Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 45-60 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)

The Components

Ra comes with:

• 1 gameboard
• 180 tiles
• 1 cloth bag
• 48 tablets
• 16 suns
• 1 Ra figure
• 1 rulebook

Gameboard: A four-panel, linen-textured board. As with the majority of the components in this game, it features beautiful and evocative Egyptian theming.

This is a gameboard that's entirely unnecessary, but still hugely useful. The center of the board includes spaces to place tiles to be auctioned and to place Ra tiles which eventually mark the end of an epoch; there's a row for each. The top and bottom of the board also contain references for the values of all the tiles, which I continue to find helpful now after quite a few plays of Ra. The reference is helpfully laid out with lots of different information, including tile numbers, catastrophe numbers, and of course values.

Tiles: These 180 cardboard tiles are large, linen-textured, and again feature nice Egyptian themed artwork. Each of the main categories of tiles is helpfully depicted with a very different colored background which makes it easy to pick out what's what. In addition tiles that you get to keep are helpfully marked with an "x" so it's easy to remember what to throw out at the end of each epoch and what not to.

Cloth Bag: A large and sturdy black bag that holds all the tiles. It's much sturdier than most tile bags that I find in games.

Tablets: Again, these are cardboard tiles that are linen-textured and feature some nice Egyptian pictograms. They depict fame (Victory Points) and come in denominations of 1, 2, 5, and 10. The supplies are small enough that you inevitably have to trade in for 5s and 10s by the end of the game, but you don't have to do so constantly.

Suns: These 16 wooden tiles features the values 1-16. They're a nice alternative to cardboard bits for this type of marker. The ink is iridescent, and I don't entirely like it, but some people probably would think it's a nice touch.

Ra Figure: Another wood piece, this one particularly hefty, and showing the Egyptian sun god in gold ink. I appreciate the fact that Uberplay didn't stint in making this figure, because its weight produces a particularly satisfying sound when you bang it down on the table and call "Ra!"

Rulebook: An eight-page rulebook, full of illustrations, examples, and sidebars. It's how I like to see rulebooks done.

Overall, the components for Ra are high-quality and easy to use and the Egyptian theming is entirely beautiful. It thus earns a full "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Ra is to to win valuable items in auctions over there epochs of play.

Setup: Each player is given 3 or 4 suns (depending on the number of players). These suns each have a unique value from 2 to 16, and each player gets a "fair" spread (e.g., in a 5-player game, one player will get 2, 7, and 16, while another will get 6, 11, and 12). They're the items that people use to bid.

In addition, the gameboards is placed in the middle of the table. As already noted it has places for the Ra tiles and the auction tiles. It also has a space in the middle for a sun, which is part of the current auction lot. The 1 sun is initially set there.

The set of 180 tiles is shuffled a bit in the bag.

Order of Play: Each turn a player may take one of three actions:

• Draw a Tile; or
• Invoke Ra; or
• Play a God

Draw a Tile. A player draws a tile from the bag. If it's a Ra tile, it's placed in the Ra row. Ra tiles can force auctions or end an epoch of play, as discussed below. Otherwise, it's placed in the auction row. Most tiles placed in an auction row are good, but disaster tiles (also discussed below) are usually ad.

Invoke Ra. Instead a player can explicitly call an auction without drawing a tile. A player must call an auction if the auction row already has eight tiles in it.

Play a God. Last, a player may discard one or more gods that he has previously purchased in order to take one or more tiles currently up for auction.

Conducting An Auction: An auction may occur in one of three ways: if a player reveals a Ra tile; if a player decides to call an auction; or if a player is forced to call an auction because the auction row was full.

The auctions are simple once-around affairs. Starting with the player to the left of the auction caller, each player may either play a sun (which must be higher than any suns already played) or else pass. The auction caller gets the last chance to bid.

If no one bids, what happens is based on how the auction was begun. If it was a result of a Ra tile, nothing special occurs, and the play continues with the next player. If it was the result of a forced auction call because the auction row was full, the 8 tiles are discarded and play continues with the next player. If it was the result of a player choosing to call an auction, he must bid.

Whomever bid that final, and highest, sun gets to take all the tiles in the auction. Tiles won can include:

• Gods, which are worth points, and which can also be used for stealing tiles, as noted above.
• Disasters, which can destroy your other tiles, as noted below.
• Pharoahs, Niles, Floods, Civilizations, and Gold, which are worth points during the game.
• Monuments, which are worth points at the end of the game.

In addition to taking the tiles available for auction, the winner also gets to take the sun that was in the middle of the board. He places it face-down in his area, and puts the sun he bid face-up in the middle of the board. The sun a player just received will be available for use in the next epoch of play, while the sun he just placed on the board will go to the next auction winner.

Winning Disasters. As mentioned, some tiles are actually bad. They're called disasters. There are 10 total disasters. Two "Funerals" destroy Pharoah tiles, two "Droughts" destroy Floods or Niles. Four "Unrests" destroy Civilization tiles. Two "Earthquakes" destroy Monuments.

In each case if you take a disaster tile as part of an auction lot you must discard two of the appropriate type of tile. These could be tiles that you'd already taken or they could be tiles that were part of the lot or both. They and the disaster are removed from play.

If you had less than two of the appropriate type of tile, you lucked out. (And that's probably why you decided to bid on the auction lot.)

