Ra discovery

My copy of Ra was the original German version published by Alea. It was a surprise gift from my Taiwanese friends. They had bought it from the German eBay, back in 2004, when it was an out-of-print game. Recently my elder daughter Shee Yun (3.5 years old) has been requesting to play with it. I have some player aids / mats where you can place your tiles. She likes matching the tiles to the pictures on the player aids. One night she whispered secretively in my ear, "Waaa" (哗), and I wondered what made her say "Wow". Only when she pointed outside (my boardgame shelf is just outside my bedroom) I realised she was actually saying "Raaa" in a "My Presscioussss" way.

And while playing the tile matching game with her using Ra, I realised something for the first time after having owned this game for 4 years. I actually have a lot of extra tiles in the box! It had never occurred to me to count the tiles. So I have played quite a number of games of Ra where the tile draws have been skewed by the incorrect mix of tiles. So now I have an excuse for losing so frequently.

The game did come with many tiles that were not printed correctly. The position of the picture is off, the worst case being the picture for the next tile being visible too at the edge. However the game is still playable with these misprints, because you can still tell what tile it is. I suspect the original owner had requested for replacement tiles from the publisher, and when he/she sold the game on eBay, he/she had put all tiles into the box.

These are all extra tiles