Most table top gamers, whether of the board or pen & paper variety, will I’m sure admit their relationship with dice is…volatile. There is of course the exception to the rule, that smug friend who seems to have been granted mastery over the pips in exchange (I hope) for their soul, rolling natural 20s and making checks like they’re Yngwie Malmsteen at a kindergarten talent competition. But for the rest of us mortals, we ride the rollercoaster of randomness, never quite sure if the ride will end in screams of delight or an expensive laundromat bill. But that’s part of the attraction, isn’t it? Dice are the great equaliser, the pebble in David’s sling to bring the giants of strategic rumination to their knees. They issue judgement with a finality no lawyer would dare appeal, which tangentially is a quite fascinating quirk of human behaviour. We’ll fight tooth and nail over the interpretation of a rule, but once a die has given its proclamation, we accept the verdict as harsh as it may be, with nary a quibble. But I digress. So what is to be done when you desire the tactile joy of rolling dice but you dislike the severity of pure chance? Or put another way, when love and hate collide? If we’re to follow the wisdom of Def Leppard, ‘you could have a change of heart if you would only change your mind’.
How to reconcile dice with strategic depth has been a holy grail of sorts for boardgame designers, the search for which has until now been met with varying degrees of success. Even Euros, whose once mighty walls kept all manner of geometrical chance-takers at bay, have come to an uneasy alliance with these upstarts. In my personal opinion, as effective an implementation as has been achieved in certain instances, the collision has still witnessed collateral damage. On the thematic front, games that have attempted to employ dice in a slightly more strategic manner invariably end up with an imbalance in terms of desirability of available actions. Take Dead of Winter, for example. The dice aren’t simply making win/lose judgements, they’re all being utilised to govern what your characters can and can’t do. And as important as all of those actions are to surviving, let’s be honest; being able to attack zombies or search for items is far more satisfying then cleaning waste piles and erecting barricades. Conversely, when dice make an appearance in Euros, for the most part they lack the more tangibly pleasing aspect. It’s as if they’ve been implemented to incorporate a manageable element of chance, but are used in such a precise manner that it completely negates that distinctive clatter and sharp intake of breath that is at the heart of why we love rolling dice.
Resistance is Futile
This is the state of the board, as such, that sees Roll for the Galaxy enter the fray. A quick mention of Roll’s big brother for context; Race for the Galaxy was released in 2007 by designer Thomas Lehman, and it currently sits at rank #23 on BoardGameGeek’s bonafide chart of, like, the best games ever. So you know it must be something special indeed. It’s a game about building a galactic civilisation through exploration, commerce and the development of technology. If I had to attempt an in-depth analysis of why Race has been so successful, I reckon that success could be distilled into a handful of elements: clever cardplay, a high level of replayability and a relatively quick playtime thanks to simultaneous play. But the iconography proved to be fairly intimidating to new players, and an often confusing and opaque first game experience has certainly meant a large portion of the gaming populace gave Race a miss. There are also currently five expansions for the base game, and it’s important to note that with each level of added complexity, the favourable response to these expansions has been inversely proportional. I can’t say why Lehman decided to reinvent Race, but I can certainly see why he may have wanted to. As great as Race for the Galaxy is, there’s room for a lot of improvement and I have always felt as if there was a truly great game lurking between Race’s cards, waiting to break free.
Is Roll for the Galaxy that truly great game? I’m not going to make you wait until the end of the review – yes, it is. Roll may very well be my game of the year. Buy it, borrow it, play it. That’s really all you need to know at this point. Thanks for reading!
Live Long and Prosper
Still here? Well, okay then, I suppose I should at least attempt to substantiate my opinion. This time, Lehmann has collaborated with former US World Puzzle Championship team member Wei-Hwa Huang. It’s never easy, I’m sure, allowing someone else to pick apart your own creation, but it’s a credit to Lehman’s desire to offer a significantly different experience, and it’s a collaboration that absolutely pays off. But let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? Roll remains a race of sorts to see who can expand their galactic empire in the most explosive manner through five distinct phases. Exploration, in which you’ll travel uncharted space in the hopes of discovering new worlds and new technologies. Development and Settle, which allows you to bring those technologies to fruition and settle those new worlds. Produce, whereby planets or technologies allow you to manufacture commercial goods. And Ship, which allows you to convert goods to improve your cashflow or increase your galactic standings. In Race, these objectives were all governed by playing cards, which could perform the duel function of either representing a new planet/development, or the necessary fuel to activate one. Roll reinvents this approach by removing the card play, and using a mixture of tiles and dice to perform those same objectives. And it’s the incredibly prescient execution of incorporating the dice that elevates Roll for the Galaxy to greatness.
You like dice? Well, this is the dice jackpot, man. 111 of them, to be exact, in an array of pleasing hues. These dice are also your workforce, with all the pros and cons attached. Some are better qualified in certain areas than others, some you’ll develop a slightly alarming attachment to, and some will abuse lunch hour and sick leave. But I’m getting slightly ahead of myself again, so let’s explore a typical turn and then hopefully the disparate pieces of the puzzle will actually coalesce. You’ll begin the game with five standard workers (five plain dice), one home world and one fully completed development (or faction tile), and one unsettled planet and incomplete development. You’ll also have a ‘phase strip’, which lists the five phases I mentioned earlier. Then, your player mat, which houses your potentially settled worlds and developments, your galactic credits track and your citizenry, which is just a fancy way of labelling the space used for your pool of dice. Oh, and a player screen and dice cup, which are important for reasons soon to be revealed. Two dice will go into your citizenry space, to be used for future rounds, and three into your dice cup for immediate use. Each die face pairs to one of the five phases, and the different coloured die all represent different odds for attaining a particular phase. A handy chart on your player screen not only breaks down all your turn options, but it also lists the different die and how many faces match a phase, so for example a white die may provide a greater chance for rolling an Explore or Develop symbol, while the brown die has odds favouring Production or Shipping. If you’re keeping up at this point, I’ll speak to the editor about arranging spot prizes.
