Roll for the Galaxy is a dice rolling, tableau-building, action selection game.

Title: Roll for the Galaxy

Year Published: 2015

Designer: Wei-Hwa Huang, Thomas Lehmann

Publisher: Rio Grande Games

Players: 2-5

Game Time: ~45 Mins

Set-up Time: >5 Mins

Ages: 12+

Theme: Space

Mechanic: Tableau Building, Simultaneous Action Selection.

How to win: Get the most Victory Points by Colonising Worlds, Building Developments and Supplying Planets.

Game Description

Roll for the Galaxy is a dice game of building space empires for 2–5 players. Your dice represent your populace, whom you direct to develop new technologies, settle worlds, and ship goods. The player who best manages his workers and builds the most prosperous empire wins!

Roll for the Galaxy Set Up

Put the tiles in the bag and the phase tiles X side up on the table. Put 12 VP’s per player in the middle of the table and put the rest in the box.

Players take the pieces of each colour and one Faction/Home World tile. You also draw 2 tiles and place one as a Development and one as a World on your board.  Put 3 White (home) dice in your cup and 2 on your Citizenry. Also, take dice as determined by your Faction/Home World into the right locations.

Roll for the Galaxy Game Play

The game is played over 5 steps which repeat until the game end is triggered.

1 – Roll

Roll all dice behind your screen.

2 – Assign

Place dice below each phase matching symbol, * are wild. Then, select any one die to activate the phase on the phase strip.

Dictate – During the Assign phase, and once only put any die in any non-matching column and move a die to the dictate area.

When finished, turn your cup face down so you know when everyone is done… or face-up if you like… You know what? It doesn’t matter, someone will forget! 🙂

3 – Reveal

Players remove their screen and then you flip each selected Phase tile face up so you know it’s activating this round.

Return to your cup any dice in the dictate areas and unselected phases.

4 – Phases

Players do each phase from left to right in ascending order simultaneously. Each die must be used if possible and dice assigned to a phase can be used in any order. Any dice you use goto the Citizenry.

The Phases…

Explorer

Scout to gain new tiles or Stock to Earn Money.
Scout – You can abandon any tile/s on your board under the Explorer tile.
Draw one more tile from the bag than the number of abandoned tiles.
Put each tile on the bottom of either Development/Home World slot.

Stock – Add $2 to your Galactic Credits per dice used.

Develop/Settle

Develop/Settle your topmost Development/World Tile. Put dice one at a time on top of your topmost Development/World tile.

If the dice moved is equal the cost of that tile, move the dice to the Citizenry and put the tile into play. Complete immediate effects on these tiles went built.

Produce

Produce a good on a non-Gray world. The die used becomes the good on that planet, each planet can only have 1 good and unused dice are returned to the cup.

Ship

Trade to sell goods for Credits or Consume to trade goods for points
Trade – Sell goods for Credits equal to the colour of the good sold.

Consume – Pair a Ship die with and Good die on a Planet.
Gain 1 VP for the consume action, then an extra VP the colour of the Planet and the Good on the Planet match. Get another VP if the Ship die and Good die match. So, 1-3 VP’s are possible here.

Put each Good and Ship used into the Citizenry.

5 – Manage Empire

Recruit – Spend $1 per die to move them from your Citizenry to your cup. You must either spend all the credits or recruit all dice…

Recall – Take any dice you would like dice from Developments/Planet tiles back into your cup.

Rest – Flip all Phase tiles to their X side again…

Check for Game End…

Game End

If all of the Victory Point tokens have expired or a player has 12 tiles in their tableau (including their starting 3) this will be the final round.

Scoring

Add up your VP Chips, your Developments/Home World Value and any Bonus Points from your played tiles.

Most VPs Wins.

Tiebreaker 1 – The number of dice in your cup
Tiebreaker 2 – Your number of Galactic Credits

Roll for the Galaxy Round-Up

Roll for the Galaxy is excellent. Once everyone knows what they’re doing you can play simultaneously so it’s VERY quick.

You have your head down looking at what you need to do and you’re working out how much money you need if you need ties, where you dice will go…

But it’s not overly mathy or complex.

At the same time, you have your head up. What roles will other players pick… That player has 4 Goods on planets so they’ll ship, right? Maybe someone else has 3 goods and both players will think/hope the other will do it!

Maybe the one with 3 Goods also has a Citizenry full of dice and will need to Explore to get money…

I don’t think you’ll win ignoring other players and considering what they might pick.

The components are excellent and VERY pretty. The art on the tiles is good (although I barely look at them, not enough time!), the bright colours of the dice really stand out and the cups are good quality as far as cups go.

Shaking and slamming the cup down is LOUD and may annoy those around you.

For me, great game, top 10 of all time (at time of writing), made better by the expansion and much better than Race for the Galaxy in my opinion.

Rating

Very good, if a bit short.

I give it 8/10

Roll for the Galaxy Initial Review January 2015

Like Race for the Galaxy, but with dice.

I see what they did there.

So, literally just Race for the Galaxy but with dice, does that make it better?

I have now played both games once each and while I like both I prefer this version. The use of dice and the starting player powers was fun and adds something.

Balancing gaining/using dice with having the money to buy them back gives you something to think about.

While I would definitely play both versions of the game again, I look forward to playing Roll for the Galaxy again more.

Jesta ThaRogue