My Favourite Game: Ra

$20 million your sir 20.5 wo 100 million CLS 100 million I love Bargain Hunt but enough of Tim wot let's in toad talk about one of my favorite games [Music] raw welcome to my favorite game a series where I explore my favorite games but in a given genre to today we're talking auction games and I want to ask you a question why do you play auction games no really what experience are you hoping to get out of it because I bet your answer is and now auction Lot number seven my anacronismo do I hear $1 $1 $2 $75 Shillings 12 Doge marks 7 cronas 300 lra sold it's that right it's that feeling of teetering on the edge of a wrong decision but not knowing where the line is it's the feeling of w to press a giant red button with the words big mistake but somehow mysteriously hoping that it's going to turn out to be not a mistake at all in the real world that kind of action financially ruining unless you're a billionaire or a Tory or some such but games allow us to live vicariously in a world where we can bet it all and the only consequence is that our friend gets to have a smug grin for about 5 minutes or in other words the consequences are mechanical we might lose points or Monopoly money or whatever but it doesn't matter raah is an auction game from Dr rer kenzia if you're not familiar with his work boy have I got a video for you but also in the board game World the K is is somewhat of a legend a Beyonce or Taylor Swift type figure you know been around for ages still putting out bangers where's a bow tie little bit country little bit rolling right but auction games is what he's most famous for and I don't just think that this is the best game he's ever designed I think this is the best auction game period because unlike other auction games the bidding isn't the exciting part it wants you to experience the consequences at the start of RA you get free bidding discs this is the only currency you have there's a total of 16 of these Sund discs in the game with values from 1 to 16 and each player has three and there's always one on the center of the board let's say you want to make a bid in an auction not going to explain what you're bidding on in this game just yet to make a bid you offer one of your discs the next player in turn order can out bid you offering a disc with a higher value players keep bidding or permanently passing until one clear winner emerges raw is what you call a closed economy game any currency that leaves your hand stays in the system and in this game in a particularly painful way see winning a bid can be pretty easy let's say I have the number 16 disc this is the highest value in the game if I bid with it I immediately win the auction the other players can't even compete but here's the thing if I win an auction I of course get to claim my prize and then I have to spend my sundisk the sundisk goes into the center of the board where it replaces another sunis that was placed there in a previous auction this disc from the board will now be a sundisk I possess in the next Epoch and an Epoch is essentially around with multiple auctions so I don't have a 16 anymore and instead I have a fre I guess whatever I was bidding on better be worth it but to add insult to injury this 16 is now available to be claimed by the winner of the next auction which I guess could be me but luckily isn't because I've just spent my best currency dope right so that's the first layer of consequence okay but what are you bidding on well tiles but this is is where it gets a little bit complicated there's a whole daily worth of different options and some of the sausages on offer are really not very good most tiles are obvious benefits and you want to bid on them but just because the tiles are good doesn't necessarily mean that they are good to you your strategy emerges as you accumulate auction winnings in your personal T portfolio let's have a look at monuments there are eight different monuments in the game and you'll score points if you invest heavily into one type of Monument or completely spread out into different ones you know those weird guys that hang around Parties by themselves in dark corners and then you talk to them and turns out they're really into sphin statues we've all met them well let's pretend you're that guy you've been building up a steady supply of sphin statue monuments if you have at least three of them by the end of the game you'll get five points if you have five you'll get 15 points so far so said collection but think about how well the game t rhs your intentions everyone at the party can see that you're the weird sphin statue guy you're in a dark corner and you're wearing a t-shirt that says Sphinx me bastard one more time if you've got two Sphinx monument tiles that means that every subsequent one you get will net you five points and the other players know that so they either won't let you win them or deliberately gouge you for higher value Sund discs and that's just one type of tile others include Nile tiles which will scor you one point each at the end of every Epoch which is nice because Nile tiles persist through Epoch but they won't score you any points unless you have a flood tile which don't persist through Epoch having the most pharohs will net you five points but having the least loses you two points better get some of those civilization tiles are worth nothing until you have at least three different ones but also if you don't have any by the end of the epoch you will lose Five Points also they don't persist through EPO so you have to keep reing them all of these options create an intricate ecosystem that pulls you into different directions but also sticks a bunch of great big light bulbs on you every tile you win sets you on a path where some tiles become extremely good and desirable and other tiles become a waste of your resources and everyone can see what you want and most importantly they can see what you don't want and that that is layer two of the consequent sandwich get it it's the meat from the deli honestly I don't know how I come up with these things and here it is we have arrived at the final bread what I've been describing so far it probably sounds like an average set collection game with a very simple bidding system evaluate what tiles are good for you and how much you want to bid on them fun not groundbreaking but fans of RA will have noticed that I've been emitting a pretty key detail that transforms this game into a hellish Bazaar where every bad decision could be yours for the l l prize of losing a board game I went high and now I need to come down because I need to explain some roles there are three things you can do on your turn you can invoke ra which is code for starting an auction you can spend a god tile which is not relevant for our discussion or you can dip into the bag and add a new tile towards the offering and here here's the thing in raw when you call an auction you don't just bid on one tile you bid on all the tiles that have been drawn so far which doesn't sound so bad but that's cuz I haven't