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Roll for the Galaxy is a dice game where you and up to 4 other players can expand across the galaxy, conquering worlds and utilizing your citizenry. The individual dice represent the citizens in your empire, and each color has a different chance of coming up with a different action that you can use. They range from exploring for money or new worlds, to helping to colonize those worlds, research technology, or produce and sell goods for more money to hire more citizens.

The action selection system relies on a shield that everyone hides their initial picks behind, after which they're revealed and only certain phases will take place that round. All other dice allocated to phases that won't be occurring go back into your cup for the next round. The tile selection system is superb as well, drawing them from a black bag, because they're double sided with planets and technologies.

You start out with an initial double wide tile that decides your faction, and a home world tile, between which there are 81 possible combinations. From that point out, the path you take to victory is varied. The end of the game is triggered by someone getting 12 tiles on the board or all of the victory point chips being exhausted. After that, the player with the most victory points from chips, values of worlds and technologies and bonuses from certain cards wins.

The number of dice in this game is staggering, and rolling the mounting number of them from your cup is intensely satisfying. The actual components are excellent and pretty sturdy. In my copy, I had some issues removing some of the tiles from the punch board, and ended up marring some of the paper on them. I was able to contact Rio Grande Games, though, and free of charge they shipped punched tiles to replace the marred ones. Top notch customer support rounds out the good experience I've had from owning and playing this game nicely.

– James Orr

Conquer worlds as you Roll for the Galaxy

Roll for the Galaxy

Rio Grande Games

Ages 14 and up, 2-5 players

$42 Buy a copy on Amazon