Focus – Gia and Talya

Comparing our 16 Heroes as to their Focus, both Talya and Gia come up on top with their Focus maxed out at 6, while four other Heroes have a Focus of only 2!

What is Focus?

The principal use of FOCUS is to allow you to reroll a die. If your play style is one where you like to reroll a die if you don’t get that “prefect” result, then Talya and Gia would be good choices from that perspective:

Of course there are MANY other unique attributes and abilities to all 16 heroes, but these are the top two heroes for Focus!

In case you are wondering, yes, “focus” is a nice way to refer to the ability to reroll a die. Other games also try to have a way to refer to this “reroll” ability. Example, in Dice Miner, some of the dice are “magic dice” and there is a “Magic Phase” to the game. Basically, “magic” just means “reroll a die”, and while playing Dice Miner we always refer to it as “reroll” and never as “magic” :)

Meanwhile, back here in Rogue Angels, since we are looking at rerolling dice, it is good to note that there is only one type of die in Rogue Angels with these six faces:

While there is only one TYPE of die in the game, you will have several dice available to roll at various times during the game.

It also is worth pointing out at this point there is NO “bad” side to a die. There is no “gotcha”… no “fail”… no “lose one point”. I like to view the Rogue Angel dice as NO FAIL dice. All six faces of a die are “good”.

However, you might be trying to roll to gain two moves… and rolling a “shield” will not be what you hoped for! You were hoping for the Move 2 icon or possibly the +2 icon (if you were rolling for movement). So, while there is no “fail” side to a die, you might not get exactly what you want:)

But this is a very good aspect to the dice in Rogue Angels and is NOT the case in another good space adventure game, ISS Vanguard, where almost every die has one BAD side to it (that can have particularly BAD results for you):

Each hero in Rogue Angels has the ability to reroll a die IF they have “Focus” available! Each hero has their own maximum amount of Focus and starts each main mission with the focus marker at the maximum. Any time during your turn if you roll a die, you can choose to REroll that die IF your focus marker is not at the zero point! Example, here is the Focus track on the character sheet for Talya with the focus marker at 2 (it had been used 4 times already):

If Talya wanted to reroll a die, simply move the yellow focus marker down one (onto the 1 spot) and reroll a die. You also can see how the maximum focus for Talya is 6. During the game there are ways to increase the focus for a hero, including the action “Concentrate“. If one of your two actions is “Concentrate” the yellow focus marker is moved UP two spots (but note that it can never be higher than the maximum for that hero).

Final notes about FOCUS

Some heroes can use their focus for things other than “reroll a die”. More on that in a later article. This is what the focus token may look like in the final game: