Pegasus Spiele publishes new core game First Rat
Friedberg, Mar. 25, 2022: With First Rat, Pegasus Spiele recently published a new Core Game. Players move rat families across the board, gather resources and build a rocket to reach the moon made out of cheese. At the end of last year, an expansion for Bonfire has also been released.
In First Rat, players lead a family of rats aiming to build a rocket and fly to the moon, which they believe to be made out of cheese. On their turn, players will move one or multiple rats across the junkyard towards the rocket. The spaces along the way have different colours and different advantages, providing different resources or affecting different tracks on the board. While wandering across the board, the rats collect vinegar bottles, baking sodas, tin cans and calculators on orange and green spaces. Yellow spaces provide them with cheese, blue spaces allow players to shine light on the junkyard which helps them find more resources, and white spaces offer delicious apple cores. Additionally, helpful items like backpacks, energy drinks and bottle caps can be bought or stolen throughout the game. They provide players with more resources or additional points at the end of the game. To end their turn, players can build parts of the rocket by handing in the necessary building materials or donating cheese as provisions for the flight. For these achievements, players get to place a Score marker on one of the eight Score tracks. Depending on the position of the marker, players receive a certain number of points at the end.
A game of First Rat ends once one person moves their 4th rat onto the Launchpad or places their 8th Score marker. The player with the most points wins this tactical game by Gabriele Ausiello and Virginio Gigli. The Core Game is recommended for players ages ten and up and can be played with up to five people. It also includes a solo mode where the player competes against Greg the Robo-Rat. Numerous strategies as well as options to optimize turns, individual special abilities that can be acquired in the rat burrow and a variable set up offer a continuous challenge to all Rattronauts.
Another game for experienced players, Bonfire, an expert level game by designer Stefan Feld got an expansion at the end of last year when Bonfire: Trees & Creatures was released. In the base game, players have already gotten to know the world of Asperia and its inhabitants. Bonfire: Trees & Creatures lets them dive in even deeper. The expansion contains three modules: Ancient Trees, Creatures and Events, as well as game components for a fifth player and a sticker sheet for the resources. The modules can be added to the base game separately as well as in any combination and offer new options like special abilities or event cards.
