Ra Review

Ra is by now a classic eurogame, but it’s relatively new to me. It’s also the prize in this month’s LudiQuest and it seems only fair to let people know what they’re trying to win by way of this review. Ra is a game for three to five players, was designed by Reiner Knizia, and most recently published by Uberplay.

The gameplay in Ra centers around gathering a variety of scoring tiles in order to garner the most points in the game’s three scoring rounds (or “kingdoms”). At the beginning of the game, players each receive three “sun tiles” (or four, in a three-player game) which will be used to bid on tiles in order to gain victory points (technically called “fame”, I think). The tiles are numbered one through thirteen (or up to sixteen, with five players) with the tile numbered one starting in the middle of the board.

On each player’s turn, they can do one of two things: Take a tile from the bag or call for an auction. If they take a tile from the bag, they generally add that tile to the group of things which will later be auctioned. The only exception to this is that if they draw a “Ra” tile, which instead forces an auction to be called immediately. When an auction is called, the person who initiated the auction (by calling it intentionally, or by drawing a Ra tile) bids last, with each player bidding once only. You may only use one of your sun tiles to bid with, so there are only three possible bid values (plus zero for a pass). If a player started an auction intentionally, they must bid if everyone else passes. When someone wins an auction, they take all the tiles and the sun tile in the middle (which cannot be used until after the next scoring) and put the tile they bid onto the board to become part of the next auction. The scoring round ends when a certain number of Ra tiles are drawn. The gameplay itself is very simple – there are few kinds of decisions to make and each one has very few choices. When learning the game, the more daunting task is keeping track of the many different types of tiles and how they work to add (or subtract from) your score.

Gold tiles are the simplest, giving a player three points during scoring and then being removed from the game. It is important to get at least one Civilization tile each round, because you lose five points during scoring if you have none (you start the game with a score of ten). Getting positive points with them requires you to acquire at least three different types before they are removed at the end of the scoring round. Pharoahs score five points each round for the player who has the most, while the player who has the least loses two points. You keep pharaoh tiles until the end of the game. Land is another tile type you get to hold onto, but they don’t score anything without having at least one flood tile (which goes away after scoring). As long as you have a flood, all lands and floods score a point apiece. Monuments don’t score until the third and final round of the game, but can be worth a massive amount of points if you have a lot of them. You score is based on both how many types of the 12 you’ve collected and on how many sets of three or more (bigger sets are worth more) you’ve collected. God tiles can be expended to allow a player to steal a tile from the “tableau”. If you do so, this is the only action you take on your turn. If you don’t do so, you’ll instead turn them in for two points during scoring. Finally, there are disaster tiles. Disaster tiles score no points – acquiring one means you have to remove two tiles you already own. Disasters affect pharaohs, civilizations, lands (and floods), or monuments, depending on the type.

The strategy in Ra centers around 1) how much groupings of tiles are worth to various people and 2) when to call an auction. By calling an auction to exploit a gap in the values of others’ tiles, you can often pick up a bargain.

Overall, Ra is a light game with quite a bit of luck. You can manage this luck to a certain degree by choosing whether or not to play “press your luck” at the end of a scoring round by gambling on how many valuable tiles might come out before the next Ra tile ends the round.
It moves quickly (once you learn the tiles) and has very little downtime. Based on these factors, I will rate it a 7.5 out of 10.


P.S. I got in some games on Saturday morning and increased my 2008 game count by six to 23(Pillars of the Earth, Clans x2, Evo, 24/7 x2)