RoboRally - Tips & Strategies

A few tips…

1. Be patient. Planning a move, especially for new players (and those without a swivel chair) can take some time. Don’t use the timer included. (unless your play group is cut-throat) It’s a little hard core. It take the fun out of the game.

2. Because of #1 above, playing multiple flags with more than 3 players can take a while. (a 6 player/3 flag game I played once took over 4 hours) So play with less flags if you have more players. The game can get frustrating if it goes on too long.

3. Using the Option Cards the way the rules instruct (ending on a double wrench space) make them few and far between. Hey, it’s a robot factory! Starting the game with an Option card and handing them out more often makes the game even more fun. Try it!

To help even out the game for players, I put a mine on the first flag. This slows down a player who gets out ahead of the other players, forcing them to shut down for a round to repair. (Remember you can’t declare a power down unless you already have some damage) The mine then is put on flag two, etc. If there are more than one robot in contention, the other will take proximity damage as well.

Another option is to put a force field around the flags, so robots must stop to destroy it with their forward laser. We use a six sided die to represent the force field, turning it as damage is taken.

We have also dealt a hand of option cards face down for each flag. When a player tags up, the player to his left chooses an option for him. The idea is that the lead player gets the worst option, the last player getting the remaining best one.

Look for creative ways to use your turn cards. You may get unlucky and not draw a right turn that you need for a crucial move. Three left turns or a turn-around and a left will give the same result, just in a different register phase. There are some situations where that extra phase to turn can be used to your advantage such as stalling to avoid a traffic jam or menacing board element.

I have seen this alluded to elsewhere, but I don’t think it can be stressed enough.

I love a long drawn-out game. I used to subject my siblings to all night Star Trek CCG marathons with dozens of mission cards just for the fun of it. However, not everyone wants the game to last forever.

I strongly suggest starting out new RoboRally players with two boards maximum. I actually start them with one. You can still put four flags on one board should you choose to do so and there will be plenty of mayhem on the board since everyone will be in the same space, but the game will take significantly less time. I find this get my friends the RoboRally bug, and I can then expand the number of boards and have longer games because they are already hooked.

My friends and I play RoboRally nearly every time we get together and to freshen the game up we added “Chaos Bot”. Chaos Bot is an unmanned bot that starts out on a random spot on the board and completes 5 random programming cards a turn. If it is facing a player at the end of a phase it automatically shoots the opponent. If an opponent destroys Chaos Bot they get an Option Card. You can even give Chaos Bot an Option Card to increase the difficulty!

You should ignore the initiative order for players who are only making a turn. It it no way effects every other players movement and will speed up game play. After completing turns, resolve movement as per normal rules and then go to the environment/shooting.

When looking at the board and trying to figure out how to get from A to B, the closest route seldom is the one to chose. The conveyour belts, even the slow ones, have GREAT impact on the speed and accesibility of the boards. Running upstream takes great effort, using the belts downstream speed you up a lot (remember, if you stay on the belt it’s five extra steps in a turn).

Also, walls that force you to turn all the time hinders you as well. Taking a slightly longer route where you don’t have to turn all the time often goes faster.

When playing with larger groups (especially 8 people) break into two teams. Everyone still needs to touch each flag in order (not just the team), but it lessens the number of robots a player is “gunning” for. It tends to open the game up a bit more (and make for more anguished cries when you blow up your teammate).

People who start falling behind can still be beneficial to a team and win with their team by playing different tactics. You can play saftey, or stock up on weapons to keep the other team’s leader down.

Team play is now the only way I play with larger groups.

To add more chaos and mayhem to the game we will play with a rule that 1) Each player starts with a uppgrade and 2) everytime a player would heal he/she also recieves a uppgrade. This adds the frequency of uppgrades dramatically and makes fore some insane robots rolling around.

No flags, one board. Game can be turn-based (Hitting someone with a laser is 1 point, killing blows are 5 points, pushing-deaths are 10 points), or lives based (5 lives, last man standing wins).

This changes the game from a race into a very competitive fighting game. Everyone should be similar in terms of skill for this to be any fun.