LogFAQs > #933331798

67. Ra (1999)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Bidding, set collection, push-your-luck
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 40-60 minutes
Experience: 2-3 plays over 2-3 sessions with 4-5 players (2017-2018)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 46/80 (2018)

Summary - Over the course of three age, players try to collect various different tiles. Points are awarded after the round and some of them are cashed in, while some others persist 'til the end of the game. On each player's turn, they pull a tile from the bag and add it to the collective offer pile. A player can also declare Ra for an auction on the offer pile. Bidding is done once around the table using numbered sun tiles. An age ends when all players have taken the offer or a certain number of Ra tiles have been drawn.

Design - It's interesting how different set collection games can be. Some tableau-builders go the whole game and let you become absurdly powerful or amass large swaths of victory points. Ra's rounds are fifteen minutes long and wipe out nearly your entire board afterward, and it they punish you each time if you have the fewest of a certain type of (otherwise useless) tile. Ah, Dr. Knizia, you sly bastard.

While I don't find it quite as streamlined and beautifully designed as Modern Art (with a mess of different tile types), there are several points of interest in Ra. Ra's auctions are more homogeneous than Modern Art's. All of them follow the same format, and they use sun tiles, which are far less fungible than the money found in Modern Art. You can win three offers in each round of Ra, period. You'll just get more or less contested offers with better tiles. While this is intrinsically a feature of open auctions, Ra codifies the use of the "bait" bid, where you can essentially force someone to overspend on something they value, if you have a tile that slots between two desired values.

I'm not actually good at Ra, and it can be frustrating because of some of the strategic subtleties. The most notable one to me is valuing the sun tile in the middle (which replenishes your hand for the future round). It's really damn easy to get stuck with a whole round of shit bids, and if that happens in round 3, well that just sucks.

The anti-push-your-luck feature of Ra is great, too: the Ra tiles. It can be tempting to sit out a round and let everyone use up their high tiles and then have the pick of the litter among remaining tiles. Yes, you can do this, but if you've waited that long, you'll likely be in danger of the final Ra tiles being pulled. Only one person effectively winds up playing this game of chicken, but it can be significant, and you can lose if you're greedy.

Honestly, my favorite part of Ra is just taking the little statue and declaring "Ra" on my turn. I rarely wind up getting the better of an offer (both paying a good price and getting back a good number), but it can be really fun to frustrate others about not having a fuller offer, even though they want some of what's up already. It's a sort of visceral satisfaction that I think will age well in future plays.

Experience - I've only played Ra a few times, but its relatively simple. As I described, I'm not particularly good at it, but it feels satisfying and interesting.

Ra is the final Knizia game on this list. Incidentally, since I made the list, I've gotten two more plays in of another Knizia title which might rank decently (perhaps above Ra!) in the future.

Future - Only one friend owns Ra and it's not widely available (though it might be a tough sell for me anyway, not playing two players). For my money, I admire the design of Modern Art more and would be more eager to replay Modern Art. But I also want more reps of this slightly-over-filler bidding game that has you trying to collect so many items with so few items, where you never have to declare an auction but so often want to, and where you have so little theme-related mechanics but so many Egyptian-themed tiles.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness