Aldebaran Duel is a 2-player (with a solo mode) card-based battle for dominance of a newly discovered planetary system. It’s designed by Vladimír Suchý, also responsible for games such as the award-winning Underwater Cities, and published in 2023 by Czech toy and game maker Dino Toys s.r.o.
Gameplay Overview
Aldebaran Duel plays over 3 ‘epochs,’ which are sequences of player turns until both players pass or cards run out. Besides passing on their turn, players can either draw or play cards. The drafting cards are arranged in 3 rows of 2 cards, where cards on the top row cost 3 units, the middle 2 and the bottom row 1; players have a total of 3 units to spend on their cards, so can choose to take 1 from the top row into their hand, 2 from the bottom row, or 1 from the middle and 1 from the bottom. The remaining cards are slid down to fill gaps (thus becoming cheaper for the next draw), more added to the top from the deck.
Cards have a cost when played, indicated on the left, and each card has a resource symbol on the bottom left. If you want to play a card, you need to discard other cards with symbols matching the cost—though moving along the resource production scale allows players to offset some of that cost. When played, a card will have different effects, depending on the type of card:
- Production station cards will let players move their marker along the matching production scale;
- Space shuttle cards similarly increment military, trade or diplomacy scales, which affect scoring at the end of the epoch;
- Planet cards offer the potential for scoring a good number of points as well as increasing production, but only when fully colonised—the card shows a disc divided into quadrants, some of which are outlined in white, indicating they’re ready for colonisation;
- Colonisation cards have a coloured quadrant in their top right corner, indicating where they’ll fit on a planet card, and when you place a colonisation card, you gain its benefits immediately, as well as the planet’s when it’s completely colonised (i.e., all 4 quadrants are filled in); and
- Colonisation ships can be added to fully colonised planets to gain more resources.
Planet, colonisation and colonisation ship cards also have space object symbols, letting the player collect matching tokens, which contribute to scoring at the end.
Players take turns until either the current epoch’s cards run out or both players have passed. At epoch end, players can play one of their science cards, scoring points and taking advantage of immediate or ongoing effects. After this, the players’ military, trade and diplomacy values are used to determine a position on the influence board, providing more points.
The next epoch begins, using the appropriate card deck, and this repeats until the third epoch ends, signalling the end of the game. The various space objects that players have collected during the game contribute to the final score via a messy set of formulae, as does progress on a set of objectives randomly selected at the beginning of the game.
The player with the higher score is the winner.
Aldebaran Duel also offers a beat-your-high-score solo mode, with a deck of solo cards determining what action an opponent bot takes. The game plays as normal, with the bot passing (i.e., ending the epoch) as soon as you do.
Verdict
Aldebaran Duel’s rules are fairly straightforward and easy to pick up, and play is quick.
The card playing aspect of this game is fun and requires a fair amount of thought, deciding which cards to keep and which to sacrifice to play another. I’m not so keen on the influence board, as gaining a beneficial position early in the game means you’re likely to capitalise on it in the following epochs—resetting the board between epochs could reduce this bias. The space object scoring at the end feels unnecessarily fiddly, but at least it happens only once. Science cards provide interesting player asymmetries, and the range from which you choose leads to a decent amount of replayability of the game, though I would suggest omitting them for the first couple of plays of the game. Finally, although the solo mode is merely a beat-your-score game, the bot’s actions work nicely to simulate an opponent’s behaviour.
Construction is solid, though the box is a tad larger than it needs to be. (I’m not entirely sure why the influence board is supplied folded in half when its easily fits in the box unfolded.)
Overall, a good, mid-range game with nice space theming, and thinky enough to live on my shelf.
About the author
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
