Tiny Epic Galaxies BLAST OFF - How To Play

hi and welcome to watch it played my name is rodney smith and in this video we're going to learn the 2-4 player game tiny epic galaxies blast off designed by scott alms and published by gamelan games who helped sponsor this video this title may seem familiar and that's because it's based on the original game of a similar title that has many of the same elements but here you'll find some new changes along with some fantastic art and production upgrades so if you're ready to guide your galaxy civilization to new heights join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up each player collects one of these galaxy mats four starships one galaxy slider and one culture and energy token all in their chosen color in this video we'll set up a game between blue and yellow and return all the other player components back to the box each person then stands two of their starships upright onto this area representing their home galaxy the other two they'll put onto the space is marked with a small starship symbol on this track that has a starship symbol at the top now these two tokens will show you how much culture and energy you have based on their location within this circular track everyone begins with two energy and one culture so we'll place them onto those spaces and then you set your galaxy slider on the bottom row of this track of numbers and symbols the cards with this back are the planets and you'll shuffle these into a face down deck in the center of the play area dealing a number of them into a face up row equal to the number of players plus two and then set this action mat and the six game dice nearby finally give the youngest player this first player marker or you can just choose a player randomly and that's the setup in tiny epic galaxies blast off players will be discovering new planets acquiring new technologies and trying to advance their civilization so they can earn the most points by the end of the game the game is played over a series of turns starting with the first player and then going clockwise around and around the table and on your turn you'll start by rolling a certain number of dice determine how many by checking what number is in this column of your galaxy slider so in this case four which you'd take from the supply and then roll after rolling those dice you'll then use their symbols to take actions and you can activate these in any order but each die can only be used once per turn to help you keep track of this move each used die to the leftmost empty space of this activation bay on the action mat as a reminder that this die cannot be used again you can also choose not to activate a die if you don't want to and we'll talk about these different actions in a moment but at any time during your turn you can spend one energy to re-roll all of the dice you haven't activated yet and you're reminded of this here to spend energy or culture you move its related token backwards the required number of spaces once you're at zero you just take the token off the track until you gain more now after paying that one energy again you can reroll all the dice you haven't used yet and you can keep re-rolling as many times as you like as long as you have energy to spend now though let's go through each of the different symbols on the dice and learn the actions that they allow you to take this here is the symbol for moving a single starship starships cannot be moved from this area of your mat here but any other one can be moved either from your home galaxy to one of the planets in the face up row or if it's already on a planet to a different planet or back to your galaxy if you move to a planet you have two options you can either land on its surface standing it upright or orbit the planet by laying it down at the bottom space of this colony track here during the game you can have a ship both on the planet and orbiting it and while different players can also go to these same spaces you can never have more than one of your ships on any single planet surface or track so for example i couldn't do this now if you choose to move a starship to a planet's surface like i've done here then you immediately resolve the effect shown in this area this will be made up of a series of symbols that are explained on the back of the rulebook but these explanations will make more sense once we know more of the rules so we'll come back and look at these more a little bit later if you instead choose to orbit a planet you don't gain this immediate benefit but instead this will help you colonize the planet with future actions using these dice each colony track will have a symbol here at the top representing either life or tech when you spend an action die with one of those symbols you move one ship you have on that type of track one space up and as you spend more of these symbols if you ever get your ship to the top space you have fully colonized the planet at that point you then return all star ships on that car to their owner's galaxies and then take that card and slide it under your mat so this action area can still be seen as you colonize more planets later you'll also slide these under again making sure that their action areas are visible colonizing planets will give you a new way to use their action later as we'll see but planets you gain are also worth victory points as indicated by this star symbol so here i've gained three points any time you gain new points in the game you must announce your current victory point total which will include all the planets you've colonized and the visible value shown with a star in this column within your galaxy slider right now this is zero so i would announce a total score of three points also after a planet has been taken from this line immediately draw a new one from the deck to replace it okay well now let's move to two other actions that dice can provide these will let you acquire either energy or culture when you use either of these dice check every planet where you have a ship either on or orbiting the planet that shows that resource symbol and then you'll gain one of that type of resource for example if i use this die to gain energy i'd collect one from my ship that's here but also another for this ship you'll notice your home galaxy also shows the energy symbol so you gain an energy for each of your ships here these other ones over here however are not considered in play so you don't gain anything from them so in this case i'd gain a total of two energy and any time you gain culture or energy you move the related token up that number of spaces at most you can have seven of each so any extra you gain beyond that you just ignore this is the last action symbol we have to go over and it's called utilize galaxy one of the ways to use this is to upgrade the level of your galaxy by checking the value in this column directly above where your slider is this is how much energy or culture you must spend to upgrade to the next level so here i would need to spend two energy or two culture and this cost must be fully paid entirely by one resource or the other i couldn't pay a mix of both after paying the cost you then move the slider up one space these values are now active for future turns in other words you'll now roll this number of dice at the start of your next turn and this level is worth these victory points here and since this just increased your victory point total you announce to the other players your new total between this and any planets you have colonized here i don't have any planets so i'd announce a total score of one point when upgrading your level if you get to a space with one of your ships you move it from here and add it to your galaxy you'll now have this ship to use immediately during this turn if you want and in all future terms rather than upgrade your galaxy when using a die with this symbol you can instead pick any one action block from a single planet you already colonized and resolve it and those are all the actions and remember you'll spend each die you rolled one at a time and as they're spent move them directly to the leftmost empty space of this track the exception is if you use this converter to do this you'll spend either a single energy or culture and then you take any one die you rolled that you haven't used yet and you turn it to any side you'd like and resolve its effect when you're done you then place that die into this space as a reminder that you cannot use this converter effect again this turn in a lot of games when one player is taking their turn the other players don't really have anything to do but that's not the case here on a player's turn after they activate a die and have performed its action they should wait a brief moment to allow for any of the other players at the table to announce whether or not they want to follow that action to follow an action the opponent spends one culture from their map and then they get to copy the action of the die that was just played but they don't have to copy it in exactly the same way for example if i use this die to move one of my starships to the surface of this planet and this player decided they wanted to follow that action then they also have to move one of their starships but they don't have to go to the same planet in fact they could instead choose to orbit a different one the important thing here is that they are following the action not the way the action was performed and when following any number of other players can follow but only once each for example a player couldn't spend two culture to copy the action twice and if several players are following the action they resolve those turns in clockwise order from the person who's currently taking their turn there's one other restriction when following you can only follow the actions of dice that are placed in a spot here on the action map that has a yellow border so a diet placed here here here or here can be followed by other players but any dice placed in these three spots cannot be followed with that we now know how to resolve all the actions you'll find on a die so now let's go back to the planets and see how their action symbols work now we won't go through every card because again all of their symbols are explained here on the back of the rule book but i thought we could just go over a couple to give you an idea of what to expect if you see a plus it means you gain the related resource so this would gain you one energy or here you'd gain one energy and one culture if an icon is in red it means that it's a cost you have to pay to activate the rest of the planet's ability so if i went to this planet's surface i'd have to spend two energy and then arrows mean that you move one of your ships up the related colony track once each for each arrow so this means i could move one of my ships two spaces up on a colony track that shows the plant symbol at the top this symbol over here is red and it shows a die so that means you have to return any one die you rolled but haven't used yet back to the supply this shows an up arrow but then a ship and a ship symbol means that you can move any one of your ships upward one space on its colony track whether it shows a plant symbol at the top or a text symbol when you see this symbol it means every other player so going here means that first every other player would get one energy and then you'd get two energy and with that you now know all the actions you can take on your turn and once you've activated as many dice as you can or want to your turn is over now you return all dice from wherever they are back to the center of the table and then the next player in clockwise order takes their turn and turns will continue like this until a player announces that they've reached 21 or more points and remember anytime you gain points in the game you must announce your new total out loud so everyone knows how many points each player has so again once a player announces they have 21 or more points the end of the game is triggered and play will continue until everyone has had an even number of turns for example in this two-player game blue has the first player token so if they announce that they have 21 points yellow will get one more turn but if yellow announces that they have 21 points first the game ends on their turn since everyone will already have had an even number of turns with all the required turns complete each person now totals the points they have from the planets they colonized and their galaxy level and the one with the most points wins in the case of a tie like we have here the tied player with the most colonized planets wins and if there's still a tie the tied player with the highest galaxy level wins and if there's still a tie the tied player with the highest total number of resources wins and if there's still a tie the thai players share the victory but otherwise that's everything you need to know to play tiny epic galaxies blast off if you have any questions about anything you saw here feel free to put them in the comments below and i'll gladly answer them as soon as i get a chance you'll also find forums for discussion pictures other videos and lots more over on the games page at board game geek and i'll put a link to that in the description below and if you found this video helpful please consider giving it a like subscribing and clicking that little bell icon so you get notification anytime we post a new video but until next time thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] you