Do The Robot

After over a year and a half of not being able to play board games, this is the third Friday in a row I’ve had friends over for an evening of laughter and fun around a table. Goodness, it feels good to see friends again. 

Tonight I decided to inflict the 2005 Avalon Hill edition of RoboRally on two of my neighbours. RoboRally is a notoriously long game among my college friends, but that’s mostly down to playing “Monopoly Rules”. That is to say, no one checks the actually rules and goes with the decision of the person who owns the game, in this case, usually in relation to maps and victory flag positions. RoboRally comes with a bunch of suggestions at the back of the book for maps that cater to Beginners to Experts, Short to Long games. We played a Short Beginner suggestion, and including rules teach at the start the game was finished in a hair over two hours. That might sound long still to readers outside the modern board gaming hobby scene, but remember that a lot of the time was just us chatting between resolving turns. 

However, Claire did comment upon seeing us start “Are you sure you have enough time?”

An early burst saw me reach the first flag a solid two full turns before my friends. Highlights along the way included a friend messing up an early game turn that resulted in him travelling in a big circle to end his turn in exactly the same space as he began it, and the time that I forgot that rotating right by 90° four times would put me back in my original orientation, not, as I needed, facing to my left. I failed the RoboRally Dance big time there. 

But the true highlight of the night was the final turn that saw my robot push one of my friends robots out of winning, only to immediately have my other friend reverse onto the third and final flag. In the end, all three robots were beside each other around the flag, but only one was sitting atop it as the victor. We all burst out laughing. 

A wonderful way to end any game.