RA: Gambling with the gods

by Bret

By the power of RA!

There are few celebrities in the board game industry and even less that can actually earn a living as a designer. Reiner Knizia tops both these categories with hundreds of published games (8 just this year!) spanning the gauntlet of mechanics and themes. Though highly regarded in general, he often also has the reputation (mostly undeserved, IMO) of making abstract number games with pasted on thematic elements. In any case, RA is one of my absolutely favorite board games!

RA is an open auction game (i.e. not blind or secret) that is played over 3 rounds or “epochs’ (purportedly the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms) In a 4 player game, each player starts with 3 bidding tokens called sun tiles with a number on them between 2 and 13. The objective is to use these tokens to bid on an assortment of tiles that meet various requirements to gain victory points. A player’s turn consists of either drawing a tile randomly to add to the bidding track or invoking the power of Ra to initiate an auction. In an auction, each player in turn has the option of placing one bid for all the tiles currently on the bidding track. The highest numbered sun tile bid wins and that person places their acquisitions on the table in front of them. In addition, they take the sun tile on the board (#1 in the first auction) and puts it aside for use in the next epoch, replacing it with their just bid tile. In this way you are bidding on bidding tiles in addition to the scoring tiles, which makes the strategics all that more interesting as each epoch progresses. The game’s clock consists of red RA tiles mixed in with the scoring tiles that, when drawn, are placed on the RA track. Once this track fills, the epoch immediately ends. In addition, RA tiles start auctions automatically. The difference between this and an invoked auction is the invoking player must bid if no one else does, whereas no one has to bid in an auto-auction. Scoring occurs at the end of each epoch with some tiles only scoring after the 3rd epoch. The player with the most victory points wins.

Overwhelmed? That’s understandable, but after a few turns it starts to make sense rather quickly and there’s reference charts for each tile right there on the board. Strategy takes a little longer with knowing when and what to bid and when to invoke. Yes, which tiles you draw when makes a huge difference in the game and you obviously can’t control which ones come out, however there is surprisingly a LOT you can do to not only decide which tiles you get, but which ones others do too. The meta-game comes into play quite often, too. I’m a firm believer that controlling the invoking of auctions is the key to consistent scoring; though others may disagree. A fun/stupid little house rule I use is to make someone say “By the power of RA!” whenever they invoke to help lighten the mood from all the thinking going on!

I absolutely LOVE this game! (did I mention that?) It’s been in my top 3 ever since I first started playing it. The art on the board and bits are fun, the game is incredibly balanced (even for an auction game!), incredibly challenging and never even close to the same every play. (Plus, there’s a whole lot more I like about it that I can’t even explain until you’ve played it a few times) An entire game only takes around 45 minutes or less. This game is not heavy but not terribly easy to learn, either, so who you play with can have a wide variety of results.

All things considered, perhaps what makes RA so good is that regardless of who I play with, I have won and lost this game by 1 point or tie breaker many times. Does a game get any better than that?

Number of players: 2-5 (note: there are a few variations that depend on the number of players)

Playing time: Around 45 minutes

Suggested ages: 12 and up

All photos courtesy of Boardgamegeek’s database