Robo Rescue - So Many Ways to Build Your Engines!
Transcript
The year is 2047 and this game takes place on Mars, the International Research Facility, but there's no humans around. This is Robo Rescue. We are humans from far away, probably Earth, uh, guiding our robots to try to build rockets for their ships so that they can return home.
Yeah. Except not all the robots. You just want your robot to get home. So while the description anyway it kind of sounds like it might be cooperative when you just like describe what you're doing like you're trying to you know collect resources and build your rockets but it is competitive. It is a race. It is the first person to completely power up their rocket by powering up these four engines that literally do like snap into place. If you're the first one to do that, you automatically win the game.
You will likely win the game. The game is going to go until someone builds all four of their engines. Uh it varies with different player counts, but if at the end after that final round other people have built their engines too,
there are some points that will be awarded to determine who the ultimate winner is. But what you're doing in this game is controlling these robots. And while at first it feels like, and they even use the word programming, feels like a programming game. It's not a programming game in the traditional sense where not everyone are placing cards face down and then reveal it and then they're all executing sort of simultaneously. On your turn, you're going to be using command cards to command your robots around this board to do a number of different actions. And while it looks like you might be collecting resources, I mean, there are resources to get, but you're really kind of going to these different spaces, activating actions to do things like get oil, to get cable pieces so that you can put together your matrix array of cables over here. All of these different things are going to allow you to potentially build some of those engines.
Yeah, the game gives you a lot of different ways to build this engine. I think we counted there's like six or seven different things you can do. four, five, six, seven, eight different ways you can build your engine kind of.
And you're going to be doing four of those. Yeah, kind of. Like, for example, this array here gives you a couple different ways. You can either circle these G1 and J2s or you can make these connections. You'll see I've kind of been experimenting and doing a little bit of different stuff. You can gain a lot of oil. If you gain if you fill up both of your barrels of oil, that's enough. You'll each one of those can build an engine. If you collect all these SD chips, if you get these energy cubes, which is harder than it seems. So, not every way, I think, is created equally. A lot of it is going to be based on your situation on the board, what you have access to with your cards, and then also these ability cards that come into play that will give you something that you're better at maybe than the other players. And I think you want to kind of lean into that as well.
Yeah, just to give you an idea before we describe what you do on a turn, what you're seeing here is the main board where all your robots are going to move around. This is kind of a game in progress. There going to be some crates out here that hold oil if you're able to blast them. But in each space, you're going to see a a number of different actions in a lot of the spaces. Some of these spaces have fewer actions. Some of the spaces has switches that will turn and activate some of those actions. Then, like Ryan said, here we've got some ability cards, which are probably the cards that come maybe least into play because they're fairly expensive, but they allow you to modify what you do on your turn quite a bit. Over here, we've got a number of components, things you're going to collect, modifier tokens that you're going to use. Then we've got command cards and then these bonus cards that you can activate. And then in front of you, you have your player board which has a lot going on. And before we probably wrap up by reminding you of all the different ways to build engines, but the first thing we want to talk about are how you're going to be taking your turns because at the beginning of your turn, you're going to be programming effectively what your robot does.
Yeah. And you can program in a few different ways. They give you kind of two sections of your board and you're going to use one or the other. Most turns you're going to be placing just a single card in front of you and that's your whole turn. So when we say light programming, like that doesn't really feel like programming. But as you go through the game and as you start collecting like these modifier chips, you'll be using these to maybe program more. And you'll see on either side of this card, there's some programming options of like I want to do this first and then I want to do this after. And if you did it right, you turn 90 degrees, you make your move, and then you blast something, right? And you have to decide all of that before you start the turn. Now, those are pretty easy turns, but then as you play, you're going to get these doubler cards, and these allow you to chain together just some really big turns. And again, you're going to be able to use these tokens in multiple different places. So, what you're going to end up with here is something that does feel much more like programming when you're really thinking about it and hopefully doing this maybe on other players turns. Thinking about like, okay, well, if I turn 90°, then do this move, then blast the crate, I can move through it, then and then at the end of my turn, I want to end at 90° because everything you're doing in your turn is collecting elements that are going to help you build those engines. But and David made this point I think earlier early in our game. It's not about what you're doing on your turn as much as it might be setting up the next turn.
Yeah. You're going to be thinking about not just your turn but the turn after that because the things you have at your disposal and you have quite a few things at your disposal. Uh they're going to be limited to some degree though from turn to turn because you're going to be spending some of these things not only to take your actions, but you can also convert some of them to get some of those tokens, get to use some of those special abilities because you're like thinking, okay, I'm right here, but I want to get here so that I can get this action and activate it and then activate this switch to get this other thing. But to do that takes some thinking because if I'm right here, first of all, I'm facing south right here for us. To get past this, I need to get a turbo chip so I can push it out of the way. Or get a blast token and use it at the beginning of my turn to blast this out of the way.
