First Impressions- TEG - While Blogging

Recently I got the opportunity to play two new board games. Tiny Epic Galaxies, a recent purchase of mine, and Last Will brought along by my friend.

First Impressions:

I don’t think its fair to review a game without a lot of plays so instead I do First Impressions posts based on early plays, with full reviews following if I play the game enough

Tiny Epic Galaxies (TEG)

Type: Dice Combo-ing/Engine Building MicroGame
Players: 1-5
Time: 30 minutes

I played Tiny Epic Kingdoms a lot at Gaelcon and enjoyed it so I went looking for a copy. I found TEG which had slightly better reviews on boardgamegeek and has a theme I prefer (Space!). It was very well priced at around 20 euro.

The game consists of game mat and counters for each player, 7 dice and a deck of planet cards around which the game is based. The box is only about 3 inches by 6 and all the contents are on the small size to fit (hence the name).

Theme

The players are in charge of a space empire expanding into a new galaxy. They are each competing to colonise new planets and improve their empire. The theme works well with nice art and design, and all the pieces are quality.

This was towards the end of the game and things were not going well for me...

Play

Play revolves around rolling ‘action’ dice and performing the relevant actions in the order of your choice. You can gain resources (culture/energy), colonise planets, move your spaceships around or perform actions on your colonised planets. There is also a unique rule where other players can pay to do the action you just did, which adds interesting decisions to the game.

Thoughts

The game seems to have a lot of luck but there are also a lot of decisions for the players to make. It took a while for everyone to get the hang of the game and figure out how to play. It took about 1 hour which I felt was a little longer then I wanted but we also had to learn the rules first to be fair. I lost miserably which I’ll try to blame on luck…. Overall I enjoyed playing, but lossing badly soured the experience. I need to play more to get a proper feel but lossing should never be unfun in a boardgame! It has a lot of interesting complexity for its size but a lot of randomness. I will try to play a few more games but I’m not excited to do so. I definitely like the box though!