Asterix & Co
- Board's Eye View
- Aug 13
- 3 min read
Designed by Francois Rouzé and Jean-Marc Tribet, Asterix & Co is a competitive card game for 2-4 players published by Matagot and No Loading Games. It's distributed in the UK by Hachette Boardgames and it's set in the Asterix universe portraying the conflict between the Gauls and the Romans but tho' it features many characters from the Franco-Belgian comic, you don't play as any of the characters or even as Gauls vs Romans; instead, each player uses both Gallic and Roman cards.
Players are competing to earn tropies that are worth Roman sesterce: a legionnaire's helmet is worth 1 sesterce, a centurian's helmet is worth 3 sesterces but the main cut and thrust of the game is over 'Albums', worth 15 sesterces (the Asterix graphic novels are usually referred to as albums and, in a rather nice touch, the reverse side of each the 26 Albums shows the design of a different Asterix album/graphic novel). Albums all have a Gallic half and a Roman half, and they are placed between each player so that there's a Gallic side on their left and a Roman side on their right. Each Album is affected by its own unique rule or condition.
Players have three 'bonus tokens' and starting hands of five cards, and these may be a mix of Gaul or Roman faction cards, possibly with some unaligned cards. On your turn you can play a card or draw a card and use a bonus token. When you play a card you play it to the side to which it is aligned, with non-aligned characters playable to either side. Most cards can be played without any other limitation but a few can only be played if you meet their stated additional requirements; for example, Tullius Octopus can only be played to an Album with a legionary or centurian. When you play a card you can activate its special power; so, for example, Panacea knocks out the weakest Roman on the Album (flip the knocked out card so it no longer contributes its strength). To win an Album you need the faction on your side of it to reach or exceed a total strength of 15 points, so this is essentially an area-control wargame.
As an alternative to playing a card on your turn, you can draw a card to add it to your hand and then play one of your bonus tokens. When the Potion token is placed on a character card it doubles its strength and protects it from other effects. You can slap a character with a Fish token to knock them out, provided of course they aren't protected with a Potion token. When you play the Boar token you can either duplicate the power of the last character you played on either Album or you can revive a knocked out character (tho' you don't get to activate its power). Finally, you have the option on your turn of discarding any number of cards and drawing back up to a hand size of five cards.
That's pretty much the entire game in a nutshell so it's a light, easy-to-play, hand management game that plays in around 30 minutes. We've especially enjoyed Asterix & Co with three players, so that each player has their Gauls against one player and their Romans against the other. If you're a fan of René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo's Asterix cartoon, Matagot and No Loading Game's Asterix & Co will surely be a must buy. One or two diehard Asterix fans on the Board's Eye View team initially voiced disappointment that the game didn't directly pit a team of Gauls against a team of Romans but even they quickly got into the swing of things. The only remaining gripe was that all the Gaul cards have blue backs while the Roman and non-aligned cards all have red backs. That means that tho' you don't know exactly what cards an opponent holds you do have a strong indication of which Albums they can play to. That knowledge can inform players' tactics and which cards they choose to play. If you like that aspect, you might consider a house rule of offering separate red and blue draw piles for players to choose between when drawing cards. On the other hand, if you prefer to play without that information you can just sleeve the cards in opaque-back sleeves.
