de terraformer les plan\u00e8tes. Je parvins \u00e0 recycler un syst\u00e8me de programmation \u00e0 l\u2019aide de cartes cach\u00e9es que j\u2019avais un temps envisag\u00e9 pour Warrior Knights. Toutes les pi\u00e8ces du puzzle s\u2019imbriquant parfaitement, chacun rebondit sur les id\u00e9es de l\u2019autre, et apr\u00e8s une dizaine d\u2019heures, nous avions un premier prototype, fait des cartes action imprim\u00e9es \u00e0 la va-vite sur du bristol, de pi\u00e8ces r\u00e9cup\u00e9r\u00e9es dans divers jeux, et de plan\u00e8tes griffonn\u00e9es sur des disques de carton. Autant vous rassurer tout de suite, cela se passe rarement ainsi. La gestation d\u2019un jeu est habituellement bien plus longue et difficile, et il faut g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement des semaines, voire des mois de r\u00e9flexion avant la r\u00e9alisation du premier prototype. Si cet historique est plus bref que celui de la plupart des mes autres jeux, c\u2019est donc tout simplement parce que l\u2019histoire de Ad Astra est assez simple et courte.<\/p>\n

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La toute premi\u00e8re partie d’Ad Astra
The very first game of Ad Astra<\/p><\/div>\n

Le samedi soir, j\u2019invitai donc quelques amis pour une premi\u00e8re partie, qui permit de valider l\u2019ensemble des m\u00e9canismes – exploration, d\u00e9couverte, production, programmation, construction, mouvement, terraformation, tout fonctionnait parfaitement, \u00e0 l\u2019exception du syst\u00e8me de score, qui allait encore demander un peu de r\u00e9flexions. Il ne nous restait donc qu\u2019\u00e0 faire les r\u00e9glages – d\u00e9terminer la r\u00e9partition des plan\u00e8tes produisant les diff\u00e9rentes ressources, les ressources pr\u00e9cises n\u00e9cessaires pour chaque d\u00e9veloppement, le nombre de points de victoire rapport\u00e9s par chaque \u00e9l\u00e9ment de jeu. De simples ajustements, certes, mais qui pour un jeu ambitieux n\u00e9cessitant un \u00e9quilibre parfait entre les diff\u00e9rentes strat\u00e9gies possibles, demand\u00e8rent une centaine de parties, et autant de coups de t\u00e9l\u00e9phone entre Lyon et Avignon.<\/p>\n

Notre prototype, baptis\u00e9 Andromeda, puis Cassiopeia, suscita beaucoup d\u2019int\u00e9r\u00eat chez les \u00e9diteurs. Il faillit \u00eatre publi\u00e9 par nos amis de Days of Wonder, Cyrille r\u00e9alisant m\u00eame une tr\u00e8s jolie maquette. Apr\u00e8s quelques d\u00e9tours par l’Allemagne, le jeu se retrouva finalement chez les italiens de Nexus, qui firent un bon boulot d’\u00e9dition… mais disparurent quelques mois plus tard. Ad Astra ne sera donc pas r\u00e9imprim\u00e9, du moins pour l’instant, et l’extension que nous avions pr\u00e9vue ne sortira jamais. C’est un peu dommage, c’est un bon jeu dont Serge et moi restons tr\u00e8s fier. Il doit encore en rester dans quelques boutiques.<\/p>\n

Ad Astra<\/strong><\/span>
\n Un jeu de Bruno Faidutti & Serge Laget<\/span>
\nIllustr\u00e9 par Justin Albers & Kieran Yanner<\/span>
\n 3 \u00e0 5 joueurs \u2013 60 minutes<\/span>
\n Publi\u00e9 par Nexus (2009)<\/span>
\nLudovox<\/a> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Vind’jeu<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tric Trac<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Boardgamegeek<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

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Explore the galaxy, find the mysterious artifacts of long lost alien civilizations, land on uninhabited worlds and mine their precious ores, build living bases, factories and huge spaceships, terraform and colonize faraway planets…<\/em><\/p>\n

The theme and graphic style of this game could make you think it’s an american style conquest and exploration game. It is not. Ad Astra is definitely a “Eurogame”.<\/em><\/p>\n

History of the Game<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

For a few years, Serge Laget and I wanted to work together on a “heavy” game, something we had done only once, with Mystery of the Abbey. We had tried several times since, but none of our projects had gone very far. Serge is a science-fiction fan, I\u2019m a Settlers of Catan fan. One evening, on the phone, these two facts merged into one simple idea – a big science fiction game about space exploration and empire development using a “Catan-like” resource and building system.<\/em><\/p>\n

A few days later, on Friday night,\u00a0 Serge was here in Avignon and we immediately started to work on this common design – and things went incredibly fast. Serge knows all Sci-fi clich\u00e9s, and insisted on terraforming. I managed to recycle a face down card programming system I had once thought of using in Warrior Knights. All the pieces of our puzzle went together well, each one of us bounced on the other one\u2019s ideas, and after ten hours of uninterrumpted work, we had a first prototype, with rough action cards, cardboard planet disks with drawn symbols, and pieces from various other games. Of course, it usually doesn\u2019t happen that way. Most games usually need weeks, or even months, of thought and debate before realizing a first prototype. If this “history of the game” page is much shorter than for most of my other games, it\u2019s simply because the story of the game design was short, simple, and straightforward.<\/em><\/p>\n

On Saturday night, I called a few friends to play a first game. As a result, all global rules system were validated – exploration, discovery, production, programmation, building, movement, terraforming, everything worked well – the only exception being the scoring system, which needed a few more games before being satisfactory. So the game only needed tuning, but it needed a lot of fine tuning to decide of the planet distribution, the resources needed for every development, the number of victory points for ever game element, and so on. The game was nearly finalized after a first game session, but it needed a hundred more, and as many phone calls between Avignon and Lyon, before we were completely satisfied with it.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Bruno Cathala commente le prototype d’Ad Astra
Bruno Cathala comments on the Ad Astra prototype<\/p><\/div>\n

The prototype was first called Andromeda, then Cassiopeia, and many publishers showed some interest in it. Our friends from Days of Wonder hesitated for a few months, and Cyrille even designed a wonderful prototype. After a few months in Germany, the prototype ended in Italy. Nexus made a great edition and production work… But went out of business a few months later. This means Ad Astra won’t be reprinted, at least for the moment, and the planned expansion won’t be published. It’s a shame, since Serge and I are very proud of this design. There ought to be still a few copies left in some shops.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ad Astra<\/strong><\/span><\/em>
\n by Bruno Faidutti and Serge Laget<\/span><\/em>
\nArt by\u00a0Justin Albers & Kieran Yanner<\/span><\/em>
\n 3 to 5 players\u00a0 \u2013 60 minutes<\/span><\/em>
\n Published by Nexus (2009)<\/span><\/em>
\nBoardgamegeek<\/a><\/em>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Explorez la galaxie, d\u00e9couvrez les myst\u00e9rieux artefacts laiss\u00e9s par des civilisations depuis longtemps disaprues, d\u00e9barquez sur des mondes inhabit\u00e9s pour en exploiter les ressources naturelles, construisez des bases, des usines et de gigantesques vaisseaux spatiaux, terraformez et colonisez les plan\u00e8tes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[359,236,61],"class_list":["post-536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ad-astra","tag-ad-astra","tag-science-fiction","tag-serge-laget"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2HNOP-8E","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9074,"href":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536\/revisions\/9074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}