“All ahead full!” The Captain yelled as the airship pulled away from the Teacup dock and out into the violent storm that raged across the void between worlds. The sky shook with cannon fire and wild vultures attacked the rigging and the crew, but it was okay, the Captain trusted to his magic spyglass, everything would be fine.
Celestia is a retheming of Cloud 9, but it is done so in a beautiful package with stunning art and visually wonderful pieces. Each turn a player takes on the role of the Captain and rolls the dice. The players in turn then decided to stay in the ship, trusting the captain has the cards they need, or to abandon ship and take a treasure from their floating port. The first player to reach 50 points worth of treasure is the winner.
The a Little Help expansion adds a small number of cards to the game and increases the complexity only slightly. It adds Double cards, these have two symbols of the same type on them allowing you to use them to pay for two matching dice with a single card. They also add the Helping Hand Cards. After all passengers have spoken, the captain can declare he doesn’t have the cards he needs. Players may then play Helping Hand cards that match the missing symbols to stay afloat.
Finally it adds two more misfortune cards, the first forces the captain to roll an extra dice, the second is played after cards have been played to stop the airship moving. Both are mean but fun additions.
The A Little Help expansion is an inexpensive add on for a wonderful little game. Is it necessary? No not really but it allows for more interaction between the players and even with the helping hand cards the ship still crashes more often than not. If you like Celestia I would recommend picking it up and throwing it in the box, it has variable player powers if you want to shake things up and the special cards are easy to teach once everyone is familiar with the base game.