ASTERIX & CO (2025)

PLAYERS	TIME	DESIGNER	ARTIST	PUBLISHER
2-4	30 mins	François Rouzé Jean-Marc Tribet	–	Matagot

METHOD

This is lane battling with the Asterix theme gently laid over the top.

Players play character cards on either side of Albums in a bid to score the 15 or more points required to claim it. The first player to amount 50 points is the winner.

Now, where’s my magic potion?

POINTS OF INTEREST

Growing up as a kid, I was a big fan of the Asterix books. Any time we would visit the local library to take out some books, I would grab the next Asterix and Obelix adventure and be whisked off to another historically loose story, meeting up with an crazy cast of characters.

Decades later and I’d almost forgotten about the series. It was upon opening the game box and seeing all the character cards and cover art that I was sent spiralling back to my childhood, almost drowing in the nostaligia. It all came flooding back. I chewed my wife’s ear off as I cycled through the deck of cards explaining who all the major players were and any anecdotes I could remember.

My excitment levels to try this game went through the roof. But were they even close to being met?

My first impressions of the game brought me crashing down in a hurry. Most of this is based on the 2-player experince (which I’ll go into in more detail in the next section). Suffice to say that, the glow of my happy memories quickly dissipated.

But persist I did, and while the game didn’t fullfil the promise I’d asserted over it immediately after the unboxing, it improved somewhat on a wobbly first impression just enough to leave me with a mild smile

The game is a lane battler. Each turn you are playing cards to one of two Albums between you and another player. In a 3-4 player game this will be the players sat to your left and to your right. The cards you play have different values and you are trying to amount 15 pts across your face up cards at a location before your opponent does so as to claim the Album for yourself.

Of course, playing a card is only half the battle. Each card comes with a special little ability that can either improve your side of the fence, or really hinder your opponent. You can force players to flip cards face down, thus removing its points from the running. You can remove cards, brings others in from other locations or the discard pile, or win helmets (another way to score points).

And so it continues with you involved in two seperate tugs of war, playing cards, playing tokens that mess things up further, building your hand up more, and generally causing chaos.

There’s an interesting discision space as you can only play to one of your two accessible albums each turn. Do you focus on one, giving up the other, or pick at both little by little, distracting your opponents into having to match you more than they were hoping so as to not lose out?

Of course, choice might not always be an option. There are three colours of character cards; blue, red, and purple. The Albums are red and blue, fifty/fifty (except one special one) and this limits the cards you can to play to the end facing you. Purple are wild, but red and blue can only go on the matching red and blue end of the album. What is in your hand can dictate what you’re able to do on a turn, and it may mean wasting a go so as to burn your hand so as to draw new cards.

The card abilities, the KO mechanic, and the use of tokens all mean that the board state is always in flux. Everyone is always in the game, either by gaining a benifit for themselves, or seeing something mischeivous they can inflict on others. It also doesn’t outstay it’s welcome, with the win condition (50pts) being just right.

Obvioulsy we can’t talk about this game without talking about the art. The images are lifted right out from the comics. Every character card has the character fully illustrated. Some multiples (the main characters) show up in different poses. And the albums themselves each have a comic cover on the back. Of course, it’s a real shame that these spend most of the game hidden face down.

4-player games of ASTERIX & CO were a lot of fun. At first the game seemed simple, but the constant balancing of your hand to make sure you’re not suddenly blocked from going after an Album due to colour limitations, all while being best prepared for what your opponents might do to you, keeps you thinking on every turn. In a 4-player turn, there’s only one player who doesn’t directly affect you, so you’ll be paying attention most of the game.

The cards too were a lot of fun. If you know the characters enough, the powers they have are pretty thematic.

Overall it’s a decent lane battler.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

I’ll get my biggest issue with this game out the way now. The box states 2-4 players, but this does not work in 2-player.

That’s technically a lie, because it does work at that low player count, but the game doesn’t have the same fun vibe and intersting choices you’ll get when facing off against two different people from either direction.

And it’s tough to put my finger on exactly how it falls apart, but it does. In a 2-player game you have two different albums between you and your opponent. One with red facing you and one with blue, so that it starts off equal. In theory it shouldn’t feel different to the higher player counts because in those, you still only have one end of two different Albums at your disposal.

But vieing for two lanes with the same opponent seems to disrupt the flow and the mind games. A different player offers a different playstyle. This throws more into the mix when you’re deciding the best course of action each turn.

But playing against the same person for both Albums felt sterile and it was easy to fall into a downward sprial of losing one, losing the other, and so on. Because that other player has their own single hand of cards, and they can see the backs of yours to know what you’ve mostly got, they can place a new Album to be more advantageous, effectivly blocking you out.

For example, if you have only red cards, and they have mostly red cards, they’ll choose the next album to face red towards them, having two lanes that they can start adding to, while you’re stuck, unable to play red cards to the two blue ends before you. You’ll take a few turns to correct this (prehaps being lucky with your card draw) only to find that your opponent has an advantage too far out of reach now and is about to take both Albums before you can stop them.

It’s hard to really explain more than this, but the issue doesn’t seem to come up in higher player counts because each opponent has their own, individul hand of cards and different motivations related to their other opponent. If you want to go head to head in a lane battler, play SCHOTTEN TOTTEN.

Then there is the theme, which is a double edged sword. If your a fan of Asterix, there are a lot of little nods to the source material to make you reminise and bring out a smile. But if you don’t know anything about the series, these are just coloured cards with numbers and powers, none of which tie in to the oddly name characters you hold in your hand. Obviously the source material is French, and the publisher is French, so it most likely isn’t an issue there. But outside of France, there is perhaps a limited market for the game being skinned this way.

And finally, there’s the artwork for certain characters themselves. Now, I understand that these comics were of a different era and, bnack then, certain races were depicted in certain stereotypical ways. Growing up, my understading of the racial politics would have been limited, flying over my smaller, more hair covered head.

But thumbing through the deck of cards after the game arrived, I definitely winced a couple of times when discovering certain characters had been included in the game. With what happened recently with Devir’s THE GANG, I’m surprised I’ve not seen more mentioned about ASTERIX & CO in the same regards.

Again, the books and the art come from a different time, and their includsion in the comics is something that would remain unaltered because of it’s histroical contect. But I find it odd that the publisher left these racial caricatures in the game, especially when there is an army of other characters from the books that could have easily taken the spots. It puts a dark cloud over the game overall.

EXTRA CONTENT?

At the time of this review there are no expansions.

FOR 2-PLAYERS?

I’ve already mentioned my thoughts on the 2-player version of the game. It just doesn’t work, and I would not play it again without a full quota.

– – CONCLUSION – – What appears as a fun lane battler, putting you up against two different opponents at the same time, eventually drifts off for most due to a theme many might not click with, and has a small issue with some of the depicted artwork chosen for some characters. I like the idea and the mechanics, and my trip down memory lane was most welcome, but it’s a tough one to fully recommend. Good, but not great.

Review #0218

[ Review copy supplied by Hatchette UK, obtained through the UKBG Review Circle – thoughts and views are my own ]