This weekend some friends came over for Saturday night games. We started out with the Royal Game of Ur which turned out to be surprisingly fun! I just printed out the game board from the internet, and used some plastic game disks I had laying around. The dice was a problem (since the original game used 4 black four sided dice with two of the corners painted white for movement) until I realized the game just used them for a 50/50 odds mechanism. So I just used 4 eight sided dice, and you moved on an odd roll. In the future I think I will just use six sided dice.

Now, on to Tiny Epic Galaxies!!!! After the warm up game of the Royal Game of Ur, we watched the first part of ‘TableTop: Wil Wheaton Plays TINY EPIC GALAXIES’:

I actually watched the entire show before my friends came over, and I am glad I did. The game looks like a simple ‘little’ game but it is has some technical fiddly bits about it that you need to understand before you can really play it. Also, to bone up on the game I played the solo version a few times which really helped me understand the game better. And the solo game is actually quite fun.

In Tiny Epic Galaxies each player controls a galactic empire, aiming to expand their influence by acquiring highly contested planets and increasing their cosmic armada. The game revolves around an innovative dice-rolling combo mechanic. The number of dice you roll is determined by the strength of your galaxy. Each die is engraved with symbols representing the various actions you can take, such as moving a spaceship, increasing your culture or energy resources, or advancing your political or economic influence over newly discovered planets.

Through careful planning, you must make the most out of your turn, taking the available actions in whichever order you consider most beneficial. But be careful, as each of your opponents can choose to follow each action you take by expending valuable resources. This means that it can always be your turn, even when it is someone else’s turn!

Players will colonize new planets throughout the game, thereby earning victory points and accumulating special abilities which they can activate for their galactic empire. Careful spending of resources will ensure the fastest growth of your empire, while allowing you to receive the biggest possible pay‐off from the actions you take.

Will your influence be enough to control the most powerful planets in the galaxy? Will you be able to meet your secret objective along the way? Will your empire stand victorious?

Boardgamegeek.com

OPINION: Tiny Epic Galaxies is a lot of fun to play! And it is tiny. The entire box with everything you will need to play easily fits inside a backpack with plenty of room for a laptop, lunch, some spare socks, etc. I liked the game and enjoyed playing, but I found the tiny size to be somewhat irritating at times. There is a lot of stuff going on and the mat and pieces are very small. If your arms are growing shorter and you are finding it more difficult to see little teeny tiny things this can be quite annoying. Also, the pieces are so small that I found myself constantly knocking them about on the little mat. In short, this ‘tiny’ stuff seems to be a bit of an unnecessary fetish, and I would have been happier if the parts of the game were not quite so ‘tiny’. Perhaps just 50% larger mats and easier to hold and see pieces would have been nice. Other than that it really is a fun game to play.

You start out with your own game mat which has everything you need to play the game, and keep track of your progress. Your mission: capture available planets that are represented by cards in the middle of the table. What takes a little getting used to is the dice mechanic. The game comes with a set of of custom dice that you use to obtain energy, culture, advance your colonization, and do other interesting things in the game.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I give Tiny Epic Galaxies a 3.5. It would be a somewhat higher if it hadn’t been so darned TINY!!!!!