Evil Mike was out of town this week. When this happens it can only mean one thing…RoboRally! Ben, Owen, Mike the Younger, and I gathered at Andy’s house for the Straatman invitational. If you know nothing about RoboRally you can click the link above or go to GeekBo.com to check it out. Basically each player is one of several supercomputers in a fully automated widget factory. Each turn you program your robot’s path in a frantic, destructive race across the factory floors. Our games are always heavy on the destructive part of the race, as many of our robots are destroyed along the way. Fortunately you can archive copies of your robot along the way, so destruction isn’t the end, just a setback.
We like the robot option cards, so we have several home rules that include them. Each robot starts with an option and as you touch each flag you get a new option. This is above and beyond the normal option rules.
We made the horrible mistake of allowing Ben to pick the factory floor boards. (We play with the new Hasbro release of Roborally, but I have all of the boards and expansions from the original release too.) Of the three boards Ben chose, two were particularly deadly. One was filled with conveyors and spinning gears, while the worse of them was filled with lasers and walls—forcing you into the lasers.
All through our game we had lots of programming mistakes, but I don’t think any directly ended in robot destruction. Indirectly though, there was lots of damage as players used their robot lasers at every turn. My robot got off to a slow start and even was destroyed early in the game at the hands of a crusher. Still this ended up being a good thing. While everyone else was ahead of me, they were also interfering with each other, slowing each of them down. This allowed me to eventually catch up with my robot being pretty much unscathed.  Mike the younger took an early lead, but those nasty boards that Ben chose soon had his robot in trouble. This allowed everyone else to catch up. A low point for my robot was during the turn I powered down. Granted, I was in a horrible position, but Andy didn’t have to shove me into a laser (well, maybe he did actually.) And Mike didn’t have to keep shooting me…register phase after register phase. My power down turned into a destruction sequence.
At the end of the game Andy and Owen were primed for the win, but a mutually destructive laser battle postponed one of them from leaping in for the win. Ben and Mike were nearby, ready to touch the final flag too. But where was I? My robot was doing a spirited ballet on one of the spinning gears…right turn, right turn, right turn… In the end it was Owen’s robot that touched the final flag first-using his robot’s extendable arm, then his robot did a victory danced on the flag itself.
Chaos Steve