RoboRally (1994)

20150904:
After two rounds of Taboo, my friends and I played a little RoboRally. In RoboRally, players are robots on a factory floor. Equipped with lasers, each round, players are dealt program cards and choose five of them to place on their program sheets. After 30 seconds, players must complete their choices or else their remaining cards are chosen at random.

Made a small mistake at the start and I'm all the way in the back.

The five cards are then resolved over five turns. On each turn, the next card is flipped over and the player with the lowest valued card resolves his/her card first and then resolution continues with the next higher value. After all players have gone, various board actions are resolved, and finally all robots fire their lasers.

Without going into detail, taking damage is bad, and the goal of the game is to reach various goals on the factory floor*. Think you got the perfect program devised? Think again. With all the obstacles on the factory floor and other players lurking about, plans will undoubtedly be spoiled!

*Various official boards have been released and many additional game boards have been created by fans.

My robot, Trundle.

With six players, the game was quite challenging, especially since it was the first time for all of us except the owner. Forced to make decisions under the pressure of a 30 seconds sand timer, the game moves along rather quickly. Well, perhaps we needed a more efficient way of resolving turn orders.

What seemed to work rather well towards the end was having each player hold up the hundreds digit of their card value. That way we got a vague idea for who would be going next. Again, it wasn't the most efficient solution, but it sufficed.

As it was our first time playing, it took us an hour before a player (Michael) reached the first goal and it was getting late so we ended the game there.

While the game can be played with as few as two players and as many as eight, I would say having six players felt pretty good and having five players would probably feel better.

For the most part, the rules were straightforward and the only confusing bit was in regards to rotation on the conveyor belt. If there's a bend in the conveyor belt, the player does not rotate if he/she moves onto the bend or another player pushes him/her onto the bend. However, if the conveyor moves onto the bend as a result of the conveyor belt phase, then he/she should rotate. Furthermore, the rotation is 90 degrees with respect to the robot's current orientation.

20150904 Steph Kevin Michael Josh Thomas me.
RoboRally (1994)