Introduction

I find that my robots operate best when lubricated with 40-weight Jägermeister. Now, this is a family Web site, or so I am told, but the "Almighty Military Babes Thread” in the forum has me thinking a comment about hooch and gaming is a relatively safe one.

Cheeky comments about Schnapps aside, RoboRally from Avalon Hill stands out as the kind of game well suited for a gathering of friends and good cheer. Set on a factory floor full of Rube Goldberg contraptions, conveyor belts, and bot-gobbling pits, the game indeed plops players into a road rally of sorts. All manner of mishaps await as players jockey robots from waypoint to waypoint while continually struggling with lousy pathing AI—which is sometimes brought on by lousy card draws and sometimes due an imbalance of Jägermeister. Now, imagine up to eight fault-prone robots trundling around in a confined space and you have RoboRally.

Many players will recall this game, and perhaps fondly so, given the fact that it’s a re-release of a classic by the same name. Although I never played the original, Avalon Hill contends that the new game boards are backwards-compatible with older boards and that most of the changes in this edition focus on making the turn sequence clearer for players. That said, this review will focus on the game as it stands now, rather than comparing it to earlier versions.

Components

Eight plastic robots, double-sided cardboard maps, scads of playing cards … this game comes packed with components a-plenty. Unfortunately, the quality is a bit uneven. Printed on thin cardboard, the maps and player mats disappoint. The art direction stands tall here, but I fret over the durability of the medium on which they’re printed. Time will tell, as it will for the program cards used to dictate the movement of one’s robot. They could have been coated in a manner akin to poker cards.

As is their wont, the BoardGameGeek hardcore frequently discuss card protectors and the like. I think their comments may have some merit here. Plus, because the inset tray isn’t broken down into sections, players may need to bag their components in some way.

Bottom line: RoboRally will get handled. It’s that sort of game. Overall, players will want to exact a touch more care when shuffling the bits about in this game.

The rulebook presents roughly ten pages of rules set in a magazine-style layout, which makes the overall presentation quite readable. An additional 22 pages cover suggested map layouts, broken down by difficulty. This is a significant plus for new players because they can choose a map configuration that suits the skill and number of players.

Some of the rules jump around a bit, and players will want the factory floor reference cards handy while reading. The icons, and their effects, aren’t fully covered in the line of the rules proper. None of this is a show-stopper, though. The rules remain pretty straightforward and can be conveyed in less than 15 minutes.