Hi! It's Ryan from Nights Around a Table,
and you're probably wondering "Ryan...
where's the game?"
Well the game is so small you can barely
see it! It's right here, and it's called
Ultra Tiny Epic Galaxies. That's right:
ULTRA
Tiny Epic Galaxies, not to be confused
with Tiny Epic Galaxies, which is merely...
oh guh... that's the expansion. That is the
base game, Tiny Epic Galaxies, which is
merely tiny, and it's such a great format.
If you watch the channel a lot, you know
that i
adore this game. i think it's great, and i
love that it packs
such a big experience into such a little
box, which is the hallmark of the whole
Tiny Epic series, but they decided to
take a couple of more popular ones from
the series,
and make them into even smaller,
ridiculously small versions. So Ultra
Tiny
Epic Galaxies is about the size of a
standard deck of cards,
which is pretty crazy, and i've wanted
this badly for a long time, but i find it
hard to justify spending money on a game
that i already
own, right? So i own the (now) Gigantic Epic
Galaxies, in comparison.
So i thought i couldn't do it, but then
recently i made a purchase from my
friendly local game store,
and they have a shipping limit - you gotta
get up to a certain amount in order
for them to ship for free, and i was just
15 bucks off,
and this little guy is 15 bucks up here
in Canadaland, so i thought "Ah - perfect."
It's the
opportunity i've been waiting, for to
finally get my hands on this. So
i wanted to crack it open and compare it
with the,
uh, now former... you know... the Gigantic
Epic
Galaxies box
that i... i already own. Now, i brought this
out mistakenly at the beginning, but i
i think it is a little bit of a bummer
that i own the base game and the
expansion, but the ultra
tiny format is only... only contains the
components that are in the base game.
Interestingly though, i will note that
when i bought this version
there's a little seal on it that said it
was the deluxe version,
and i didn't know what that meant at the
time. If you go back and watch my
unboxing you'll see
a look of confusion on my face, which i
so often have.
But the deal was, the... the base game...
there's a retail version, and then
with Kickstarter, they had a little mini
expansion. They do this with, i think,
a lot of, if not all of their games, so
that if you buy it on Kickstarter,
there's a little bit of an incentive to
buy it there,
then if you buy it retail, they actually
split out the
little promo or the little expansion, and
you
can buy that separately from a store
like the Board Game Geek Store.
So i had the deluxe version, which came
with the Satellites and Super Weapons
expansion. What's cool about
Ultra Tiny Epic Galaxies is not only is
this whole base game in there,
but... i feel like... i sound like such a
shill! i honestly...
these these guys didn't send this to me.
i bought this with my own money, and i
honestly quite like this game,
uh, genuinely. Naturally. But Satellites
and Super Weapons,
which you can only get with the deluxe
version, or buying this game on
Kickstarter, is included in Ultra Tiny
Epic Galaxies. How cool is that?
Answer: very cool. Kind of sucks,
though, that that the expansion isn't
available yet, because i quite like the
expansion, but - hey -
we'll take what we can get, and we'll
crack this open and see what is inside!
So i zoomed my camera in a little bit. It
might be a little bit grainy.
i don't have a craft knife, so i have to
have to open this (ftheh ftheh ftheh) with
my second
favorite board game opening tool,
teeth! (indiscriminate space humming) Oh man.
So excited about this.
Um... i want to see how itty bitty
everything is!
Okay. So... and i want to know if they have...
like, do they have to... do... is... is the
solo
mode in here? That's what i'm most
curious about, i think. Ss the solo mode in?
Here we go. So i'm opening it up, and
there's a bundle of wood right there, in
a bag that...
it IS resealable. i was going to say... i
would be worried if that just kind of,
like, rattled around in the box. So you
get a little bag,
and you get...
a deck of cards. Probably... it's
very thin, and i'm bad at estimating, but
there's probably only about...
50 000 cards in there. And so those are
going to be all the player mats,
and ooh, look: it's got rogue galaxies on
the background, so
indeed, the single player mode of this
game is...
IS on these cards! That's kind of cool!
And then...
an instruction booklet that's almost
thicker than that batch of cards itself!
But i already know how to play. If you
don't know how to play, uh... here's me
actually being a shill... you can go watch
my How to Play Tiny Epic Galaxies
video, which i worked so hard on just for
you. And this...
i'm surprised that the cards in the game...
so, the player mat
cards aren't as big, but the planet cards
look like they're in this teensy tiny
little deck!
Alright: so we got to get stuff out of
the main box to compare the sizes of
things before we
go hog wild and open everything. So here
is the main game.
Let's shove all this up here. To
compare, this is a standard - what is it?
