Review after a few dozen games

[SDF_II]

This game is the best example of an irony I have seen in a long time. Great game, poor product.

Bad things:
Robots: Can they look any more familier?

Virtual Robots: I like how you can't really tell which way they are facing.

Starting box: Great way to give someone a better head start. I'm not sure who designed the actual "starting grid" but I have to question whether they have played before and to what extent they were even attempting to be successfully neutral in its design. Crappy.

Board Construction: Wow! I mean my home made Hex version of the game had the quality of boards that exists in this box set. I think I'll put contact paper over these game boards as well to help protect them. Geeshh. Hope there isn't too much moisture in the air (or on the table).

Cheap cheap cheap. What a freaking dissappointment for Dr. Garfield.

---------------
Positive points on the game:

Board Design. Nice selection of old boards + nice new created board. It would be nice to have access to individual board purchases (say $3.00 a board?). I can think of several multi-board designs I can't do now. Too bad you can't even replace damaged boards due to cheap construction. I think I can predict that will be necessary.

Board Element Design: I love the modifications to the Express conveyers, though the pushers are still questionable.

Flags: I am liking the three dimenional clear aspect. Simplify's things for newbies even if it is something else on the board to get knocked over.

Options: Nicely selected group of options. Though there are several simple missing options from the original game.

Game play: Like before, it rocks. Good move at not messing with that, too bad you had to cheapen the product material up.

SDF II

[SSG_Huble]

In my opinion, this is a great re-print of a classic social game. The more players the better the game. I personally wouldn't play the game with any fewer that 4 players and think it is best with about 6.

I personally enjoy the game but I know of a number of people that don't care for it because it "makes you think", and they aren't looking to have to "think" when they play social games.

Just my opinion.

[PhilFleischmann]

Bad things:
Robots: Can they look any more familier?
Right. To me they look like they were designed primarily to come out of the mold easily, rather than to look like distictive robots.

And I find it laughable how they just blithly say "The new Squashbot looks like the old Hulk X-90, the new Hulk X-90 looks like the old Trundlebot, and the new Trundlebot looks like the old Squashbot." And they don't even apologize for the error, or even admit that it was an error. As if they did it on purpose for some benefit. Are we supposed to thank them for screwing it up? I'm glad I have the older edition with the metal bots. I just use those when I play.

And they have the audacity to claim that the new bots come "pre-painted." Whoop-de-do! They put a little black wash over them. Actually painting them would have entailed making them different colors or otherwise easily distinguishable. If I ever decide I want to play with these new bots, I will paint them myself.

Virtual Robots: I like how you can't really tell which way they are facing.
Those aren't virtual robots. They're just archive markers. Sure, they look nice, but there are no virtual robots in this version. You don't need them because you have the...

Starting box: Great way to give someone a better head start. I'm not sure who designed the actual "starting grid" but I have to question whether they have played before and to what extent they were even attempting to be successfully neutral in its design. Crappy.
I completely agree. My only guess is that they deliberately tried to "dumb down" the game, and they thought that virtual robots was too advanced a concept for most players. IME, no one has ever had a problem with it. "I know! Let's take a fairly advanced game involving programming robots and take out one thing that might confuse people, leaving the rest of the game's complexity intact, and make the game unfair as a result!" I'd rather play a game that's fair and slightly more complex, than a game that's slightly less complex and unfair.

It also annoys me a little that they didn't name the starting boards, like all the other boards are named. I call them "Starting Gate" and "Pole Position" myself.

Board Construction:
There is one positive aspect to the cheap quality of the boards: they're lighter. I have the original set and all of the expansions, from before RR was assimilated by the Hasborg. That's a total of twenty boards - which gets very heavy if you have to lug it around much. But yes, on the whole, I would have preferred higher quality, especially considering the price for this set.

And the thing that annoys me most is that the boards aren't sufficient for playing all of the scenarios in the book. "Give us more of your money so you can play these tracks! After all, you can't have too much of this cheapness!" And it wasn't even necessary. If they had put Cross on the back of Spin Zone, and Island on the back of Vault, and Maelstrom and Exchange on the backs of Chess and Chop Shop (either way), all of the book-tracks would be playable with one set.

The bot screw-up, the board screw-up and the overall cheapness says to me that they really didn't care enough to give this their best effort. It makes me less likely to buy games from AH/WOTC/Hasbro in the future.

In addition to these things are the other changes that were made to the actual rules. (The removal of virtual robots was already mentioned - IMO, a foolish decision which then necessitates additional rules for re-entering the race, adding complication where they were trying to simplify. And of course, the inherent unfairness of the startign positions.)

The changing of the double-wrench spaces into wrench-hammer spaces is not a bad idea, but it does show the attitude of the publishers as wanting to "dumb down" the game. On a double-wrench space, you have to make a choice. On a wrench-hammer space, you don't get a choice. The same thing is seen with the starting boards: you have to face toward the main board; you don't have a choice. One other area where this "take away the choices" attitude is seen is in the options, the two options that had a choice in the original basic set, Turret and Shield were replaced by options that don't have such a choice. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does show the dumbing down.

And speaking of options, a few of them were changed as well:
One good change was made to the Flywheel. The original sais that you could save one of your leftover "movement cards" which means you can't save a rotate card (though that might not have been the original intent). The new version says "program card" which means any card. I consider this an improvement to the original option.
A bad change is to the Superior Archive. The abbreviated text (compared to the original) does not make it clear what happens if the SA is the option lost on being destroyed. Do you still re-enter with no damage? Many have interpreted the rule as meaning that you don't. If you discard the option right at the time when you use it, you don't get to use it. This may or may not be the intended interpretation. If it is, then they've taken an option that was fairly weak to begin with, and made it almost completely useless. If it is not, then they should have said so explicitly. Ambiguity is a cardinal sin in writing game rules!
The worst change of all is to the Mechanical Arm. This was one of the most powerful options in the entire game, and they made it even more so! Not only does it work diagonally, but now it works even while you're shut down! In the previous edition, no options can be used while shut down unless specifically stated or implied by the optio itself (which means only Power Down Shield and Ablative Coat). Some of the tracks in the book have all the flags next to conveyors, which means that if you have this new Uber-Mechanical Arm, you can get onto the conveyor, shut down, and win the game without doing anything! In the previous edition, you couldn't tag flags while shut down - again, a much better rule, IMO.

As SDF_II said, it seems to indicate a severe lack of playtesting prior to this edition's release.

More cheapness: No box(es) for the program/option cards. Why the heck not?

The player mats: completely useless. They say that they reduce clutter on the table. What? Who are they kidding? They increase the clutter on the table! Before, you just needed space for five cards and a small space for damage counters and lives. Not you need space for the player mat, and the cards hang over the edge! Also before, if you locked registers, you'd put the locking damage counters on the locked cards. With the mats, the locking damage counters are on a separate row, making it less clear which cards are locked, which becomes even more of an issue if registers are locked out of order with Fire Control or by repairing them in a non-obvious order.

Also the ! on the damage counters is upside-down. (check the icon for this message above, for what a "warning" sign is supposed to look like.)

Good things:

Board Element Design: I love the modifications to the Express conveyers, though the pushers are still questionable.
I agree about the Express Conveyors. But what's wrong witht he pushers? They're pretty much the same as the old ones. Also, despite the new conveyor design, they're still very confusing to many new players, I've found. I guess that's just part of the game.

Flags: I am liking the three dimenional clear aspect. Simplify's things for newbies even if it is something else on the board to get knocked over.
Agreed! Although the number stickers are a little wierd: the "backwards triangles" don't quite fit, except on the back side of the flags which makes them unreadable.

[PhilFleischmann]

In my opinion, this is a great re-print of a classic social game. The more players the better the game. I personally wouldn't play the game with any fewer that 4 players and think it is best with about 6.

I personally enjoy the game but I know of a number of people that don't care for it because it "makes you think", and they aren't looking to have to "think" when they play social games.

Just my opinion.
RoboRally has always been, and remains, a "thinking game." It's about planning and programming. I find that most of the people who don't want to have to think don't play RoboRally in the first place.

BTW, I find it to be a fine game for less than 4 players, but to each his own. It certainly gets harder with more players.

[PhilFleischmann]

Just to clarify: I may have overstated my post above where I complained about the problems with the new edition. I am upset at some of the foolish decisions that were made, but they are easy enough to ignore.

When I play, I pretty much ignore all the broken rule changes. I use the old, better rules for the options, Mechanical Arm and Superior Archive Copy (and Dual Processor - a slight change that I forgot to mention*). I use the virtual robot rules for a fair game and ignore the starting boarts. I use my old metal colorfully-painted bots. I painted them myself. It wasn't hard and they look pretty good if I do say so myself. And I'm far from an expert miniature painter. The only new rule change that has any real merit is the wrench-hammer instead of the double-wrench. I can decide to use it either way each time I play.

I look at the new edition as a new deck of program cards (my old ones were getting worn out), four new boards, four slightly different versions of old boards, some spiffy new flags, and a few new ideas about possible courses like "Moving Targets." Unfortunately, these things really aren't worth the retail price. The extra screwed-up rules and unfairness do not add to the value. If I hadn't had the opportunity to buy it at a fairly deep discount, I wouldn't have bought it at all.

*The original Dual Processor only allowed certain prescribed combinations:
Move 2 + Turn L = Move 1, Turn L
Move 2 + Turn R = Move 1, Turn R
Move 3 + Turn L = Move 2, Turn L
Move 3 + Turn R = Move 2, Turn R
Move 3 + Turn U = Move 1, Turn U
And that was it. With the current version, you can combine any Move with any Turn, although any such combination other than the ones above results in the Move being ignored and just the Turn being used. So it doesn't really matter too much, except that it can now be combined with other Movement Options like Fourth Gear and Reverse Gear. The original had a rule that only one movement option could be used in a phase - Either Dual Processor or Fourth Gear, never both. The new version also allows more ambiguity when you have both Dual Processor and Crab Legs. Since Crab Legs only uses Move 1s and Dual Processor never does, it was always clear in the previous edition which one you were using. Not anymore. As with all the other changes made, my advice is to use the old rules instead.