Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black (Gamelyn Games)

Earlier this year, I shared with you a Kickstarter success story called Tiny Epic Galaxies. I found the game to be very impressive in terms of theme, quality of components, and compact nature of the game. You can read my full recap here. Today, I am pleased to announce that Scott Almes and Gamelyn Games are revisiting this game by releasing an expansion entitled Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black.

In Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black, you have expanded your galaxies as far into known space as you can, fighting bitterly with your rivals over every possible planet. It's time to find new territory, and the only way to do that is to upgrade your ships and hire pilots. The expansion is currently available on Kickstarter for a pledge of $24 (or $46 will get you both Tiny Epic Galaxies and its expansion, if you don't own the original game). Let's talk about how the expansion changes the game.

Setup - Setup is done the same as the normal game with the following additions:
1. Add Planet Cards from the expansion into the planet deck and shuffle
2. Shuffle the Secret Mission Cards from the expansion into secret mission deck.
3. Shuffle the deck of Pilot Cards, and draw two more than the number of players. Place these face up in a row, above the row of Planet Cards.
4. Give each player a Hanger Card and their four Advanced Ships in their player color.
5. Place the Exploration Mat where everyone can reach it. and shuffle and place the circular deck of Exploration Cards face down on the mat.

Game Play - Game Play is done the same as the normal game with the additional two actions.
1. Hiring Pilots - On your turn, you may activate a certain number of dice symbols (2 matching symbols depending on the ship or 3 matching symbols for any ship) to hire a Pilot and replace one of your normal Ships with an Advanced Ship.
2. Exploration - Using a Move A Ship action, you can place a ship onto the Exploration Mat to explore. You then take one of the revealed Exploration Cards and end the exploration OR take the top card from the Exploration Deck. If you take the latter action, you can keep drawing and revealing new cards until there are three face up or a red card is drawn. You then resolve the action with the card you have selected and end exploration.

The game still ends when one player reaches 21 or more points (from Planets, Empire Level, Pilot Cards, and Dwarf Planets. You then score any bonus points from Secret Missions and Exploration Badges located at the bottom of the Exploration Cards.

Review
Expansions are a lot like sequels in that they almost never live up to the original. Thankfully, Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black breaks the mold. For starters, even though I only have a prototype of the game, I can tell that the artwork and quality did not suffer from the original game to the expansion. In fact any component upgrades the first Kickstarter campaign unlocked are automatically included in this expansion. Secondly, the expansion adds in more Planet Cards and Secret Mission Cards to add more variability to the game. Third, are the Pilot Cards. Each of them provide different abilities adding an asymmetric element to the game. It will be up to you to discover which combination of pilots works best for you from game to game. Also on the Pilot Cards and Exploration Cards are symbols which add a set collection element to the game. This brings me lastly to the Exploration Cards. With these cards, we add a press your luck element to the game.

So now in addition to area control and dice activation, we have added two fun game mechanisms to an already great game. This gives each player more options on what to do with their dice and adds even more replay value to the game. They were also smart to keep the end game trigger at 21 points. By keeping this the same, the game doesn't get bogged down and feel like it overstays its welcome. I am always amazed at the amount of strategy that Gamelyn Games is able to pack into their Tiny Epic boxes, but somehow they find a way. If you are already a fan of Tiny Epic Galaxies, you NEED this expansion. If you've never played Tiny Epic Galaxies, you'll WANT the game and expansion.

This game was provided to me for free by Gamelyn Games in exchange for an honest review.

Martian Dice (Tasty Minstrel Games)

Martian Dice is a pocket-sized filler game with a press your luck element to it. For those unfamiliar with those terms, allow me to explain. Pocket-sized means it's a tiny game, which is composed of only 13 dice and nothing more. Filler game denotes the time to play the game, and this one takes approximately 10 minutes per player. So if you have two players, you're looking at 20 minutes, but the more you have the longer the game is unless you buy multiple games. (If you have a large family, you might want to as you can have as many or as few people as you want with this game.) The press your luck element means you roll your dice and you can keep rolling them to get a desired result, but by doing so, you might get an undesired result and your turn would end, and/or you would not score any points.

The 13 martian dice in this game are custom-made with unique images on each side. On two sides of the die is the image of a Death Ray. The other images on just one side are a Human, a Cow, a Chicken, and a Tank. On your turn, you pick up the 13 dice and roll them. Immediately set aside all Tanks. These dice cannot be re-rolled. You then must then choose, which single image you want to keep - Human, Cow, Chicken, or Death Ray. If you set aside Humans, Cows, or Chickens, you cannot set them aside again on later rolls. However, if you set aside Death Rays, you can set those aside on later rolls. After you have set aside the tanks and one of the other four symbols, you take your remaining dice, roll, and repeat until you can no longer set aside dice, or you choose to stop rolling and not press your luck anymore. Then, you score your set aside dice and it is the next players turn until someone reaches 25 points.

So how do you score? For starters, you must have at least as many Death Rays as Tanks or else, you will score 0 points. After you have performed that check, you then add up the rest of your dice. Each Human, Cow, or Chicken counts for 1 point, but if you set aside at least one of each, then you score 3 bonus points. Some people play a variant where you get 3 bonus points for each set of Human, Cow, and Chicken, but that can be overpowered, if someone has really good dice luck. To further illustrate the scoring I am going to do a quick sample turn.

First roll (13 dice) = 4 Tanks, 3 Death Rays, 2 Humans, 2 Cows, and 2 Chickens. The 4 Tanks are automatically set aside and I choose to set aside the 3 Death Rays.

Second roll (6 dice) = 1 Tank, 2 Death Rays, 0 Humans, 1 Cow, and 2 Chickens. The 1 Tank is automatically set aside and I choose to set aside the 2 Death Rays.

Third roll (3 dice) = 0 Tanks, 1 Death Rays, 2 Humans, 0 Cows, and 0 Chickens. I choose to set aside the 2 Humans and then opt to roll no more, as I don't want to press my luck.

The score is 2 points, because my 5 Death Rays were at least as many as my 5 Tanks, and I had 2 Humans.

Overall, this game will scratch an itch if you have a hankering to chuck some dice and gamble with how lucky you think you will be. The theme is clever and the actions makes sense. The designer - Scott Almes is excellent and one of my favorite designers of little games (particularly the Tiny Epic line). The packing makes sense (dice come in a cardboard cup, which doubles as storage and a dice cup). The price point is low ($15 MSRP, but $11 on Amazon). Children can play this at a very early age. 8+ is recommended, but younger can play. And it's just fun! (Unless your Tanks outnumber your Death Rays) So if you are looking for a clever game to take on the go or just gather your whole family around the table, pick up a copy (or 2) of Martian Dice and see who the best alien in your family is.

This game was provided to me for free by Tasty Minstrel Games in exchange for an honest review. If you found this review helpful, please click here and hit Yes!