Finishing an Epoch: Each player will only get the opportunity to win either 3 or 4 auctions in a round; when he's used up all his suns (meaning that all the suns he has left are ones that he's won, and thus are face-down), he's out of the round and no longer gets to take turns. This means that he doesn't even get to use gods, if he has any left.

An epoch ends when either all of the players are out because they've used up all their sun, or when 8-10 Ras (depending on the number of players) have been revealed. In the latter case, any tiles that were in the auction row are immediately discarded.

Now, scoring occurs. Each player gets point as follows for tiles remaining in front of him:

• Gods. +2 points each.
• Pharoahs. +5 points to the player with the most; -2 points to the player with the fewest.
• Niles & Floods. +1 point each if the player has at least one flood.
• Civilization Advances. -5 points for none, +5 if a player has at least three different civilization advances, +10 for four, +15 for five.
• Gold. +3 points each.

In addition, at the end of each epoch some tiles are discarded after scoring, specifically: Gods, Floods, Civilization Advances, and Gold. (The tiles you keep are marked with an "X".)

Ending the Game: After the final epoch ends a final scoring round is conducted. The first five types of tiles are scored as usual, but then there are two more scorings:

• Monuments. +1 point per different type of monument, or +10 if a player has 7 types or +15 if a player has all 8. Also +5 for each set of 3 identical monuments, or +10 for each set of 4, and +15 for each set of 5.
• Suns. The player with the highest sum of suns gets +5, the player with the lowest sum gets -5.

The player with the highest score after 3 epochs wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Ra was originally the first of Alea's line of big box games. Though the Alea version is now a few years out of print, Ra still fits in well with the line, which are all gamer's games of varying weights. Other Alea games that I've reviewed include The Princes of Florence, Hoity Toity (now rereleased by Uberplay), The Traders of Genoa, Puerto Rico, Mammoth Hunters, San Juan, and Louis XIV.

This new edition of Ra is by Uberplay. They seem to be working pretty hard at reprinting, revising, and sometimes retheming out-of-print Reiner Knizia Games. They're also responsible for entirely new editions of High Society!, Relationship Tightrope, and The Motley Fool's Buy Low, Sell High Game. In addition, they've got a new edition of Knizia's Traumfabrik called Hollywood Blockbuster due out next year.

Beyond that, Ra is one of Knizia's auction games. He's done tons of them by now. I think this is one of his best, because of its multiple paths to victory, its brinkmanship, and its beautifully theming. Three other Knizian auction games that I rate similarly high are Modern Art, Taj Mahal, and Amun-Re. This is my personal favorite; though Modern Art and Amun-Re may technically be better games, I get more enjoyment from this one.

Finally, it's worth comparing Ra to the two other editions of the game:

Uberplay's Ra is largely identical to the edition that was released by Alea five years ago. There are a few component differences. The cardboard bits have been upgraded. The tiles are much larger than the original (but still a very reasonable size for tabletop play) and both they and the VP tablets are now linen-textured. Contrariwise, the suns aren't quite as nice as the originals. They're a little smaller. As I mentioned, these new ones also have iridescent ink.

Razzia! is a gangster rethemed German language version of Ra that was released by Amigo games last year. It was a smaller, even quicker game. it featured 120 cards rather than 180 tiles and got rid of all the disasters. There's also no real board.

The Alea Ra is out-of-print and the Amigo Razzia! isn't available in the United States.

The Game Design

Ra is overall a superb game design. It packs a huge amount of gameplay into a short game length. On the surface Ra melds some strategy (do you go for monuments or pharaohs, civilizations or gold?) with very interesting tactics.

The auction system is great because it presents ways that you can take advantage of whatever resources you have. You can try and hold out for bigger lots if you have high suns, or alternatively you can try and push auctions early if your suns are lowers. Carefully integrated with this is brinkmanship, as you try and figure out when other people will be forced to take goods if you initiate an auction (and I'll admit, I've been wrong on that guess), and when the value of an auction lot is high enough that you don't want to chance a final Ra coming out and ending the epoch. Grabbing a lot before a disaster comes up offers a similar feeling.

Other highlights of Ra include its very clever money system, which is limited enough to introduce a real sort of resource management into the game, its low downtime, and the fact there there are lots of hard choices, because you can never get everything you want. In addition, Ra works well with any number of players. I've played it with 3, 4, and 5 and shines at every number.

Ra is a pretty light game, and it's got some degree of (somewhat controllable) randomness implicit in what tiles happen to come up, but these elements combine well with the short play time.

Ra is sometimes described as a poorly themed game. Perhaps it is. I mean, how much sense does it make to be auctioning for elements of Egyptian life? But, I've now played both Ra and the gangster-themed Razzia and I find Ra to be much more evocative, beautiful, and fun to play, even though they essentially use the same system. It might make more sense for gangsters to be auctioning off stolen goods, but it just doesn't see the mystery and magic that I get out of Ra's theming.

You can find some other discussions on Ra, which I participated in, at The Dice Tower.

Overall, I find Ra to be a superb, enjoyable, evocative, and well-designed auction game. It's one of my favorites, and given the beautiful Egyptian theming, it's probably a great game for RPGnetters to try out if you're interested in seeing what Reiner Knizia's designs look like.

Conclusion

One of Reiner Knizia's best designs is now back in print thanks to Uberplay Games. This evocatively themed Egyptian game mixes a fast-paced, no-downtime auction with careful management of limited bidding markers and wild brinkmanship. It's a great, if light, game and very replayable.