Robos rule! Will your team of metal meanies be able to take down the competition, or will a perfectly pointed attack be your ultimate undoing? Position your robos wisely and prepare yourself for battle! Let’s check it out.

What Is It?

Tile Placement / Pattern Building – Each round players will play 5 robo cards into the grid during the staging phase, trying to line themselves up to attack other robos. Robo cards show which direction/space they target, which directions (if any) they have shielded, and how many hits they need to take to be defeated. Players must choose their placement wisely! Players also have the option to layer their cards after the first round to vary the board more.

Hand Management – Players only see 5 cards per round, and take turns placing them in the grid. They must strategically place their robos to not give away their attack plans too early.

Who Is It For?

  • 2 to 4 Players – I think it’s a little more interesting / balanced with 3 or 4, but overall seems to scale decently well
  • Ages 10 & Up – Pretty simple ruleset overall, but there is definitely a good layer of strategy, which may be harder for younger audiences
  • Fans of tile placement
  • Players who are able to adapt their strategy as new tiles are laid out, and can react to what others are doing

PROS

  • Aesthetics – Fun art; symbology for hit points is clear
  • Rules – To the point, well-written/clear
  • Turns and rounds are pretty smooth
  • Plenty of options for how to position your cards as you play
    • I like that the grid does not wipe between rounds so if your cards get left behind you can essentially try to reuse them

CONS

  • Length – Though turns are fairly quick, the game itself is still too long. It gets repetitive over the 6 rounds, and I thought it could have been about half the length
  • Layering – I thought the rule about playing robos on top of others after the first round did not work great. For one thing, there’s nothing to signify that a card was played in a previous round, so unless you remember that you played a card earlier, and not in the current round, there’s no tracking system. Additionally, if a robo stack is attacked successfully, the player who attacked it gets all the cards in the stack, so it seems too easy to give other players a bunch of points for no extra work

Final Thoughts

The game is pretty straightforward, so I don’t feel like I have a ton to say about it. But, I think it works well if you enjoy tile placement, and focusing on aiming your cards in a certain way to try and eliminate other cards.

In the 2-player game, I thought the player who went second had the advantage. While first player does alternate, in the final round the 2nd player gets the final “reaction,” which is arguably the better position to be in, allowing them to gather a lot of last-minute points.

With more players, I thought the game was more competitive, of course, but could also lend itself to a few mediocre rounds, as, if players got in each other’s ways too much, it was harder to take out the higher health robos.

Ultimately, while the gameplay was decent, I just thought it was too long, and overstayed its welcome for me. But if you’re perhaps a little more into the gameplay, or play quicker, it might be the perfect length for you!

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 6/10

Designer – John Carimando
Artist – John Carimando
Publisher – Gamey LLC
MSRP – $19.00
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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