❥ Stella: DIxit Universe
3 - 6 players
30 min
Age: 8 +
Weight: 1.11/5
Publisher: Libellud - Asmodee
Stella is a game about associations of ideas and interpretations of images. In each round, the players must secretly match different Dixit cards to the word.
❥ How do you play Stella?
Each player gets a personal player board, marker and lantern token in their own color. The game board is put down. Shuffle the Dixit cards and place three rows of five cards next to each other. The remaining cards form the draw pile. At Stella there are 4 consecutive rounds that consist of the following steps:
1. Associate
A word card is turned over that will be played with this round. Take a good look at all the cards, which cards do you associate with the word? Secretly you will tick these cards on your own player board. This is a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 10.
2. Announce
In this phase you reveal how many cards you have associated with the word. You do this by using your lantern chip. You place it on the number equal to your number of cards. The player with the highest number turns over the lantern token to the 'dark side'.
3. Reveal
Each player takes turns revealing which cards they chose to match the word. If you chose the same cards as your opponent, you score points. If no one else has chosen the same card, it will cost you dearly... There are three situations.
The Spark - if several players have chosen the same cards, they get a spark. All these players color two stars in the corresponding box.
The Super Spark - If only one other player has picked the same card, they both get the Super Spark. You then color two stars plus the bonus star (star with the circle around it).
The trap - If no other player has chosen the same card, you 'fall'. Players who have fallen can no longer collect stars.
4. Scoring
In this step, all players count the stars they have colored in this round. Each star counts as one point. You enter this per color on the results board. Players in the dark must not make any mistakes or score normally. If they do, they must subtract one star from their total score for each spark and super spark.
When all the scores have been written down, you start the new round. You clear your player board, 5 cards in a row are replaced and you take a new word card. After the fourth round, the game ends.
❥ My Thoughts
I'm a real fan of Dixit so this edition could not be missing in my collection. First of all, I think the artwork of the box is really cool. The illustrated Dixit cards in this are really beautiful. Stella has a nice twist compared to Dixit, in which you as the narrator give a sentence or word after which each player lays down a card. In Stella you will associate different Dixit cards with that word by means of a word (from the word card). You tick this on your own player board. To score points you hope that one or more opponents have also chosen this card. That's how you score points. If not, your points will be halved for this round.
Stella is an addition to the Dixit series. Which means that all cards that come with Dixit can also be used with Stella, and vice versa. Given the amount of expansions of Dixit (9) you can vary a lot with this. There are also plenty of word cards to play with, you only use 4 per game. In addition, there are also blank word cards so that you can add words yourself.
I really think Stella is a fantastic game and I even think I'd pick this one up before the original: Dixit. I really like the way of playing and the choice of cards. You have to pay attention and make sure that you do not pick the most cards and therefore fall and score fewer points. What I always regret is that Dixit, and also Stella, can only be played from 3 players. It is of course a party game that is also much more fun with more players, even more than three players. This is one reason Stella hasn't been on the table very often. But I will definitely change that!