RoboRally 2023 & Transformers Review(s?)

You know that band that was just putting out their first couple of albums when you were a kid whose early stuff still holds up? My board game version of that is RoboRally. Maybe it's just that I'm a nostalgic fool, but the combination of madness and ease that came from everyone drawing the round’s programs out of a communal deck was a design masterstroke that hasn't been matched in thirty years. Turns out, when you tell a table full of people to program their way through an obstacle course with movement cards that don't agree with whatever plans they might've had, hilarity ensues.

When I saw the second edition’s release about a decade ago, I was quite optimistic. RoboRally is one of those games that's great to put in front of anybody, because it's fundamentally terrible for everyone. Even if you're great at everything it asks of you, you'll inevitably wind up getting shot, pushed onto a conveyor belt, and eventually dumping yourself into a pit from the chaos factor. But there were a lot of changes that I wasn't a fan of, like how giving everyone their own deck made the game feel like Flamme Rouge in 2D with obstacles. The worst was definitely the antenna, how initiative was re-tooled to deal with the lack of a common deck; instead of just checking the numbers on your card, everyone had to keep a running tally of how far they were from the antenna (an actual hellscape if you didn't think to keep count and tallied up every register). I wasn't sure where I landed on the other changes, but the antenna was such an anti-fun abomination that I sold my copy after playing twice. It was like when that childhood band got signed by a major label that made them change their sound and that first try was just pits.

Thankfully, the third edition fixes initiative with a rotating token. Biggest problem solved. I still prefer the original, but I understand the need to update some of the more punishing old school design choices to make the game work better for a wider audience. I can accept differences in opinion; my wife thinks Psycho Goreman is a horrible movie, and I haven't transformed her into a brain monster. So yeah, if you want a pure, simple RoboRally but with fewer rough edges than the original, 3E is the place for you, as much as I disagree with what you want in a game. They got it together, even if the old stuff was arguably better.

Whether or not Transformers will appeal to you is a totally different question: if we've accepted that modern RoboRally is more of a deck management game, what amount of additional rules overhead are we willing to take on to return a bit of the chaos of the original? As you might've anticipated, Transformers’ hook is switching between outdoor vehicle and indoor robot modes. Every round when you program your movement, you'll also choose your mode. If you planned well, you'll only need one for the majority of your turn, but if you wind up stuck on the wrong part of the map for your mode, you won't be able to take advantage of the course's movement features. You'll always have your choice of directions to shoot your laser in bot mode, but you'll probably take the opportunity to spend an energy to transform to the correct mode if you're missing out on whatever flavor of conveyor belt. Energy you could've spent on your robot’s asymmetric guaranteed upgrades, meaning getting knocked off course is more opportunity cost than sitting there spinning your wheels. It's not a lot of overhead, and I'd argue it's worth it to get the best modern RoboRally. To finish off the band analogy, Transformers is the new stuff that's closest to the beginning I loved, and there's going to be new fans that love it,but it still doesn't hit the same for me.