Priests of Ra Mini-Review

Now it's time for a quick rundown of Priests of Ra.

Let me start off by telling you that Priests of Ra is a remake of Ra.  I have already reviewed Ra, so I'm going to assume that you're familiar with that game.  (If not, go check it out - Ra is an awesome game!)  This review will mainly highlight the differences.

Building the pyramid is a different scoring mechanic

Priests of Ra is an auction game like Ra, and all of the bidding, sun tiles, and Ra tiles work in exactly the same way.  The difference is what pieces you are bidding on.  In Priests of Ra, you are bidding on buildings, workers, pyramids, priests, and plagues.  Each of the buildings and workers are double sided, with different images (and colors) on each side.  When a player pulls a tile out of the bag, he gets to select which side is showing.  However, when a player buys a priest, he has the option of flipping over one of his pieces - whether one that he just bought, or one that he already owned.  For scoring, workers score at the end of each epoch, and you get points for having the most workers of a certain color, and another bonus for having at least three types of workers (this bonus is an "ankh" and scores after the third epoch); then they are discarded.  With buildings, you score points for every "complete" building (a pair of buildings of the same color), with a bonus if you have three or more types of "complete" buildings; you keep buildings from one epoch to the next.  Priests are worth two points each, and are then discarded.  Pyramid pieces only score at the end of the third epoch, and are worth points based on how tall your step pyramid is.  Plagues are scored after each epoch, and you lose points based on how many you have, with the penalty per plague growing as your number of plagues grows.  At the end of the third epoch, whoever has the most points wins.

So, yes, Priests of Ra is basically the same game as Ra, but slightly different.  One of the most impactful differences (that I actually like) is that, in Priests of Ra, plagues stay from one epoch to the next.  In Ra, you can get plagues that don't hurt you (if you don't have the tile that is being plagued), but in Priests of Ra, plagues always hurt you, and if you collect too many of them, can hurt you really, really badly.  Yet, they aren't so bad that a single plague is really all that damaging - after all, if you can buy a large collection of tiles inexpensively because there is a plague, that might be worth doing.  However, just because one plague doesn't hurt you doesn't mean that you should not be careful.  If you get enough plagues, you can lose 20 points - after each epoch!

It even has the same Ra piece

The next thing to mention about Priests of Ra is the tile flipping.  Instead of the "god" tiles in Ra (that let you steal a tile from the currently available tiles, Priests of Ra has priests.  Priests aren't as strong as gods, since you can't take what you need from the center, but they are still quite helpful since they can both flip tiles and get rid of plagues (if you have three priests during an epoch scoring, you can discard a plague tile - this is the only way to get rid of plagues).  Like gods, priests can be useful or useless based on when they come up, and what tiles come with them.  In Ra, a god tile is worthless (ok, it's action is worthless, the tile is worth 2 points) if you purchase it with your last sun - you are out of the round, so you can't steal any tiles.  However, in Priests of Ra, priests that are purchased with your first sun tile are also fairly useless, since you really won't care which side most of your tiles are facing at that point.  They can at least still be used to cancel a plague later.  Again, not really better or worse than Ra - just different.

That's really about all I have to say about Priests of Ra - if you feel like my review should be longer, go read the Ra review again, and pretend that everything I'm saying there is about this game.  Then you should feel better!

Overall, I give Priests of Ra a 9.0/10.  It's a good game, and I actually enjoy it quite a bit - however, I'm dropping it a bit from Ra, simply because it's not innovative.  It's a remake.  And, whereas that is not a bad thing, I don't feel the need to own both games, so I will probably be parting with this one.

Ra Review

An auction game that I picked up in a math trade recently (and then donated to my FLGS after it got quite wet in the tornado) was Ra.

