Designers: Wei-Hwa Huang, Thomas Lehmann

When it comes to a list of my favorite games to play, Race For The Galaxy is one that falls into the category of games that I like to call “love to play them, hate to teach them”.  That is to say, I think its a fantastic game, I will happily pull it out and play it but only with people who already know how to play.  Trying to teach Race for the Galaxy is a bloody nightmare to the point that I almost never do it.

Along comes Roll For The Galaxy, a dice based version of the same game, in the same style by the same designer.  The concept and goal is the same, build up your space empire by colonizing planets, discover technologies and of course doing it faster and better than the other guys.  Like Race for the Galaxy, Roll For The Galaxy is a race to the finish line but instead of cards, it uses a combination of tiles and dice.

Overview

Final Score:  (3.9 out of 5 Stars)

Roll For The Galaxy is a game of resource management and while its driven by dice, unlike most dice based games there is not that much luck involved.  Its really a game of manipulating your dice (resources) to create the most optimal engine that scores the most points.

Now the fun part about both Race for the Galaxy and now Roll For The Galaxy is that you have limited control over which phases will be played during a round and its in this roll selection mechanic much of the games strategy takes place.  You have to try to guess what your opponents will do, guess right and you can leverage their chosen actions as well as your own.  This is how you really get the edge in Roll For The Galaxy and as such its both a game of resource management and reading minds.

 

Components

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Pros:  Streamlined, clear and easy to understand iconography supported by explained text on everything makes learning the game easy, high quality tiles and dice.

Cons:  Player mats are a bit flimsy, the insert is too small to fit all components so you have to pull it out to fit everything.

Rio Grande Games has a mixed reputation when it comes to component quality but with b Roll For The Galaxy they really put in the effort here.  The quality of the tiles is the absolute best it can be, the dice quality is also above grade and while some of the player mats are a bit flimsy there are some nice organizational touches here that make every component very handy for streamlining gameplay.

You have shields to hide your dice area, cups for collecting and rolling dice and there is fantastic organization of information on everything.  Really most of the components act as player aides so while the game has a lot of iconography like Race for the Galaxy did, its less confusing because the rules of each icon are always spelled out on the tile or player mat.  This makes the game very easy to reference and easier to pick up.

My biggest complaint about Race for the Galaxy is the difficulty in teaching it and this is largely due to the fact that the game has a ton of Iconography and its not explained anywhere in the player components, its all stored in the rule-book or index card requiring constant reference.  In Roll For The Galaxy they have solved this problem and its a huge blessing, deserving of all my praise.

Roll for the Galaxy is not a complex game, but there are a lot of special powers on the tiles, unique actions and a variety of special rules.  Thanks to the layout of the games components however, it all becomes second nature after a couple of rounds of play.

While there was quite a bit of art pulled from Race of the Galaxy, the majority of it is new and this was also a great decision.  The game feels fresh and the art work is colorful and themed just right even if you already own and have played Race For The Galaxy.

All and all the component quality here is really fantastic, I see little to complain about other then the player mats which are a bit flimsy and will definitely wear and tear over time.  The insert was also really bad, it doesn’t leave enough room in the box to fit everything so I had to throw it out.  Not really a big deal, but you have to wonder what they where thinking.

Theme

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Pros: A sense of “race” remains in the game, art work does a lot to promote the theme.

Cons: Very abstracted and disconnected in most places.

Rio Grande Games generally makes Euro style games and Roll For The Galaxy, despite being a dice based game, is very much a Euro game.  Despite its roots, Roll For the Galaxy has more theme then most Euros.  Your building a space empire, playing out improvements, technologies, installing governments and colonizing planets.  All the science-fiction bells and whistles are here supported by great art that heightens the perception.

That said the game is not really particularly thematic, its all very abstracted, though in a dice game this is a given.  Its clear that everything that could be done to make this game thematic was, but it still does not result in an overwhelming sense of time and place.  It works well as a science-fiction theme and being based on Race for the Galaxy it retains that “space race” feel, but the theme here is pretty interchangeable, it could have just as well been themed to be medevil Mediterranean trading or well pretty much anything with trading and exploration.

I don’t think this really has much impact on the game though, you don’t really sit down to it expecting a thematic experience.  Its a fairly short, strategic dice game with roll selection and resource management.  The mind games of trying to guess your opponent strategy and intended action each turn is a lot of fun, but I’m not sure how that ties into the theme at all.

Needless to say the theme is sufficient, but isn’t going to overwhelm the senses and that’s just fine.

Gameplay

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Pros: Great core mechanics, streamlined and fun.  The game pace and timing is just right in the sweet spot.

Cons: Very little player interaction.

