A Week of Games, Day 2 - Roll for the Galaxy

ROLL FOR THE GALAXY

Back in 2007 a little game called Race for the Galaxy came out and became very popular. I enjoy it very much and have played many hundreds of games of it over the years.

Seven years and many expansions later the die based version came out, Roll for the Galaxy. I often find my self liking the smaller quicker "dice" based version of games that come out, sometimes as much as the original. Roll for the Galaxy is no different. Roll takes the core principles of Race, building a tableau, gaining new abilities, picking actions and trying to score the most points the quickest but rather than having it all card based the mechanics are moved to dice. Each player getting a ever expanding pool of dice they roll each round to perform actions. The more dice allocated to an action the stronger it is, but you can only guarantee one of the action types per turn (chosen in secret), while hoping the other players pick the others you want to do as well.

Where Roll really shines is the speed of which it is played, rolling dice, allocating and using the dice are all more or less done simultaneously, meaning a 4 or 5 player game moves along at a quick race, er pace, actually feeling more like a race than the original game. The mechanics are smooth and it's easy to keep track of what both you are doing and the other players accomplishments.

I think Roll for the Galaxy does a great job of capturing the feel of the original, with it's own twist, being a lighter, quicker easier to learn game. I give it top marks and enjoy it a whole lot.

(There is also an expansion, Ambition, which adds more dice colors and objectives, both enhancing the core game without over complicating it.)