Tomello Visello
United States
Reston
Virginia
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Dozens of reviews for Ra already exist so you don’t really need this one to find out IF it is any good. After my own recent introduction, I’ve been pondering what I’ve learned to determine WHY it is respected so highly and widely.
Game overview: Game tiles are drawn at random, one at a time, from a bag. You compete with the other players to take them into your possession. Your objective is to score the most points by the tiles you have.
The bag contains 180 tiles. By their background coloring and style you can distinguish that the tiles can be grouped into seven categories. Six of the categories represent tiles the players can collect to accumulate points. The remaining category is used as one of the mechanisms (a second mechanism exists) to measure the length of a game round. Scoring takes place at the end of each round, the game consists of three rounds.
Scoring is complex to track mentally as you go along (although not overly difficult to understand once you get acclimated) because each of the tile categories has different mechanisms for scoring. The individual mechanisms are:
1) Direct count – number of tiles determines the number of points.
2) Comparative count – compare against others. Player with the most gets points; player with the fewest loses points.
3) Conditional count – tiles only counted if a specific supplementary tile is also present.
4) Multiplicity count – count repetitions of a particular picture
5) Diversity count – how many different pictures captured within the category
6) Pass/Fail – simply a penalty if you have none of the category.
Make note, too, that some categories are scored according to a combination of two of the mechanisms above. Two further variations for the point tiles are a) negativity - some tiles take away points within their category; and b) longevity - some kinds of tiles are removed from the game after scoring, while the others remain as a basis for continued scoring in all the rounds that follow.
Competing for Tiles: Scoring is focused on the tiles, so how do you collect the tiles? They are drawn one-by-one from the bag and put on display until one of three conditions (two are automatic, one is by player discretion) triggers the event for players to declare how strongly they feel about obtaining the entire set then visible. This level-of-strength declaration is done using a set of tokens.
The set of tokens contains the numbers sequentially from 1 to 16 and each player holds 3 or 4 to use each round (not all are used in cases of fewer players). These are used for “bidding”, but I suggest it would be a mistake to think of them as the equivalent of money. That might make you believe a “purchase” will happen in the same manner as spending money from your pocket, and it does not. Consider them instead as a way to RANK your level of interest in the offered set of tiles using a scale of 1 to 16.
But you are restricted to using only the numbers actually in your possession. Thus while you might assess the potential value of the visible tiles as a “5”, you may have to make a choice between the “2” and the “8” you actually have in hand.
Play goes around the table once giving everyone a chance to make a single declaration. The player offering the highest number gives up his token and wins the tiles for his collection.
By indirect method, the players actually swap tokens. Each time a player wins a competition, his token is combined with the drawn tiles as part of the next package offered for competition. Tokens won this way are kept aside to be used in the following round. Thus the rank of the token present when bidding begins also enters into a player’s calculation of the value of the offering. An additional nuance is that the combined total of the tokens in a player’s possession at the end of the third round represents another basis for scoring.
Why is this so popular? Is dragging bits out of a bag any less random than rolling dice every turn? Yet the latter can easily generate complaints while this one doesn’t seem to. I can identify several key attributes which I think establish the attraction:
1) Everyone is involved with every turn. This keeps attention focused. Every tile drawn provides new information to be assimilated.
2) There are multiple paths to collecting points. This makes for multiple decisions. Each of the tile categories offers different possibilities for players to compete, or choose not compete, against the others for limited resources. Even within a single category, two different scoring rules may coexist. The same tile, therefor, may have different meanings to other players. Plus the different lifetimes for tiles, lasting either a single round or forever, make for long-term and short-term choices.
3) There are multiple ways for events to take place. This makes for multiple sources of tension. There are two ways to end a round; three ways to initiate a bidding competition. The progress toward most of the triggering conditions is visible, but generally you still won’t know precisely WHEN the condition will be fulfilled. Capturing tiles has an alternate pathway, too. While mainly done by winning the competition, it has a backdoor through the special “exchange” power of one of the tile categories which can be used to obtain a single tile directly.
4) It’s so fast. It’s amazing how many things there are to calculate simultaneously, yet how little agonizing is done for each offering. I suppose there are two factors that may explain this: a) there are so many dimensions to assess that it’s just too overwhelming to try and therefor a certain amount of gut-feel choices take place instead; and b) the conditional status of several of the scoring categories means that there is no definitive score in mid-round, only an indefinite probability or possible score.
5) It’s simple. Maybe it takes a special effort to explain it in an organized manner (some “teaching” threads exist in the GENERAL section of this forum), but it doesn’t take that much to understand it provided you do get an organized explainer. You can readily follow it after a single play.