-
three by four inch deck of cards? Three
and a half? Three and a quarter? i don't
even know. And so that's the size of it.
It's adorably small. Those are the planet
cards. And then
the cubes... the player tokens and cubes...
you know what? Maybe i should take, like,
one of them out. And i'll probably have
to put this on the
old close-up cameroo so you can see. So
instead of doing a nice
machined meeple for the ship, so that's
an
original ship... here, let's put it up here,,,
Woo.
Are we working? Are we functional? Yes we
are.
Last time i did a video with that
close-up cam, i had major slowdown. It
looks like some major slowdown's
happening there,
so my apologies if it's... if we've dropped
to two frames a second.
Aaand we're not in focus, either.
And back that up... nope. Go in closer...
doesn't matter. It's still fuzzy. No auto
focus... but the whole point is that you
can see
the size comparison! And the original
ship is gigantic compared
to the cube with this screened ship on it.
But that's... that's what we're looking at.
And... these satellites... i wonder if i have...?
Yes i do.
So this is an original satellite. It's a
wooden dowel,
disc-shaped, and they put everything on
cubes. So this is
an Ultra Tiny Epic Galaxies... and the size...
actually, interestingly,
the satellite in Ultra Tiny Epic
Galaxies
is kind of, like, bigger, which is shocking!
You know, it's a cube versus a thin
cylinder. i wonder by volume which one
has the edge?
It doesn't really matter, and i suppose
if you like the circular shape, maybe you
can use
your original satellites if you've got
those?
Great! Uh... what else should we do here?
Let's... let's pop open this whole bag of
wood and see everything. So i think it's
just
all cubes. Yep. So every piece is a cube,
whereas in the base game,
if we were to compare, your...
you've got a... (one, two, three, four, five,
six)
you've got a hexagonal,
uh, dowel to note your progress,
your... your civilization... space
civilization's progress,
but in Ultra Tiny Epic Galaxies, it's
going to be a cube, presumably with that
symbol
silk screened on it. There's energy, there
is...
i cannot find you! Hello?
Uh... you're blank? No you're not. There it
is!
So, yeah. The shapes of things are silk
screened on.
Neato! Aaand we'll open this b...
guy up...
and compare. Now one of the cool things
about the expansion that i actually...
usually... i don't know. It depends on the
game. Sometimes i keep my expansions
separate in their own box, and if there's
enough room, maybe i'll... i'll
put the expansion stuff in the base game
box. But one of the nicest things about
the expansion is it has this card,
which is a score tracker, which i keep in
the main game box because there's no
reason not to use that when you play
this game. It's much nicer. Love it.
Uh, so here... do we have a score tracker?
We have player cards for...
this is a fi... this is a...
it's a five player game! In this size box!
That's crazy! For those of you who play
cards, you're like "Yeah? So what?" But no
-
this is something special for board
games, i gotta tell you.
Back to here: so here are the five player
mats, and here's just a, like a player
card reminding you of the dice actions...
rogue galaxy... and in the... in the main
game,
i'm going to compare...
Woo! i'm going to get the pieces mixed up!
i
know it! In the base game, to compare,
here are the size comparisons of the
player mats.
So you don't have as much - you know - the
graphic design isn't as nice, because in
the base game, you've got these really
nice arcs that you can move your tokens
up
depending on what's happening in the
game. You've got this nice swirl... so that's
going to be a better feeling, for sure.
And here, you're just like TDAK TDAK TDAK
TDAK TDAK TDAK it's all
squares. Everything's cubes,
you know, but... but,
i mean it's the size of a deck of cards!
It's the size of a deck of cards! That's
still pretty cool!
And on the back, there is... every player
card
has a robot on the back that you can
fight against if you're playing solo,
and it looks like they carried that
through to the tiny versions!
Really neat! The last thing i'll get into
are
these planet cards. Get into them with my...
with my primitive canines... (impotent animalistic
yelling)
take that, plastic! You're scrumptious.
(whispering) It's not really... delicious
at all. Go...
great great great great great! Plastic
everywhere.
Plastic and hair! Okay. i don't know if
you can see those hairs.
Oh, interesting. Oh, right. So these are
the goal cards.
Everyone gets dealt one or two... i don't
know. i'll have to watch my own video.
i dare not put these on the... on the
close-up cam, because
i think the close-up camera is
misbehaving right now.
Those are they, and then to compare,
the planet cards... i love this tape, by the
way. If you haven't discovered this tape,
my... my friend Doc
clued me into this tape, which is a great
way to... it's self-adhesive
vinyl tape, which is a great way to keep
cards bound together, if you don't have a
deck box for them or something.
So let's bust out, like, a planet card
out of here, and compare. So perfect: both
of these planets have
a two-space track on them. There's the
start, there's the finish.
