Roll for the Galaxy

Beschrijving

Beschrijving van de Producent:

 

In Roll for the Galaxy you try to develop technologies and colonize planets. When colonized, these planets can give you goods and goods give you points. When there are no more points to take from the supply or one or more players have built their twelfth planet or technology tile the game ends. The player with the most points from planets, technologies and shipping goods wins the game.

Sounds familiar? Yes, this game has very similar ideas as Race for the Galaxy, a game I love, however it uses dice instead of cards. Dice in different colours and with different symbols. These symbols represent the different phases of the game: explore, develop, settle, produce, ship and there’s also a wild-card symbol.

You start the game with a home world that gives you, in addition to some basic white dice, some dice in other colours and a power. Everybody rolls their dice behind their player screens. You then choose one phase by placing one die, regardless of the result, on your phase strip. That’s the phase you choose and only the phases that players choose are active during the round. You then place every other die beneath the phase that the side of the die shows. You can change the outcome, at the start only one time, by placing, dictating, one die on the side of your board. You can reassign one other die another phase.

After everybody is done all players remove their screen and you check which phases are activated. The dice that are placed beneath phases that aren’t activated and the die or dice that you’ve sacrificed are put back into your cup. The rest you can use during the different phases.

In the Explore phase you can use your explore dice to gain two credits or to draw another tile from the bag. Every tile has a planet side and a development side. You draw one, choose which side you want to build and place it beneath the corresponding planet or development stack on you player board.  In the Development phase you can use your dice to develop.

You do that by placing them onto the development tile on top of your stack. Every tile has a value and when there are just as much dice on the tile as its value, then you’ve completed the development and must place it in front of you. The dice used to develop that tile go back into your citizenry and the tile is now activated and might give you an extra die, a power and some points at the end the game.

The Settle phase works exactly the same, but then you place dice on planets. The Produce phase is the phase where you place your production dice on coloured planets that you’ve already build.

It does matter which die you place where, because during the Ship phase you can consume goods for points. With your ship die you may ship one good from a planet. You always get one point, but you get one extra point if the good die matches the colour of the planet and another extra point if the colour of the ship die matches the colour of the planet. You can also trade goods for money instead of points. Yellow planets give Alien technologies and those are worth a lot more than novelty goods from blue planets. After all players has performed their actions everybody gets the chance to buy new dice from their citizenry, their own dice supply, and places them into their cup and a new round can begin.

At the end of the round where one or more players have built their twelfth tile or when the point supply is empty, the game ends and you count your points. The player with the most points wins the game. This dice version of Race for the Galaxy takes players on a new journey through the Galaxy, but with the feel of the original game. This dice version of Race for the Galaxy takes players on a new journey through the Galaxy, but with the feel of the original game.