Tiny Epic Galaxies is one of the very small box Tiny Epic games by Scott Almes and published by Gamelyn Games. As a whole, the Tiny Epic games have received mixed reviews. Tiny Epic Galaxies Blast Off and the original Tiny Epic Galaxies are solid , if not …epic…, games.
There are few differences between Tiny Epic Galaxies and Tiny Epic Galaxies Blast Off. I will mention the rules differences as I go through the rules. The basic gameplay for the two is the same. Each player has their own galaxy/player board. They start out with two 1950s-style spaceships each. That can increase to a maximum of four by upgrading their galaxy.
The two resources in the game are energy and culture. Energy can be used to reroll dice (Original game: One free reroll per turn of all unused dice and pay one energy to reroll a single die. Blast Off: Pay one energy to reroll all unused dice.) and upgrade a galaxy. Culture allows a player to perform - “follow” - an action on another player’s turn that that player has just performed. (Original game: Pay one culture to follow any action. Blast Off: Pay one culture to follow any of the first three actions performed by the other player.) Culture can also be used to upgrade a galaxy.
Player’s ships may move between their galaxy and a card representing a planet or between planets. Landing on a planet allows the player to use that planet’s special power. Going into orbit around a planet starts the player on the way to colonizing the planet. (Original game: Players use economics or diplomacy to colonize planets. Blast Off is somewhat less imperial. In Blast Off, the players use life (terraforming) or tech.)
The primary game mechanism is chucking dice. On their turn, each player rolls four to six dice. These dice can allow the player to move one of their ships between their galaxy and a planet or between planets, to advance their colonization of a planet, to get energy or culture, to improve their galaxy, or to use the special power of one of the planets they have colonized.
The goal of the game is to get victory points. Improving a player’s galaxy can get a fair chunk of VPs, up to ⅓ of that needed to end the game. All the other VPs come from colonized planets. Planets that take longer to colonize are worth more VP.
I recently played the original game multiplayer at a game night. I quite enjoyed it. The improvements from the original to Blast Off are fairly minor but welcome. In particular, limiting follow actions to the first three actions a player performs significantly changes the strategy. Using the original game, we ran into several occasions where Player A could get a significant advantage over Player B using one of their dice. If Player B could follow, the advantage would go to Player B. Player A would have to forego their action if Player B had any culture. In Blast Off, Player A could just wait to perform the desired action after they performed their first three. This change to the follow rules makes the game a little less tense, a little less frustrating, and a little shorter.
The ability to reroll all the unspent dice is less clearly beneficial. It does reduce the feel-bad times that a player has to end their turn without using several of their dice. On the other hand, it can lead to a long, boring chain of rerolls as a player tries to get the exact roll they want. I describe one such chain below.
How does the solo game compare? Not well. The AI is straightforward and mimics, for the most part, player game actions. The game is quick to set up - less than five minutes - and to play - about a half hour. Those are the good things. The problems are randomness and player count. These problems are both inherent in the game, not just the solo mode.
Towards the end of the game, I had to roll a particular symbol three times to claim a high value planet and win the game. Each die has that symbol on one face. I started rolling six dice. Initially, I had enough energy for seven rerolls. I would expect to get those three symbols after rolling about eighteen dice. I did not keep count of all of my rerolls, but it was at least a dozen. I had to reduce my dice pool a few times to get the energy to keep rolling. I must have rolled about forty dice. And got two of the symbols I needed. The AI claimed that planet on their next turn.
Following another player is a major part of the strategy of this game, particularly following actions that advance colonization. In the solo game, the AI has a few ways to advance colonization that cannot be followed. A bigger problem is that the AI is the only other player. Being able to follow two or three other players, each of which is probably going after different goals, gives a player many more opportunities to mitigate dice randomness than they can get in a solo or two-player game.
Overall, I found a three player game to be a reasonably engaging, if fairly simple, strategy game. The solo game, and probably a two player game, is a pretty boring game that relies on far too many dice rerolls. I will not be going back to it as a solo game.
Den of the Red Wolf 