Now it looks like it would be a little
small, right? If you had...
if you had these cubes, and you had two
or more people
racing, i guess you kind of have to stack
the cubes up. Not that this is a ship, but
let's pretend it's a ship.
So you would do that, and if you had all
five players
sort of vying for control of this planet,
it does get a little bit
fiddly and ridiculous.
Yeah. But...
it's the size of a deck of cards!!! Um...
it's got the power on here. i wonder if
they had to actually reduce any of the
text on the cards describing the powers,
because those are pretty small?
Also, i wonder what happens when we get
into a planet
that has - you know - like, four spaces
on a track? Or five spaces? Let's see if
we dig out one of those from this deck. (jolly
scatting)
One, one, one, one... i wonder if the game's
been modified
in order to accommodate that? Let's see...
one two, one two, one two... i don't see any
fivers in here. There's a three...
one two three spaces, one two three, one
two three, one two three...
oh! Here we go. Here's some of the bigger
ones. One two three four... and one to three
four five! (cool Transformers sound effect)
That's how they did it. So, yeah! Feel-wise,
it looks a little bit different. It looks,
you know, sort of necessarily cubey, to
accommodate these cubes,
and on the player mats, it's very cubey...
da da da. So you don't get those nice
swoops and arcs,
so it might not feel as nice to play...
but it fits, i might have mentioned, in
the box
that is the size of a deck of cards! So
this is one of the things that actually
got the base game
played a whole lot in my... in my sort of...
i
shouldn't say IN my household.
i should say OUT of my household! Because
i was...
i was able to take this,
um, all over the place. i would take it to
holiday parties where everyone would
hate my guts for busting out a board
game because nobody else likes to play,
and i would - you know - take it on outings
and things, and people were like,
you know, "Ryan, why are you taking that?
It's grandma's funeral. Can you please
pay attention?"
Um... but i... i still think that the form
factor is, you know, one of the biggest
things going for this game,
so to have it reduced even further, and i
can fit it in my big Canadian
winter coat parka pocket, that's pretty
that's pretty exciting! i'm still pretty
excited about this. i'm jazzed.
It's a dice rolling game, so i would be
remiss if i didn't actually find the
dice
and roll them! i'm shooting this after i just
finished shooting this video and i'm
cutting it in, because i forgot all about
it!
Here we go. These are the dice: one two three
four five six, and they're dark,
so... if you know this game, it's kind of
like a... like a space Yahtzee, and you roll
the dice...
and then you get to keep any number, and
then reroll the ones you didn't want to
keep, if you're like... okay those two are
good, so i want to keep these
ones, and roll this... if you played Yahtzee,
or if you played the King of Tokyo,
it's the same kind of rules for rolling
the dice. And then you line them all up
on the card, and - you know - activate the
ones that you've activated, and people
can actually... one of the coolest things
about the game is that people can
follow one of your actions if they have
any energy (quack: culture) left, and so
when it brags about decreasing down time
in the game, it's actually not whistling
Dixie, because now you actually have to
pay attention to what other people are
doing.
If you've got energy to spend (quack: culture)
or there's
something you want to do and it's not
your turn,
you can blow that energy (duck seizure: culture)
and copy one of
the dice that they actually activate. One
of the coolest things about the game.
Uh... do you own this? Did you decide not
to
buy it because, like me, you own the base
game, and you think maybe it's a waste of
time and money?
Or are you just sort of, like, curious
about it, like i have been for the
longest time, and then you finally bit
the bullet?
i want to know! Looks fiddly as heck, it
really does. And one of the games in the
series,
Tiny Epic Quest, which i've wanted to
cover on the channel for a while... i
couldn't quite get around to it, because
it's not my absolute favorite game
because of the fiddliness. i... this is the
the one that introduced Itemeeples,
where you've got meeples with little
hexagonal holes
in... where their hands would be, and you
can put... you can equip them with little
weapons and things. It was the first one
they did that on,
and it seems like a cool idea, until you
actually get the thing out, and then
you're playing like a
teensy game of, like, Operation, trying to
fit these little plastic pieces into the
meeples,
and it's, uh... you know. It's fiddly. Fiddly
is the best word to describe it.
May... this looks like it could be
dangerously fiddly, and one
strong gust of wind, if you break this
out - you know - on the
on the lido deck of a cruise ship, and
that... there goes your game.
i don't know! You tell me! Like it? Don't
like it? Comment on it! Please leave a
comment
below, and we'll catch you next time.
Thank you so much for watching this one.
Did you just watch that whole thing? Oh -
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[Music: Board Game Boogie by Ryan Henson Creighton]