I consider gameplay to be of utmost importance in a game like this as it involves dice and that is very easy to fuck up.  In fact, I would say the overwhelming majority of dice games are huge disappointments to me so when I find a good one like Roll For The Galaxy its cause to celebrate.

Roll For The Galaxy functions on several levels, its actually far deeper than any dice game I have played before to the point where I’m not sure it fully qualifies as a dice game in the sames sense that Voyage of Marco Polo or Kingsburg may arguably might be considered to be in a category other than dice game.

On the surface its a game of resource management.  You roll dice in your cup which represents your available resources or work force.  The icons on the dice determine what options are available to you although there are countless ways to manipulate the results, in particular once you get a few developments into play.  Your also managing your money to bring already used workers back into your cup for your next turn.  There is a kind of engine here you have to coordinate to ensure you always have some resources to work with and much of the strategy of the game revolves around this cycle.

On the second level you have your action for the round.  Each round you will select one of the five possible actions to take, however each player does the same thing.  Only the actions selected by the player will be triggered, and since you assign dice to actions at the start of each turn, guessing correctly what actions your opponents will take will allow you to take both your action and the actions of your opponents.  This is a kind of mini game of trying to deduce what your opponents will do, its both a big part of the strategy and fun of the game.  Guessing correctly on a regular basis means you will gain a big advantage over time, as will your opponents.  Which again flips things where you don’t want to be obvious with your actions to prevent your opponents from guessing correctly.  Its really a kind of fun mind game, it can even create a bit of Analysis Paralysis.  I really love this aspect of the game.

Finally their is the third layer where you decide what planets to colonize and what developments to build.  Here you have another engine where you explore tiles by pulling them out of a bag when taking the explore action, then choose which tiles to develop.  This is where you will build your long term strategy, a critical component to being successful in the game as the tiles both give you advantages like more dice for your cup, ways to manipulate dice or just outright score points.  The tiles themselves are also worth points and generally the more resources it takes to put a tile into play the more its worth, but of course the longer it takes to get into play.  Its a fine balance of tough decisions requiring you to have a flexible and well thought out strategy.  It is also the trigger for the end game, once any player has 12 tiles out, at the end of the round the game ends.  So there is strategy to how fast you develop, do you go for big hard to put out tiles to score big points, or do you rush to the finish line with lots of smaller tiles.

All of these elements come together to create a very thinky, very engaging game that far exceeds the expectations you might have of a simple dice game.  Much like Race for the Galaxy there is not a tremendous amount of interaction between players, its effectively a space race to see who can do it faster and better, but the game is sufficiently short that this does not become a problem.  You’re really focused on your own stuff, but because of the role selection mechanic your always keeping a close eye on what your opponents are doing in anticipation of having to guess what actions they will take.  It works really well to keep players interested in each others progress despite not really having much you can do to affect it negatively.

I absolutely adored the gameplay in this game, it has the exact same concept/premise of Race For the Galaxy, with the same feeling, but without the overly complex Iconography to slow the game down.  Its very easy to teach and learn and its very short even with a full complement of players.  Its a really great warm up game, yet it has sufficient depth to keep veteran players engaged and interested.

Replay-ability and Longevity

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Pros: Scales well, dynamic starts and plenty of randomization to create new experiences each time you play.

Cons: Nothing to complain about

Its really hard to measure the longevity of a game like this, but I think the fact that its a fairly short game (typically under an hour) its replay-ability ratio is very high.  I can see this acting as a warm up game for a lot of game sessions in particular because it scales so well with any player count.

The randomness of tile draws and dice rolling ensure that you are never going to play the same game twice, in fact, I would say even your strategy is very dynamic.  You are going to base a lot of your strategy on what tiles you start with and what tiles you draw, so your not going to walk into this game with a “this is how you win this game” pre-planned strategy.  Every game is different, requiring a different approach,  which does wonders for replay-ability.

Very little to complain about here, its easy to teach and learn, so you really can pull it out at any game session without fear.  It has a great dynamic start ensuring your going to be seeing the game through new eyes each time you play.  Just a good solid mechanic with plenty to explore.

Conclusion

Roll For The Galaxy has turned out to be one of the most solid titles to come out of Rio Grande for quite a while in my eyes.  It definitely surpasses its predecessor Race For The Galaxy and despite being a dice game, its a very strategic game well in the control of the player.  Lady luck plays her part but not nearly to the extent one might imagine in a dice game.

This is a multifaceted game that works on a fairly wide range of depth, yet manages to be easy to understand throughout.  It scales really well, it has a short play time that really hits the sweet spot for warm up games and there is plenty of exploration for repeated plays.

Definitely a highly recommended title for Race For The Galaxy fans and fans of dice games, but really this game is far more than the sum of its part.  This is a thinky, strategic game, worthy of the shelf space of any gamer out there.