LogFAQs > #896641488

59. Roll for the Galaxy
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/132531/roll-galaxy

Genre/mechanics: Dice-rolling, dice assignment, hand-building, tableau-building, role selection, simultaneous action
Rules complexity: 7/10
Game length: 40-60 minutes
Player count 2-5
Experience: 6-10 plays with 4-5 players
First played: 2015

Roll for the Galaxy is a role selection game where you compete for victory points by settling or developing double-sided planet/technology tiles. You have a cup of customizable dice, and on each turn, you roll all of your available ones, then secretly choose an action you want to perform this phase. Depending on where you place your dice and other players' choice for their 'main' action, you may get to perform other actions as well.

Enjoyment - I've never loved a game of Roll for the Galaxy. While the phase selection can theoretically be interactive as you try to piggyback off others' actions, the game feels like it's always played with heads done, everyone looking at their own tableau. It's both a feature and a curse of the game's simultaneous action phase, which I love otherwise.

Unfortunately, breaking up those actions is the Explore mechanic - the only way to draw these cardboard tiles that the game centers around. I love the dice and the player mat, but man, that tile sack is just cumbersome to shuffle things in, and really cumbersome to draw from. But that's discounting the fact that the best way to Explore is to grab a big stack and sift through them slowly until you come up with one you like. I think it feels almost particularly egregious because the rest of the game is so seamless.

Design - I actually think a lot of decisions in Roll are really elegant and neat. Rolling the dice is beautifully satisfying, and those colorful dice are mega-attractive. The mitigation of luck is really solid - you can assign one die per round, and you can always perform the role you want by using any other die. Role selection is a neat mechanic. Tying up your dice developing tiles makes sense, and the engine for buying back your dice after they've been exhausted seems fair. Performing actions simultaneously shortens downtime (and makes the game overall about as long as your slowest player).

I think it could afford to have nicer-looking tiles and a nicer-looking player board (even though it's very functional), but maybe overall I'm just a hater of space themes.

Future - I think maybe I could find it in me to enjoy this game more, if I allowed myself to get sucked up into the combos. I always rush an endgame by building really cheap settlements/developments, but that hasn't ever actually won it for me. But I'm just so impatient, and I'd be really upset if someone else ended it while I was trying to get an engine going.

Bonus question - What's your favorite strategy to pursue in tableau-building games like Roll for the Galaxy?

Hint for #58 - The grandfather of Roll for the Galaxy
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness