Tiny Epic Galaxies | Blue Dog Board Game Reviews

Publisher: Gamelyn Games

Designer: Scott Almes

Overview

Tiny Epic Galaxies is a competitive dice rolling game for 1-5 players where the aim is to colonise planets and expand your empire to earn points. The game can be played competitively or solo against a rogue galaxy bot of varying

difficulty. I have played this game mostly solo, but have also tried it competitively with my husband.

If the small box isn't portable enough for you, the game is also published in an 'ultra' tiny form as well!

Components

It's in the name; this game is pretty tiny. The game comes with a

deck of standard sized cards (Standard Fantasy Flight size) that

include planets to colonise and secret objective cards. There are

player mats and a communal control mat, 7 plastic dice with

symbols on, and wooden ships and markers for tracking culture,

energy and your empire level.

I think the component quality is pretty good. I'm a sucker for

wooden pieces, and the dice have a nice marbled type effect to

reflect the space theme. I was a little sceptical about this game

initially as space themes don't usually attract me, however I was

pleasantly surprised by how colourful and pretty the cards and

artwork were. Each planet has unique artwork and all look quite

different from one another, which I was quite impressed with

considering there are 40 planets in the deck.

The player mats and control mat are a thin laminated cardboard material which is a little flimsy, however this has not proved too much of a problem yet. The weight of thicker cardboard mats would probably be too much for a portable game like this if you wanted to carry it around with you. As the mats and cards have a laminated effect however, this does mean that the wooden pieces do slide around a bit when you are not playing on a flat surface, which can be a bit annoying!

Gameplay

When playing solo, you are working against a rogue galaxy to colonise planets and expand your empire more quickly (the first to reach 21 points is the winner). You take turns to roll the number of dice as dictated on your empire tracker, and can perform actions according to the symbols rolled on the dice.

There are a number of planets face up in the centre of the play space (see what I did there) which can be colonised. There is a number track along the orbit of each planet, and you can use culture points or energy points to progress your orbiting ship along this track. When you reach the end of the track, you have successfully colonised this planet and you achieve the victory points shown.

The actions you are able to take on your turn are dictated by the symbols you roll. Actions include moving your ships to land or orbit a planet, advance ships along the orbit tracks of a planet, generate culture or energy for your empire, upgrade your empire or utilise a special ability on your colonised planets.

The rogue galaxy works in a very similar way; it rolls a number of dice dictated on the mat and performs the abilities. One main difference with the rogue galaxy is that when advancing the ships along the orbit tracks, all of the ships progress, not just one. When you make that action as a player, only one ship is progressed. When playing solo, there is a constant battle to try to beat the advancing ships of the rogue galaxy on high value planets.

There is a cool mechanism in this game where you can spend culture points to 'follow' what another player or the rogue galaxy has done on their turn. This gives the game a slightly different edge to similar games where you need to seriously consider how your actions may affect the other players.

Thoughts

This game has surprising depth for its size, and I was quite surprised at how much I like it, considering space does not usually appeal to me as a theme. It has a reasonably short playtime of about 30 minutes which is just short enough so you feel that you want to play again straight after finishing.

When playing competitively against another player, it is a really interesting game where you really need to think about your actions and how, if your opponent chose to follow that action, that would impact their score. This is the first game that I have played that I felt I needed to be especially aware of this, instead of being able to focus solely on my own score, which was great. Some planets score you a lot of points, therefore you need to be very aware of what the other player or rogue galaxy is doing as they could quickly end the game with just one move. It really does feel like a race to conquer the galaxy.

Even though there is lots of dice rolling, I felt that the number of actions you could perform was good enough to allow you to always make the most of a bad situation, even if this meant changing your game plan. I have not played a game yet where I have felt screwed over by the dice rolls. Instead I have enjoyed the challenge of analysing the options available, seeing what else would come in useful for my empire in the future, or be detrimental to my opponent, and implement that instead. Therefore I feel this game has high replayability, and is quite strategic and not too luck heavy.

Thoughts for solo play

I lost a fair bit when I first played the game solo against the rogue galaxy, and that was on the beginner difficulty. I think it must have been about 3-4 games before I first won a game. Therefore, I think this game does take a little time to get used to the mechanics and the actions available, however once you achieve your first win, it’s very rewarding. With 5 different difficulty settings for the rogue galaxy, this game is great for solo play, and has enough depth to keep you coming back for more. I reckon I have maybe played about 15 games of this so far and I still do not feel like I have really scratched the surface on tactical play.

Pros

Amazing depth with interesting mechanics
Very good replayability for the size of the game
Appealing components and artwork (even if it is space theme!)
Varying difficulty for solo play which can really alter your gameplay

Cons

Player mats and control mat are thin, therefore may get damaged over time (not found this to be a problem yet). They are also very slippery to if you are not playing on a flat surface prepare for your wooden trackers to go everywhere!
It can be a little fiddly. I personally would not want to play the ultra tiny version, this is tiny enough!

Overall rating:

1- Poor, didn't really enjoy it much at all
2- It was ok. I wouldn't recommend it to play
3- Average game that does not particularly stand out and/or has a few negative points
4- Pretty good game that is enjoyable
5- Highly recommended to play
6- A must play!

Tiny Epic Galaxies: Text