Ra is, in my mind, the best of the best when it comes to auction games and Reiner Knizia, who created Ra, has made a few other great ones like Modern Art and Amun Ra. For me, Ra takes the crown, and here I’ll explain how to play this excellent game.
Key concepts
Rai is an auction game, meaning that each round you will be bidding on collections of tiles to add to you display. The game is played over 3 epochs (basically rounds) and the winner will be the player who has gained the most points at the end of the game. Unlike some auction games where you can bid any amount, in Ra you are limited to the values on your sun discs and once you have spent all them in an epoch, you will not be able to participate in any further auctions that epoch. Each epoch will end when the Sun Boat Marker reaches the end of the track, at which point certain tiles will leave your player board and you will turn over your Sun discs to allow you to bid for tiles in the next round. The game contains different tiles which you will be bidding for including Civilization, Monuments, God, Gold, River and Pharoah tiles, as well as Ra and Disaster tiles and the effects of these I will cover later.
Setup
Give each player their own player board at random and based on the player count, and the matching sun discs for that board which will be 3 or 4 depending on player coun. Also give each player two 5 point scoring tokens which they place face down beneath their player board (you don’t want the other players to kno how many points you have).
Place all of the tiles into the bag, and place the Epoch Counter and Sun Boat Marker on to the auction board, with the Sun Boat Marker being in the spot according to player count. Place the Ra statue within reach of the players and the value 1 sun disc on the auction board face up.
How to play!
The possible actions
There are 3 actions you can take on your turn and you must take just 1 of them. The first is to draw a tile from the cloth bag, if it is not a Ra tile, place it in the leftmost space of the auction track. This action cannot be taken if the auction track is full. If it is a Ra tile, discard it and advance the Sun Boat one space and give that player the Ra statue to begin an auction, which I’ll cover shortly. If the Sun Boat hits the final space on the Ra track the round ends immediately without an auction and I’ll also cover what happens here later.
The second action is to invoke Ra, the player says (or shouts loudly), ‘I invoke Ra’, and takes the Ra statue to begin an auction but this does not move the Sun Boat marker/
The final action you could take is to discard a God tile or tiles you have received from previous auctions to obtain a non-God tile from the auction track. This is useful to gain tiles you might be after to score the most points.
Auctions
An auction begins when either a Ra tile is drawn from the bag, moving the Sun Boat, or when a player invokes Ra as their action. Either way the player who triggered the auction takes the Ra statue.
You are bidding for all of the tiles on the current auction board (including any Disaster Tiles) and the winner of the auction will take them all and place the tiles on the allocated sections of their player board.
Starting with the player to the left of the player triggering the auction, each player can either pass or bid a value using one of their Sun discs. This happens once, with the final bidder being the player with the Ra Statue.
If a Ra tile has been drawn from the bag or when a player invokes Ra due to the auction row being full, all players are able to pass, and if so all the tiles in the auction row are discarded. However if a player invokes Ra, all other players have the option to pass but the Ra player must make a bid.
Once an auction has been won, the other players return their sun discs to their player board face up, and the winner places their sun disc on the auction board, and places the sun disc on the auction board face down on their player board, reducing the number of available sun discs for the remainder of the epoch.
If you gained a Disaster tile from the auction you must immediately apply it after placing any tiles won to destroy 2 tiles of the indicated type from your player board. If you only have 1 tile, you must destroy that and if you have no tiles of the indicated type, hooray, you avoid disaster!
End of an Epoch
An epoch will end when one of two conditions have been met, either all players have played all of their sun discs and they are face down on their player board, or the Sun Boat has entered the space of the Ra track containing the Epoch marker.
You will then score all tiles that score in the corresponding Epoch, with monuments only scoring at the end of the third Epoch according to the following rules. After you have scored all the tiles, you will discard all the tiles on the right side of your player board but retain the tiles on the left for the next remaining Epochs.
Monuments (after third Epoch only) – they will score for both multiplicity and diversity. For Multiplicity, earn 5/10/15 points for each group of identical 3, 4 or 5 monuments. for diversity, score 1 point for each type, but if you have 7 or 8 different types you score 10 or 15 points respectively.
All the remaining tiles score after each Epoch including the third.
Pharoah Tiles – 5 points for the most and a loss of 2 points for the least, and if all players have the same no change in points
Nile Tiles – these only score if you have a flood tile and then you score 1 point for each Nile Tile
God Tiles – each one you didn’t spend as an action will gain you 2 points
Gold Tiles – each one will score you 3 points
Civilisation Tiles – you will score for the largest set of different Civilization Tiles, but lose 5 points if you don’t have any Civilization Tiles. 3, 4 or 5 different Civilization tiles with net you either 5, 10 or 15 points.
Flood Tiles – worth 1 point for each Flood Tile but having a Flood Tile is required to score your Nile Tiles.
As mentioned previously, once you have scored the Epoch, discard your God, Gold, Civilization and Flood Tiles, then if you are not at the end of the Third Epoch, set up for the next round. Discard any tiles left on the auction track, flip your sun discs, the Epoch marker to reflect the current round and return the Sun Boat to its starting place.
The end of the game
After the Third Epoch, total your points as usual, but flip your Sun discs and awad 5 points to the player with the highest total value of Sun discs, if a tie, all tied players gain the points. Once all this has been scored the player with the most points wins! If multiple players share victory, the player with the highest numbered Sun disc wins.
And that is how you play the classic auction game of Ra. The new reprint of the game is absolutely gorgeous and I highly recommend adding this brilliant title to your collection, plus remember to shout ‘I invoke Ra’ loudly for added effect.
