You are a Ratzia boss, head of a family in the secretive rat mafia. To stop in-fighting and prevent any family from getting cheesed off, Ratzia bosses use a system of auctions to decide who gets which job or territory.
Welcome to life in Ratzia, a retheme of the classic Knizia auction game RA. But instead of spending time in ancient Egypt, you are causing trouble in a city (somewhere in Jersey, probably). Curious to know more? Read on!
Gameplay Overview:
If you’ve played RA before, you pretty much know everything you need to about the gameplay. The gameplay here is very similar to that of RA. For those of you who haven’t played that classic, the basics are that you are trying to earn the most points over the game’s three rounds.
Each turn, a player has the option to either add a new card to the auction row or start an auction. Auctions will also start automatically if a player turns over a police card or the auction row gets dealt a 7th card.
When an auction happens, each player has a chance to bid using one of their 3 bidding cards. Whoever bids the highest gets the lot. The key here is that the number they used in the bidding is then swapped with the number in the middle of the board. Their new number is then out of play for the player until the next round. This means that if you win an auction with a 12 bid card, but the number in the middle is a 3, you’ll have much less bidding power in the next round.
The round ends when either all players have used all 3 of their bidding cards or when the 7th police card shows up. At that point, scoring happens. Players will earn points in a variety of ways. Some cards will then be kept for future rounds and end-game scoring, and the rest will be discarded.
At the end of the 3rd round, the player with the most points is the winner.
Game Experience:
RA is widely considered to be one of the premier auction games you can play, and for good reason. It’s very accessible, the closed economy creates a ton of interesting decisions, and turns are snappy. I’ve played it many times and have always found it fun and interesting.
And now there is Ratzia. While I’m not a RA expert, there doesn’t seem to be a ton of difference in the gameplay with RA. I didn’t dive for a deep comparison, but it feels close to identical. Which makes this one a little hard to review, as RA is a classic game, and this is pretty much just a straight-up retheme. The main rule differences I have noticed are that the game rounds end when 7 police cards are drawn (as opposed to 8-10 in RA), and you can earn 5 bonus points for having a matching pair of gangster cards.
For the actual differences, it mostly comes down to theme, art, and components. The theme, taking you from ancient Egypt to more of a mafia feel with anthropomorphic animals, will probably be a bit more accessible as Egypt-themed games can sometimes be a tougher draw for the non-Euro crowd. I know with my family, if I pulled out a copy of RA and Ratzia, almost all of them would reach for Ratzia. But your mileage may vary here.
The components might be the biggest deciding factor for some people. RA draws tiles from a bag, while Ratzia uses a deck of cards. Some people like the simplicity of shuffling a deck of cards and then drawing one. While others might enjoy the tactile feeling of drawing a tile from a bag. As the kids would say 6-7…
Final Thoughts:
As I mentioned earlier, this is a tough game to review. RA was originally released in 1999, and 25 years later, it’s still a fantastic auction game. With the gameplay mostly unchanged, this one is going to come down to personal preference. Do you like Egypt or the Rat Mafia? Do you like Cards or Tiles? Ratzia also clocks in at about half the price of RA (on the 25th Century Games website) and has a generally smaller footprint, so that may also sway people in the direction of the rats. Regardless, you can’t go wrong with either Ratzia or Ra.
Final Score: 4 Stars – Leaving Egypt for the big city, Raztia is a solid retheme.
Hits:
• Excellent mechanics are still excellent
• Lower price point
• Smaller footprint
Misses:
• May not be a reason to own this if you already own RA
Source: Board Game Quest