Levitate over. Use your engines and levitate over or a token that lets me rotate and go this way around it instead of going through it. So, there's a lot of things to consider, but what you're doing on your turn, like Ryan said, you're going to play one card here or a couple cards here if you have one of those combiner cards. But your turn can be up to like three steps or just one if you don't have any tokens all the way up to five steps. And you can have some really incredibly satisfying turns. During our game, I had one turn here where I was like, "Oh, this works out perfectly. I'm going to go here, do this, go here, do this, then blast this, get three oil, all in the service of trying to get what you need to build those engines." But to be clear, some of the rules that go along with doing this kind of make it a little not complex, but a little more complicated, a little thinkier of getting there. Because
when you take an action, you're going to move two spaces. All of these action cards effectively let you move two spaces. It's either move forward straight or move forward and then move forward and turn. So you could go one, two, or like one, two with any one of these action cards like this. Wherever you finish after one of the cards, you can take two of those actions. Now, if you use two cards, you can use one of those cards and take one of the actions on the space, use the next card, and then take two. So, you're able to get three actions out of that turn if you're able to use those combiner cards. It's a really interesting thing. And a lot of these cards will come and leave your hands quite a bit, but the actions are really where everything is taking place.
Yeah. And if you notice by what we've done here with the board in progress that some of these spaces still have a lot of tokens and some don't. So, not only are we racing to complete our ships, we're racing for the items that are out here. And again, this is going to play into your strategy because some of these items that you're getting are going to feed directly into building the engine. For example, and you'll see a lot of these cuz I wasn't really getting them, but there's tokens that just gain you oil. If you fill up your oil, you get an engine part. There's some like these which let you roll this dice to get some wires that come over here and build these. But once those are gone, they're gone. So, there's a lot on here. So, you know, whatever. You have some flexibility, but they could all go away. If they do, you you're not completely out of luck. David mentioned those conversions and we'll talk about those in a little, but you can trade in like cards and stuff, but the best way to get anything done is to come out here and take those actions, especially these switch actions, which these are a way that like you're going to be competing with other opponents a lot because these green switches have to be turned on.
Somebody has to go to a switch, turn it on, or could be that somebody goes to a switch and turns it off.
Yeah. Right before you were about to go there.
Right before you're going to go do that. These are really important because these give you one of the ways that you can win is by collecting these chips which you can only get from those uh areas or you can get these blast tokens which blow up things. So, like I said, I mean it you're you're racing for these elements. This might not make sense to you as far as like why am I getting all these tokens, but trust me, if you're playing the game, you want to have as many of these tokens as possible.
Yeah. I mean, just to give you an idea of what some of those tokens do. And again, you're using those tokens to either do a thing before or after a card or using some of those tokens to modify the card itself. For instance, I have a straight card here. And at the top of this, you'll see there's three spaces for a token. One of those is going to let me stop short. So, instead of moving two forward, I could get rid of the second one and just move one forward. And as sort of like mundane as that might sound, believe us, it can be very, very important for navigating.
Uh, the next one is turbo. This is what lets you, if you have turbo and you move, you're allowed to push robots or boxes out of the way. Otherwise, you can't make that move. You can't move into that space if it's blocked. And then the last one here is to levitate, which allows you to float over it. If you don't have those tokens, you're not doing those things. And then a lot of the other tokens, like Ryan already alluded to, some allow you to rotate either before or after a card. Some of them allow you to blast. And then there's also a portal one. If you have a portal modifying one of your moves, you're able to move off one side of the board and onto the other side of the board. But there's a lot of moving parts here, literally uh that you need to take into account to actually navigate this board because a lot of times you'll find yourself like, well, I can't I don't have levitate. I don't have turbo. I'm facing a crate right now.
And then you can take what they call a standby sort of action instead. Instead of manipulating your robot or using any sort of command cards, you simply take two more command cards. And again, all of this is to activate these tokens. There's tokens here that allow you to get a bonus card. The bonus cards let you effectively get a couple bonuses. Here's one that lets you take a levitate token or you can do the top part, which in this case is draw two cards.
Draw two Oh, yeah. two command cards.
Yeah. And that's managing your hand is a big part of it. managing your hand and your token supply is a big part of it because like what I was saying about, you know, ending your turn in a specific spot, you could end your turn if you couldn't tell in a very bad position where next turn you might just have to draw two cards because you can't do anything because you're facing a wall or something. These tokens will help you uh mitigate that. And these ability cards will help you mitigate that by giving you some powers that you can activate. And you'll notice each one has like a die pip. It's not there's no dice rolling really. You just that's how many times you get to use it and the dice are used to count that. But really, you want to collect a bunch of cards. You want to collect a bunch of tokens. You want to collect a bunch of things so that you always have the ability to move. But the game dangles these conversions in front of you. And at the end of your turn, once you've done everything else, you can start turning things in. You can turn in cards. You can turn in tokens.
