Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black

Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black Deep Dive

What the Community Thinks About Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black

Beyond the Black is the expansion from Gamelyn Games for Tiny Epic Galaxies, the base game designed by Scott Almes. The discussions available for it are previews, rules walkthroughs, and unboxings, so the reaction is enthusiastic and descriptive rather than a formal verdict. Nights Around a Table calls the new scoring mat and score tokens must-have components and tucked them straight into the base game box. Rolling Dice & Taking Names previewed the expansion ahead of its Kickstarter launch and described the new ships and pilots as a really cool addition that might become a favorite in the series. Ryan and Bethany Board Game Reviews opened a deluxe copy from a giant box of Tiny Epic releases and said they plan to rank the whole line once they have played it.

Core Mechanics That Define Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black

Exploring the Void With Push-Your-Luck and Badges

The expansion's headline addition is an exploration mat that holds a stack of exploration cards. When a player uses a Move a Ship action to send a ship into unexplored space, that ship can explore by flipping cards one at a time. A green card can be kept to stop exploring, or the player can keep flipping, up to a limit of three. The first red card must be taken and ends the exploration, and red cards tend to be the unpleasant ones, such as forcing a player to pay resources to an opponent or locking a ship in a time-wasting orbit that must be finished before it can leave. Cards already turned face up on the mat can be taken instead of gambling on the deck, though a deck draw made once three cards are face up is locked in whatever it reveals.

Explorers keep their cards face down, and the badges on those cards form the memory element that Nights Around a Table highlights. Badges come in four shapes. At game end, the player with the most of each shape earns 2 points, the runner-up earns 1, and ties pay out at 1 point apiece. In a two-player game only the leader in each category scores, but ties still pay. Ships parked on the exploration mat also collect culture whenever their controller activates or follows a culture die, which ties the new space to the base game's engine.

Pilots, Hangar Ships, and Drones

Each player gets a hangar mat with four advanced ships, each loosely styled after a famous science fiction vessel. To hire a pilot, a player activates the dice pair that matches one of those ships, places the pilot card in that ship's quadrant, and swaps the pilot's card for a standard ship. From then on, using that ship triggers the pilot's special power, though the ability only applies to the ship that pilot flies. Rolling Dice & Taking Names stresses that advanced ships replace standard ones rather than adding to the fleet.

Drones are the deluxe-only extra. A drone can be acquired by activating any two dice, rides along with a pilot, and is worth 1 point. Each pilot can carry only one drone, and a drone doubles the badges printed on its pilot's card. Nights Around a Table explains that the name was chosen because Droids is trademarked.

The Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black Experience

Familiar Turns With New Choices

Rolling Dice & Taking Names sums up the change in feel by saying the new mechanic makes the game feel a lot different while still being worth trying. The new layers run through the dice and actions the base game already uses. Hiring and exploring each run through Move a Ship dice and culture or energy symbols, so the core loop stays recognizable. What changes is the number of reasons to pick a particular die, since a pilot can open a better ship ability or an exploration can yield badges that matter at the end.

Setup and Scoring Pace

Setup grows only modestly. Every player receives a hangar mat, pilot cards are dealt to match the planet count, and the exploration mat sits beside the control mat with room for the round cards. Beyond the Black's secret missions join the mission deck, and the scoring mat tracks points with tokens that flip once a player passes 30. Nights Around a Table notes that the game ends when someone reaches 21 points or the exploration deck runs out, after which the final scoring counts pilots, drones, dwarf planets, and badges.

What Makes Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black Stand Out

Pilots With Personality

The pilot cards carry the expansion's humor. Nights Around a Table laughs at a saboteur pilot whose ability sends an opponent's ship back along the colony track, and it jokes that the hangar ships are shaped like famous science fiction craft without being recognizable enough to draw lawyers. Rolling Dice & Taking Names likes the way that over the course of a game a player can pair a pilot with each of their ships, and each pairing does something different.

Solo Play and Deluxe Extras

Each hangar card carries a robot villain to face in solo mode, a detail Nights Around a Table mentions. Ryan and Bethany Board Game Reviews spotted the Beyond the Black deluxe contents while unpacking a wider haul of Tiny Epic extras, including ship pieces and what appeared to be the expansion's map.

Potential Drawbacks

The discussions here contain no sharp criticism, so the caveats below come from how the rules are described rather than from complaints.

Layered Exceptions to Track

Nights Around a Table stresses that a pilot's special ability only affects the ship that pilot flies, and the walkthrough shows how many exceptions sit on top of that. Dice used to hire a pilot do not produce their usual resources, opponents can follow only the second die and cannot copy a hire, and plastering a new pilot over an old one keeps only the top ability while both pilots still score. New players will need to absorb these details before their first hire.

Drones Sit Behind the Deluxe Edition

According to Nights Around a Table, drones are exclusive to the deluxe version. Drones are worth 1 point apiece and double the badges on a pilot card, so standard edition buyers miss a whole scoring layer and the Factory card that serves as the drone supply. Anyone deciding between editions should weigh that split before buying.

If You Enjoy Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black

Nights Around a Table points newcomers to its How to Play video for the base game, which is a sensible first step before adding the expansion. Tiny Epic Westerns also comes up in Rolling Dice & Taking Names, which praises the dice in that game as primo, and in Ryan and Bethany Board Game Reviews, which singles it out as a game they remember from their unboxing.

The wider Tiny Epic line also fills the unboxing. Ryan and Bethany Board Game Reviews describe Tiny Epic Kingdoms as a tiny 4x game that tells players to explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate, and they credit it with a Golden Geek award from 2013. They also highlight the deluxe Tiny Epic Tactics box with its Winter Highlands and Savage Wastelands expansions, the equippable motorcycle meeples in Tiny Epic Zombies, and the item meeples of Tiny Epic Quests. Tiny Epic Defenders, Tiny Epic Mechs, and Tiny Epic Dinosaurs round out the titles they plan to review over time.