In Ra, players are attempting to purchase different tiles to ensure that they either score victory points (or don't lose victory points) at the end of each epoch (scoring phase). To do this, each player starts with three bid tokens of different numbers. On a player's turn, he gets to choose between 1) drawing a new tile from the bag and adding it to the set of tiles available for auction (this could potentially start an auction), 2) purposely start an auction, or 3) steal one of the tiles that is currently in the auction pile (this can only be done if they have a special "god" tile that they have previously purchased). Whenever an auction begins, the players each have one opportunity to place their bid using one of the bid tokens that they have available. The winning bidder gets all of the tiles that were on the board, in addition to the bid token that was in the center of the board (which they turn facedown until the end of the epoch), and then they place their bid tile in the middle of the board. Play continues this way until all of the players have run out of face up bid tokens, or until a certain number of "Ra" tokens have been drawn (Ra tokens are tokens that instantly start an auction when they are drawn from the bag). One of these conditions signifies the end of an epoch. At this point, players score based on the number and selection of tiles they own. Rinse, repeat. (At the end of the third epoch, a few extra things score). After three epochs, the person with the most victory points wins!

The first pro for Ra is how the bid tokens work. I absolutely love this mechanic - and it really gives the game a different flavor than any other auction game that I have played. I love so much about them, that I'll probably have to split this into several "pro's". The first bid token pro is that they switch out whenever you win an auction. Because of this, the person with the highest token at the start of the game won't necessarily have the ultimate trump throughout the game. In fact, depending on what he purchases, he has a chance of trading in his high token for the #1 (worst) token, in which he'll only be able to win an auction if nobody else bids! This causes there to be a sub-game inside of Ra - each player being careful to not only collect the best tiles, but to also make sure that they don't wind up with the worst bid tokens. But even then, a skilled player can do well with very low bid tokens if he adjusts his strategy; he must simply start auctions more often so that the players with the better tokens don't get the luxury of spending them on a large set of tiles! The bid tokens are just plain awesome.

The next thing that I like about the bid tokens is that when you win an auction, you have one less token available to bid with for that epoch. Therefore, nobody can ever win more than three auctions in an epoch. This really helps keep any single player from gaining too much of an upper hand in the game. It does, however, allow an opportune player to have the privilege of having a "push your luck" element at the end of an epoch. If one player can outlast everyone else to where they have used all of their bid tokens (thus he is the only player still playing), he can keep drawing new tiles from the bag - but if he fills up the Ra track, then he will lose all of the tiles that have been drawn, as there is not an auction once the last Ra is drawn! The bid tokens continue to be awesome.

The last pro that I will mention about Ra is that there are both positive and negative tiles that can be drawn. Some of the tiles are "destruction" tiles, and whoever wins the auction that contains these tiles loses two of his useful tiles of the given type (for example, gaining a "Pharaoh" destruction tile makes you discard two of your "Pharaoh" tiles). This prevents the push your luck element that I previously mentioned from becoming overpowered. It can also drastically change the mood of a set of tiles instantly. A set of tiles that would easily draw out the largest bid token can go from being completely wonderful to only being somewhat good in a single draw. This is a nice element to the game; whereas the game would probably still play well without it, this element really adds a nice touch that helps take Ra to the next tier of games.

The only real con that I found when playing Ra is that passing the bag around for everyone to draw a tile on their turn winds up taking about as much time as the actual gameplay. After the first time playing, we quickly gave that up and designated a single person to draw for everyone. This speeds up the game as you're not constantly worried about passing the bag, making sure that the tiles don't fall out, and making sure you don't accidentally cheat while drawing.

Overall, I give Ra a 9.5/10. In my opinion, this may be the best auction game on the market. It is quick and easy to play, but also has the depth to keep me wanting to play it again and again. I would highly recommend that anybody that doesn't have a strong aversion to auction games make a point of trying it out.

If you like auction games like Ra, you might also want to check out Princes of Florence, Power Grid, and Furstenfeld. And, for another opinion of Ra, you can check out this Review of Ra on I Slay the Dragon.