explained all the tiles yet disaster tiles appropriately destroy whatever they depict on them when you win them in an auction so for example if I win this auction I would lose my flood tile and now my n Tils which I worked very hard to collect over the course of the game will score me nothing why would I want to win that auction well remember I have no control over what's for sale and usually what's for sale is a whole heap of different things some grad some M some downright disastrous okay so if I won this sure I would have to get rid of my flood tile but there's a f sphin statue tile right over there and you know how we feel about those what players do have control over is just how big this pile gets the way raw usually plays is that on the turn people just keep adding tiles watching the offering and the anticipation grow until someone loses their cool and hits the big red auction button there's so much drama in this it's just one of those delightful board game moments where you watch something steadily develop with twists and turns there's three identical monuments in this auction that's five points by itself surely the next player will invoke raw nah I'll just draw a tile instead ha now there's a disaster who's next honestly this is exactly the sort of thing that may be so fascinated with games but if that wasn't enough there's one more tile to spice things up whenever you draw a raw tile the game immediately forces an auction this part I'm okay about because sometimes it does work beautifully a forced auction for a set of tiles you weren't necessarily expecting can ask you to recalibrate how you feel about this is this good do I want it other times it's just obvious that no one's buying whatever garbage the bag arithm generated and after a quick pass pass pass pass pass the auction resets to an empty slate but and this is perhaps my favorite role in raah if you actually invoked raah you cannot dance the pass pass pass the auction will begin with the person to the left of you and if they all say no you have to bid on it here's how it plays out the pile is getting big and good but good for other players and not for you so if it comes to your turn you could add more goodies for someone else which isn't great or instead you could invoke raw before things get too wild logically someone should bid on it they want the stuff but if you invoked raw too early would the other players actually want to waste a bidding disc on it or would they rather saddle someone else with completely useless Tiles at no cost to themselves and force them to pay for it so the sandwich is now complete but this final layer just begins to highlight what's so magical about this game how priorities shift and a space for unpredictable moves and clever play emerges each session of raw is an invitation to the unexpected the mistakes are abundant but the burden is featherweight it's a game after all you're having fun the rules are just six pages with pictures it doesn't take effort to learn to play but there's just such a wealth of experiences and emotions crammed into this box I feel like I feel like giving it a hug I'm going to give it a hug come here you've done very well some notes on this new edition raw has been out since 1999 and multiple versions of it exists and I'm sure there's lovers out there of their original Aaliyah or Rio Grande versions and people who own the FFG and dice G versions and all of them are fine there's reasons to like them I would not recommend upgrading to this one but also I am sorry this version is just amazing I used to own the fg/ wind rider version and out of all of them it's perhaps the least loved one the civilization tiles are particularly hard to tell apart and more than once I ended up bidding on something I didn't need an issue you just won't experience with this one the player boards are a fantastic Ally nice touch with a summary of all the set collection rules plus all the tiles that persist through EPO go on the left the ones that go away at the end of the epoch on the right I'm all about these pneumonic devices in board games it makes play much smoother there are two versions of this new edition mine is the deluxe one and I wouldn't recommend it I only got it cuz I already knew raw was one of my favorite games I splurged the only difference in the regular version is that the tiles you bid on are not wooden and the Victory Point markers are not metal which is a completely unnecessary luxury do as I say not as I do what you do get in the regular version which I could find online for a very reasonable £45 is the same artwork the same layout the same thought and care and also still wooden sunnd discs and this giant wooden piece that lets you go iron VRA which serves no gameplay function but is a longstanding tradition amongst raw enthusiasts and I approve it or in other words you can spend an amount of money that is appropriate for a board game and get yourself a beloved classic that has remained at mainstate for decades and now looks better than ever ra just does not disappoint it's fine-tuned to deliver Agony and fun in precise measures and never the same Carousel of conundrums that's guaranteed to make the question is this worth it permanently un answerable that is until youve spent the sundisk and by then it's too late on the next episode of my favorite game we'll talk about my favorite deck building game if you do know what that is don't be a spoil sport to others if you don't know what it is leave your guess in the comments also leave the comment if you also love raah like me or if you think I'm wrong and there's better auction games out there and also subscribe because if you don't subscribe you'll never find out what my favorite deck building game is and that's just a bid you don't want to make and now I'm going to eat my sandwich it's a little it's a little dry but see this is what makes it the perfect analogy for a Kia game because when you hear the rules to a Kia game it's just like bread and meat on its own there's no lettuce or Rish or you know some sort of a barbecue sauce or whatever it is you want to have in your sandwich but when you play you're like oh I get it this is amazing this is delicious it's got all the things I want in it so that's raah and um um we bought this ourselves because we are independent um we don't have like review copies we don't work with Publishers so if you want to support that kind of thing um the link to our patreon is in the description and um I'm going to finish this and uh see you soon

Channel: No Pun Included

Views: 26,346

Keywords: no pun included, board game, review, npi, boardgames, boardgamegeeks, brettspiel, brettspiele, jeuxdesociete, tabletop, games, juego de mesa, gamenight, bgg, best board game, good board game, best board games, hot board games, thinky games, susd, watch it played, dice tower, strategy, ra, reiner knizia, pharaoh edition, deluxe edition, 25th century games, ian o'toole, new edition

Id: Rh1e_J2MN1c

Length: 14min 57sec (897 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2024