So the overall power of the game is that it functions successfully in so many directions, along with one more important element.
6) It’s tantalizing. Which has the meaning, “to tease and torture by presenting something desirable but continually keeping it out of reach.” Winning is desirable. And despite the known randomness, this game can generate the feeling that you might improve on your chances if you just keep playing and learning.
It has not fully won my heart so I have not rushed out to buy my own copy. Yet it has become embedded in my mind and I am convinced that I should present it to other people. And to do that I know that I will have to buy one eventually.*
* [well, unless maybe there really is some lonely but seriously dissatisfied current owner who offers to send me his copy if I just pay the postage.]
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Dennis Ku
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
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I want to dislike this game. I bought it a couple of years ago because of its popularity, read the rules, and thought, "That's it???" I feel so stupid explaining it. "Ummm...you draw out tiles, bid on them, and if the Ra track fills up, the epoch is over. Then you score the tiles." But everytime I play it, I enjoy the experience. I don't understand why I like it!
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Jim Cote
United States
Maine
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TVis wrote: Is dragging bits out of a bag any less random than rolling dice every turn? Yet the latter can easily generate complaints while this one doesn’t seem to.
When rolling dice, it's possible to roll low, for example, for a long time. When drawing a fixed set of tiles from a bag, you can get extreme probabilities, but only within the confines of the tile limits (ie there ARE only 5 of each monument). Each time you draw a certain type of tile, the probability lowers that it will be drawn again.
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Gary Pressler
United States
West Lafayette
Indiana
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Quote: 4) It’s so fast.
I think you missed listing the biggest reason for its speed, although you covered it in the review. A player has only a limited number of discrete bids they can make. Furthermore, it's a once-around auction. There's no nickel-and-diming each bid, like in Power Grid or Modern Art. And once someone makes a bid, the other players often have only one possible bid that can beat it. This makes it much easier for new players, since they need not worry about grossly overpaying for a lot. You're not paying an amount; the bid is a measure of relative priority to get what you want.
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Tim Capps
United States
Illinois
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This is the only game I can remember that I couldn't figure out how to play or why I would want to after having purchased it.
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Matthew Moore
New York
New York
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ekted wrote: TVis wrote: Is dragging bits out of a bag any less random than rolling dice every turn? Yet the latter can easily generate complaints while this one doesn’t seem to. When rolling dice, it's possible to roll low, for example, for a long time. When drawing a fixed set of tiles from a bag, you can get extreme probabilities, but only within the confines of the tile limits (ie there ARE only 5 of each monument). Each time you draw a certain type of tile, the probability lowers that it will be drawn again.
Additionally, the randomness of a dice roll affects only you. The randomness of a tile pull is generally distributed across the entire group in the sense that if it's a good tile, everyone can bid on it. The only unilateral effects are once someone has used all their tiles and is pulling for Ra's, and even that is a probability function.
Personally, I think Ra works because it has cadence. Draw a tile, call Ra, or pass. Repeat.
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Jim Paprocki
United States
Green Bay
Wisconsin
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The mechanics are so clean that this game is all about player vs. player decision making. For me this is a perfect example of a game transcending off of the table and into the mind. The luck of the tile draws don't influence the outcome as much as they create a varied play experience. I find it to be unbelievably engaging.
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Tomello Visello
United States
Reston
Virginia
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It interests me to see responses coming from those who view the game from a pleasant range of reactions: with favor; with disfavor; and even with conflicted heart.
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Tomello Visello
United States
Reston
Virginia
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ekted wrote: TVis wrote: Is dragging bits out of a bag any less random ... Each time you draw a certain type of tile, the probability lowers that it will be drawn again.
A rhetorical question, posed for dramatic effect*, is duly refuted.
*actually that clause is redundant, according to my dictionary.
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Tomello Visello
United States
Reston
Virginia
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GaryP wrote: Quote: 4) It’s so fast. I think you missed listing the biggest reason for its speed, although you covered it in the review. A player has only a limited number of discrete bids they can make. ... There's no nickel-and-diming each bid ...
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Tomello Visello
United States
Reston
Virginia
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SettlerOfCatan wrote: After years of playing Euro's and beginning to tire of the simplicity. I find myself lamenting the fact that simplicity has become such a highly contributing factor to a game's popularity. Hmmm... Perhaps the term "simple" is itself complex.
It could properly be associated with "mindless" or "unchallanging" by some, while others with equal validity could suggest it serves in opposition to "tedious" or "convoluted."
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Tomello Visello
United States
Reston
Virginia
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jpact wrote: For me this is a perfect example of a game transcending off of the table and into the mind. Ahhh...
7) It's transcendant.
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