You can turn in your oil. As long as you haven't completed a barrel, you can turn these things in for other things. to draw more cards, to get these abilities, to get specific wiring tiles. You're going to want to do that. And then you're like staring at your hand and your supply going,
"Ah, like what do I want to keep?" Like, it's five cards discarded to get one of those ability cards. And it feels like maybe that means next turn I'm not doing anything. But some of these can change the game for you. So, it's not as easy as just like collecting a bunch of stuff and having that flexibility because you're always always tempted to convert them. Yeah, you're definitely going to need to use those conversions like Ryan alluded to, especially the wires. When you roll the dice for wires using this action here, you get what you get.
Yeah.
And when you take wire or cable tokens, you have to place them. And when you place them, you can kind of like mess up what you were working on or you might get a wire like, well, this does not work for what I was doing. So, you kind of have to have some nodes to place it next to because there's rules for placement here. As you might assume, you can't just willy-nilly place them wherever you want. So, using some of those conversions to get exactly what you want is very, very key. Now, it should be noted there are some rules for those conversions. You can't just stockpile a bunch of stuff and then on your turn convert till the cows come home and get everything you need. You can only take one of each type of sort of reward. So, if I take a modify token and then I want to convert again, I can't take another modify token. If I take a cable token, I can't take two cable tokens. So, there's little rules like that.
You can get the modifiers and a cable token. So, like there is a wide variety of things that you can find yourself spending on, but you will definitely be in a situation where you spend these cards and then next thing you know, you go, "Oh, I really wish I hadn't gotten rid of that straight because I haven't drawn another straight in three turns and I'm just spinning." Right? Like, trying to get to where you want to go is the puzzle of this game. and trying to get to where you want to go before somebody else gets to where you want to go is a big part of this puzzle as well because I I I can't stress enough how important it is that these things come off. So, if you're really planning on hitting that next doubler or rolling these dice or whatever and somebody else, especially in a four-player game, might come by and scoop that token up and then or even they park on that spot and you can't go there anymore. So there is a lot of thinking you can do like planning out what you want to do but there is also a lot of tactile or tactical decisions you have to make because people will block you.
Yeah. Timing
potentially a lot.
Yeah. There is some blocking. There are some sort of jumping on opportunities before other people do. There's no direct interaction. Like for instance, you can't use a blast token to blast another robot. There's no sort of interaction like that. It's a little more friendly in that respect. But again, all of this is also driven by that ongoing race to build those engines. And again, like we alluded to earlier, just want to reiterate, there's a variety of different ways that you can build those engines such that in a race game, you don't want a race game that everyone's doing the exact same things to get to that end goal. And this one gives you a lot of opportunity. Uh, like in our game, I went after oil right away because I actually started with an ability card that gave me a free oil every turn. Nice
for a little while for like I think five. Yeah.
So, I knew I was going to get five free oil over the first five turns. So, I was like, "Okay, well, I'm going to get one of those oil tanks filled." As soon as you do, you get one of your rockets. Now, the rub there, like Ryan mentioned earlier, once you have a whole oil tank full, you can no longer spend oil from that tank to do any of those conversions. So you might want to balance that out a little bit. You do have two tanks so you can kind of like maybe keep one as your reserve and and fill the other then that you've got the cable matrix which there's a little bit of a tile laying puzzle. That's another way to get
that's where I got one. I got one of my engines and I was about I'm about to get my second one.
Yeah, you could you could get up to two there. There's four routes to getting engines there, but you can only get two based on how the puzzle works. Then you've got these energy stores. This is probably I mean it sounds like it's the easiest cuz you only need two cubes, but getting those two cubes is tricky. You have to get to these corner spots and execute a blast at the right time when you're on one of those corner spots to get one of those energy cubes. You do that twice again, you're going to build one of your engines.
You have to flip the switch to get this to flip over. You have to land on it to get the blast token. And the other way you can win by getting all of these like hard drives, uh, these chips, you're also getting them from these same spots. Every time you land here, you have to decide if you're doing a blast token or taking one of the chips. I took four chips.
Yeah. Well, you got he had a nice string of those switches and the right cards to just move on to the one and then move on on the next turn. So, yeah, you you just get four of those. That's another engine token. So, I do think there's a lot of ways that people will be going at this. And again, we haven't played it at four players, but that might have a few people stepping on each other a little bit more than in a two-player game, but it is an interesting race to get to that point where you've built the four engines. I do think I'd guess greater than 50% of the time someone will build their fourth engine before anyone else does and they'll be the winner.
Yeah, I think I mean it's nice that they have a tiebreaker if two people do it in the same round.
Yeah, there's a number of different different things. You basically look at the progress things that you've made in service of building those engines and there are some points awarded to sort of give someone the ultimate victory there.
I think more often than not though it's going to be the person that does it first.
Yeah. But that is Robo Rescue. If you have any questions at all about it, please make them in the comments below. We'll get down there, answer whatever we can. Until next time, of course, make sure everyone has fun at the table and we'll see you then.