Photo by bgg user dotKeller
Beam me up, Scotty
Right. So now we’re ready to replicate the boosters firing as our individual rockets soar into space, or at least, that’s how my wife characterises the noise of everyone shaking and slamming their dice cups onto the table in unison. Lifting the cup, we reveal our no doubt shaken workforce, who must be wondering what cosmic deity they upset to end up doing this gig. First order of business, decide which of the five phases you want to activate by placing a die of any face upon the matching symbol on your phase strip. This is done behind your screen, as any phases that haven’t been chosen by any player in this manner, are not activated for the round. Since you’ll almost always be hoping that multiple phases are activated, there’s a major element of player anticipation in place. Stuart seems prepped to do some producing this round, do you risk piggybacking on his selection to also produce, but select Explore as your option because that’s of equal concern to your fortunes? And if you do risk it, and it turns out that Stuart was hoping you’d choose Produce and went with Shipping instead, you end up with no Produce phase and at least two players glaring at each other from across the table.
The remaining die you’ve rolled for the round now get allocated in the matching spot below the phase strip, and are in essence an additional opportunity to carry out that phase. Depending on whether that phase is activate for the round or not of course. Stuart chose Shipping as his phase, so he will be able to carry out that action at least once, with each additional die below the Shipping space allowing him to carry out the action again. He placed his remaining die beneath Explore and Develop, which are active phases, and so he will be able to carry out those phases too. All dice that have successfully performed an action are placed in the citizenry space, and unused die not currently in the citizenry are returned to your cup. Extra workers (additional coloured dice) are obtained during the Settle phase if you manage to activate a new world, and will either be added to your citizenry, or if you’re lucky enough straight into your dice up. At the start of the next round, you can pay a credit to add a dice from the citizenry to your cup, and then the boosters fire once again. The less credits you have, the less workers available to build your empire, but Roll handles the potential pitfalls of being strapped for cash effectively. One of the Explore options is always a guaranteed boost in credits, and as mentioned shipped goods can be converted to either victory points or credits. There will certainly be times when you’ll be rolling fewer dice, but this is more due to your strategy as opposed to random bad luck.
Photo by bgg user punkin312
I’ve used the term ‘race’, but I’ll just clarify that it’s only a race in as much as the end game is triggered by the first player to meet a certain requirement. The ultimate aim of the game is to collect the most victory points. These are obtained by settling planets, completing developments and shipping (converting) goods. Development and World tiles each have a set number of victory points, but all also provide bonus abilities, some that speed up your ability to produce, some that grease the cashflow gears and some that grant bonus victory points for meeting specific requirements. They’re acquired via the Explore phase by delving into a black cloth bag (a black hole, if you would), though the randomness of the draw is mitigated by the tiles all being double-sided. Some draws will be more fruitful than others, but you’re never left with a tile that offers nothing toward your strategy. You do have the option of discarding a world/development on your playmat but not yet active to redraw a tile, so the game really does its best to give you options aplenty. It’s a lot to take in at face value, and since it’s less important for me to explain the intricacies as it is to tell you whether those intricacies actually work well, I’m going to leave the rules explanation right there. If you’ve played Race you’ll pick it up quickly, and if you haven’t things are only going to really make sense about halfway through your first game.
Photo by bgg user dotKeller
You will be assimilated
What makes Roll for the Galaxy worthy of such praise is, as you may have guessed, the dice. Not just the material thrill of slamming at times nine or more of them onto the table, but the ingenuity so clearly expressed through the design. As I mentioned, the dice anthropomorphise into a little cosmic workforce; you become reliant on your red Military dice to colonise new worlds, on your yellow Alien Tech dice for their wildcard abilities, you curse at your purple Consumption dice that must be engaged in strike action given how seldom they do what you want. Like any effective workforce, your cargo ship mechanic might not be great at harvesting lunar crops, but great empires are built upon multitasking. And it’s this interplay between the dice that generates such tremendous cerebral satisfaction, that converts what is inherently an action that leads only to pure randomness into a buffet of wonderful strategic options. That cargo ship mechanic, currently kicking the vending machine because he’s not able to work this round? Well, the Dictate ability allows you to reassign him, as you see fit. This mitigates the element of luck comprehensively, and is perhaps the strongest example of how the designers intent is writ large: all the fun of dice, none of the crippling rolls. Everything else, the engine-building, the simultaneous actions, the high number of variable winning strategies; all of that is just icing. On the first night that Roll hit our table, I could comfortably have played it at least five times in succession and I still went to bed pondering over what I could have done differently and what I couldn’t wait to try the moment the game hit the table again.
Do I have criticisms? Honestly, no. They may reveal themselves after the 20th game, but to be quite frank any game that stands up to that many plays before it starts to show cracks is a game deserving of the highest accolade. Concerns then? Well, as with many engine-building games, multiple plays might uncover fewer optimal strategies than would seem evident at this point. Given that certain reviewers have played Roll more than fifty times already and not raised this as an issue, I think it’s safe to assume the balancing has been superbly effected. Roll for the Galaxy is the Enterprise of the games I’ve played in the year thus far. Why are you still hesitant? Make it so.
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