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[GendoIkari]

Learned this last night. If you like Race, you should really like this. It's very similar, but I'm pretty sure I like it more. Great game.

[werothegreat]

Learned this last night. If you like Race, you should really like this. It's very similar, but I'm pretty sure I like it more. Great game.

Only if you're playing with people with a decent grasp of what they're doing.  There are a lot more decisions to make each turn than Race.  I played a 5-player game yesterday, and it was torture.  The 3-player game I played earlier was a lot of fun, though.

[GendoIkari]

Learned this last night. If you like Race, you should really like this. It's very similar, but I'm pretty sure I like it more. Great game.

Only if you're playing with people with a decent grasp of what they're doing.  There are a lot more decisions to make each turn than Race.  I played a 5-player game yesterday, and it was torture.  The 3-player game I played earlier was a lot of fun, though.

Are you talking about players taking far too long to figure out what to do? Or is there some other aspect where playing with people who don't know what they're doing ruins the game?

[werothegreat]

Learned this last night. If you like Race, you should really like this. It's very similar, but I'm pretty sure I like it more. Great game.

Only if you're playing with people with a decent grasp of what they're doing.  There are a lot more decisions to make each turn than Race.  I played a 5-player game yesterday, and it was torture.  The 3-player game I played earlier was a lot of fun, though.

Are you talking about players taking far too long to figure out what to do? Or is there some other aspect where playing with people who don't know what they're doing ruins the game?

Taking too long.

[Drab Emordnilap]

I love this game; it's almost entirely replaced Race for me. I will play it 100% of the time it's on the table.

As an aside, I'd love to hear what people think of the relative balance of the start worlds and faction tiles. To me it seems like the faction that makes yellow explorers worth $4 ends up way ahead of most of the others.

[Kuildeous]

I played a few demos of this at Gen Con, so I'm not a great authority source or anything.

Playing demos means that you're always playing with new players, so I got to see how frustrating it can be as they take their time understanding what they did. But you know, new players…have to give them some leeway. I could certainly see being frustrated with someone with analysis paralysis, but even that could likely be kept to a minimum. There are a lot of choices to make, but decisions are usually fairly easy. I do cringe at the thought of someone with AP rolling 12 dice and looking over four other tableaus in order to decide which action to take. I'd hope that is rare.

I would think the biggest obstacle with new players is that you might not know if they're doing something wrong. This is true of the card game. Whenever I had new players with the card game, I would force a turn order where each player goes through the steps. This allows the new player to see exactly what is happening with the veterans and allows us to identify any mistakes made by the newbie. The biggest one I encountered in Race is someone thinking he can turn in two 3-cost cards to pay for a 6. It's simple enough of a mistake, and it's easy to miss if no one is watching the newbie. And of course if the newbie's mistake isn't caught, then his behavior is reinforced, and he gets annoyed when he's informed of the real rule after he's been playing it that way for a while. So it is I see as a possibility with Roll.

So if I were to own this game, I'd probably want to enforce turn order as well. At least for the first two turns. And the concept is simple enough that I think newbies would grasp it in those two turns. I'm trying to remember if there are any interactions more complex than setting aside a die to change a die face.

[LastFootnote]

I've played Roll for the Galaxy maybe 3 times. Although I don't love it, I think it's worlds better than Race for the Galaxy, mostly because the arcane symbology has been replaced with readable text.

[pacovf]

...arcane?

[Kuildeous]

...arcane?

I can't disagree with that. It was quite overwhelming to learn Race because of the iconography. Of course, once you learn them, then they make a lot of sense, but that has always been a major hurdle in teaching new players. And they kept adding new symbols with the expansions.

[SirSlugma]

I think getting some extra dice is pretty key early on, thus my favorite starting faction is the one with the purple and red dice (and the yellow world).  The alien explorer to $4 development faction is really good too, especially in 2P.

The start worlds are all comparable enough, except I think Doomed World is kind of weak.   The $8 rarely goes far enough to make up for the lack of a die.

[Kuildeous]

The start worlds are all comparable enough, except I think Doomed World is kind of weak.   The $8 rarely goes far enough to make up for the lack of a die.

I've seen that, but I didn't play. Considering that you gain $1 per turn if you do the right thing and spend all that you have, it seems like the $8 extra may hurt you in the long run. After all, how many turns must you give up the free $1 because you have too much money? If I remember the game correctly (and I might not), you pretty much will have a surplus the first two turns. And if you have a combination of a really scattered die roll and a really focused selection of roles, you might not be able to spend that money quickly enough. 

But my experience is really limited.

[Drab Emordnilap]

Doomed World's advantage is that it lets you build a settlement/development first turn without needimg to build up any economy first. It's really only good when you happen to have a tile or two you actually want to build at the start. If you don't want to build either starting tile, you want to explore anyways, and so you can get money that way, which you don't need because of Doomed World.

I guess you can spend turn 1 exploring only for tiles, turn 2 building something, and be okay because you had that $8 to pay for those turns. That's okay too.

[GendoIkari]

Doomed World's advantage is that it lets you build a settlement/development first turn without needimg to build up any economy first. It's really only good when you happen to have a tile or two you actually want to build at the start. If you don't want to build either starting tile, you want to explore anyways, and so you can get money that way, which you don't need because of Doomed World.

I guess you can spend turn 1 exploring only for tiles, turn 2 building something, and be okay because you had that $8 to pay for those turns. That's okay too.

How does extra money help you build a settlement or development first turn? Doing so requires extra dice, not extra money.

[Drab Emordnilap]

How does extra money help you build a settlement or development first turn? Doing so requires extra dice, not extra money.

If I have any other starting worlds, and I use my ~4 dice to build something, I have $1 to spend, ~3 dice in my citizenry, and ~1 die in my cup. I roll 2 dice on turn 2.

If I have Doomed World, and I use my ~3 dice to build something, I roll ~5 dice on turn 2, because I had the $8 to buy back the dice I spend building the world.

[DG]

I've played a few games of this and it seems quite good. The slow portion of the game is the explore action. Everything else runs at a decent speed.

[theright555J]

It was quite overwhelming to learn Race because of the iconography. Of course, once you learn them, then they make a lot of sense, but that has always been a major hurdle in teaching new players. And they kept adding new symbols with the expansions.

I recall a post on BGG where Wei-Hwa defended the iconography, saying that it's not the icons themselves that are the issue but rather the presence of multi-phase functionality of the cards.  In San Juan, for example, no card buffs more than one phase and everything is spelled out in text.  This makes it much easier to understand what the card actually does but makes it more challenging to see what bonuses your tableau has in a given phase unless you order your cards by phase buff instead of just laying them down in build order.

The icons are pretty easy to learn.  What I've found the most difficult in teaching new players is just the immense amount of information provided by each card and lack of knowledge of the deck itself.  New players I've taught have understood the icons (e.g. "oh a -1 inside a diamond in the II slot means I pay one less for a development"), but just have no idea how to process all that into a cohesive strategy.  Therefore the game plays them more than them playing the game at first.  I think it took me about 5-6 plays of Race before I felt I had somewhat of a handle on what was going on.