RoboRally® is a board game published by Wizards of the Coast. It was originally published in 1994 and was created by Richard Garfield, the creator of the card game Magic: The Gathering®. The game and its expansions received a total of four Origins Awards. RoboRally was rereleased in July 2005 under the Avalon Hill label.


Players control robots with "program cards" in order to survive and reach checkpoints.

Gameplay
In RoboRally, players assume control of one of many "Robot Control Computers" in a dangerous widget factory filled with moving, course-altering conveyor belts, metal-melting laser beams, bottomless pits, crushers, and a variety of other obstacles. The goal in a game of RoboRally is, apart from survival, to be the first to reach a pre-designated number of checkpoints in a particular order. However, the real difficulty in RoboRally is movement, which is accomplished with the randomly dealt program cards.


Program cards

The program cards specify movement, such as move forward one, turn left or u-turn. The cards have to be arranged by the player in the specific manner they wish the robot to move. Each player receives up to nine cards each turn. They use five of the cards to specify their robot's movement for the given turn, playing each card face down into one of five available "registers". All robots move simultaneously, each player revealing each register in turn. Robots attempting to move into the same space at the same time are resolved by priority numbers printed on the cards. Players with damaged robots receive fewer cards: with one point of damage, the player receives eight cards, with two points, seven cards, and so on. When a player's robot takes five or more points of damage, its registers become "locked," keeping specific program cards in play until the robot is repaired.

Robots can also carry optional weapons and devices, which add to the carnage and mayhem. These devices can cause additional damage, allow robots to move differently, affect the movement of other robots, and disrupt opponents' plans in other ways.

The original metal pieces in RoboRally were designed by Phil Foglio, who also did the artwork for the game.



Game and expansions
RoboRally: The original game, includes basic boards, painted metal miniatures, and a basic selection of cards. You need this to play. 
Armed & Dangerous: The largest expansion. Contains additional boards, and a variety of additional weapon and option cards. 
Crash & Burn: Additional boards. 
Grand Prix: Additional boards. 
Radioactive: Additional boards. 
A large number of additional boards and elements are available via Internet communities, created by fans of the game. 
In Europe (starting in Germany), a different series was released, which was aimed to be simpler. It incorporates a few rules changes to avoid complex situations. More importantly, in this version, the 'main' game contains only a subset of four boards, four prepainted robots (made of plastic rather than pewter) and no 'options'. The only European extension of the game is named Crash & Burn, but differs from the its American counterpart as follows: It contains the other four robots, the remaining two boards from the American 'main' game, the two boards from the American Crash & Burn extension and the option cards from the American 'main' game as well. The extensions Armed and Dangerous, Radioactive and Grand Prix were never released in Europe.

The German damage and life tokens are of a higher quality (thicker, larger, more colorful/better graphics) than those of the original American release. The boards are of the same high quality. The movement cards are color-coded. Forward-Cards have blue arrows, Backward-Cards have red ones and Turn-Cards yellow ones. This can save time when arranging them on hand.

Currently (Oct. 05) the game is out of print in Germany and there is no date set for a rerelease yet.


RoboRally 2005
Recently, Hasbro rereleased RoboRally under the Avalon Hill imprint. The rerelease contains 4 double-sided basic boards, a new starting board called the Docking Bay, 8 plastic miniatures, 8 robot 'character sheets', 8 plastic checkpoint flags, assorted tokens and a revised set of basic cards.

The rerelease is generally faithful to the original game, although a few changes have been made. Production quality is in places lower than the original release, which was itself of unusually high quality. This is mainly manifest in the monochrome plastic playing pieces, and the less sturdy card used for the boards. On the other hand, the flag markers are now a transparent yellow and the tokens representing damage and lives are larger.

Character sheets have been introduced which contain areas to track damage, life counters, power-down status and program cards. Each sheet also contains a copy of the turn sequence for reference. The graphics have been redesigned to make the functionality of the game board elements clearer, particularly gears which are colour-coded for clarity, and express conveyor belts which feature a double-arrow design. As a result, the definition of board squares is more explicit, however the new boards have a desaturated or 'washed-out' appearance which may not be to all tastes. One technical issue regarding Virtual Bots has been eliminated by the introduction of the Docking Bay board and new rules regarding the destruction of robots.

The 2005 release also comes with a manual containing an extensive range of preconstructed board layouts and suggestions for gameplay variants drawn from years of play by fans. These range from short, simple beginner games through to large multi-player and team arrangements, and include the popular Deathmatch and Capture the Flag variants, allowing newcomers to the game to set up and begin playing immediately, while providing further scope for advanced players.