Tiny Epic Galaxies

26th February

2nd game of the night at 'The Sovs'.

Tiny Epic Galaxies is a part of the 'Tiny Epic' line of games from Gamelyn. I guess that all of these games aim to deliver epic gameplay in a tiny box? Does Tiny Epic Galaxies deliver on this? See below.

Well, it comes in a tiny-ish box, so that's a good start.

Tiny Epic Galaxies is a card and dice game that combines elements of worker placement with push your luck to make a game about galactic exploration and expansion. Infact exploration and expansion are how you earn nearly all your victory points - and of course, the highest victory points wins the games.

Set up
To start with, each player is given their own 'galaxy mat'. The galaxy mat is used to track 3 scores. Energy, culture & galactic level (all explained below).

Next, each player is given 2 secret mission cards, they then choose one to keep hidden face down next to or under their galaxy matt. The unused card is discarded.

Then planet cards are dealt face up in a line. These represent newly discovered planet that players can exploit or colonise. Planet cards are explained in detail below, but it's worth noting here that there are always more planets available than players (by 1 or 2).

Finally the control mat and the dice are placed where everyone can reach them.

How to play
Very simply: You roll the dice and then carry out the actions displayed on the dice.

I think it's simpler to explain what some things do, then how play goes.

Let's start with the galaxy mat.

• Energy: Energy is a persistent resource that you keep from turn to turn. Energy has 2 uses. It can be used to upgrade your galactic level and used to reroll dice.
• Culture: This resource is also persistent. Like energy, it has 2 uses, to upgrade your galactic level or to 'follow' another player (explained in detail below).
• Galactic level: This determines the power and influence of your galaxy and is rated from 1-6. There are 3 benefits to increasing your galactic level and you will gain 2 of them every time your galaxy 'levels-up'. Firstly, on levels 2, 4 & 6, the player gains an additional dice to roll (when they roll dice). Secondly, on levels 3 & 5, the player acquires an extra ship. Finally, you earn victory points at every level. By the time a player has reached level 6, they will have acquired 8 victory points. Which may not seem like much, but it only takes 21 to trigger the endgame.
• Ships: Every player starts the game with 2 ships on their galaxy mat (the remaining 2 ships are placed on the levelling track), these are your workers. They can be used to acquire energy & culture. They are also used to colonise or use a planets special abilities.

Planets
There are a number of features on every planet, all of them important.

• Each planet can produce either energy or culture.
• Every planet has a colonisation track, planets can be colonised by using one of either economics or diplomacy. The length of the track varies per planet.
• Special ability, each planet has a unique special ability that (at times) players may use to their advantage.
• All planets also have a victory point score. This seems to go from 1-7. When a player colonises a planet, they acquire that many victory points. 

Control mat

• When player 'activates' a die, it is placed on the control mat. Then, in turn the other players may choose to 'follow' the action. In which case they must spend a point of culture, to do so, this then allows them to perform the same action as shown on the dice (in then active player's turn). This can occur for every die placed on to the control mat.
• Finally, the active player may place any 2 dice dice on to the 'conversion' spaces. They may then take any 'unactivated' die and put it on to a side of their choice.

Dice rolling
When rolling the dice, player's will roll 4-7 dice (dependent on the level of their galaxy), all the dice are identical and have 6 different symbols. These are:

• Move ship: Each dice activated with this face up allows you to move one of your ships. You can move a ship to or from your galaxy to a planet or from a planet. You can also move from planet to planet. When you land on a planet, you can choose to land on the surface or go into orbit. Landing will allow you to immediately use the planet's special ability. Going into orbit allows you to colonise it, (yes I know orbiting a planet to colonise it instead of landing on it is weird, but hey) this is done by putting a ship on the 0 space of the colonisation track.
• Diplomacy: This is a temporary resource (unlike the persistent resources of energy and culture) that only lasts until the end of the player's turn. Each die activated with this symbol face up allows the acting player to advance a ship they have on a colonisation track by 1 space - provided it's a diplomatic colonisation track. Unsurprisingly, when a ship reaches the final space of a colonisation track... the player will have colonised the planet. The player removes the planet from the row and places it next to their galaxy matt. Immediately, a  new planet is drawn from the planet deck to replace it.
• Economics: This is identical to diplomacy, except it allows a ship on a... you guessed it economic colonisation track to advance.
• Energy: If a die with the energy symbol face up is activated, it allows the active player to produce energy and add it to the energy track on their galaxy mat. The amount of energy produced is equal to the number of ships the player has on planets that can produce energy. The player's galaxy map also acts as a producer of energy (thus ships on the galaxy mat will also produce energy.
• Culture: Culture works identically to energy and is produced in the same way. One difference is that a player's galaxy mat does NOT produce culture. To gain culture 'one must send one's ships to planets with culture'!
• Colony: If a die with this face up is activated, then the player potentially has a choice of 2 different actions they can perform. They can upgrade their galaxy level, but to so they must pay a cost in either energy or culture, this cannot be mixed. So it must be paid entirely in one or the other. The other action is to use the special ability of any planet that they have already colonised.

And that's what the dice do.
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Rerolling dice
After rolling their dice, the player can choose to re-roll some or all of the dice they just rolled. A player can choose to re-roll 2 or more times, but each additional re-roll after the first will cost a point of energy.

There you have it, more or less all the rules.

Play continues until a player's victory points reaches 21 or higher, this triggers the end game. Play then continues until all players have had an equal number of turns and then points are totted up. At this time players reveal their secret missions, if the objective is met, the the points are added to the player's total.
Secret missions tend to add 2-3 victory points to the total, which is about 10-15%, so not insubstantial.

I've played Tiny Epic Galaxies several times now and I always enjoy it.
There are 40 different planet cards and they always appear randomly. I've found that quite often judicious use of their special abilities can give you an edge. So you need to pay attention to which ones appear, they're more than just victory points and resource generators.
​Add to this the unpredictability of the dice and you have a game with a lot of genuine replayability.

There is one thing I will mention and that is the potential of the 'culture generation' strategy.
If you have at least 2 ships on planets that generate culture and keep at least a point of culture on your galaxy mat: Anytime another player activates a culture die, you can spend a culture die to follow them - and generate 2 culture, giving you a net gain of 1 culture at no outlay (other than the initial point of culture). You can do this as often as you want whenever someone else activates a culture die with absolutely no drawback.

Now this does requires a particular set of circumstances to occur, but they are not too uncommon (we encountered it the 1st or 2nd time we played it entirely by accident): I'm not sure if it's overpowered or not. It feels like it straddles the line between genuine strategy and exploit so I'm not too certain whether it's a legitimate criticism or not.

Ah well. Despite that potential issue, I think it's still a good game to play.

Is it epic? Well it's certainly good, although Tiny Good Galaxies' probably doesn't have the same ring to it!