How to Play Ra: Auctions, Sun Disks & Three Epochs
Ra is a three-epoch auction game. Players build collections of Pharaohs, Civilizations, Nile/Flood tiles, Gods, Gold and Monuments while a shared Ra track creates an unpredictable deadline.
Edition scope. This follows the current 25th Century Games base edition and excludes the Traders expansion.
On your turn, take one legal action
- Draw a tile: add a non-Ra tile to the auction track; a Ra tile instead advances the Sun Boat and normally triggers an auction.
- Invoke Ra: voluntarily start an auction.
- Spend God tiles: discard one or more God tiles to take eligible non-God tiles from the auction track.
Auctions use one Sun disk per player
Beginning with the player specified by the rules, each eligible player may bid one face-up Sun disk or pass. The highest Sun wins the entire auction lot and exchanges that Sun for the Sun disk currently in the center.
Used Sun disks are unavailable until the next epoch
The Sun disk gained from the center is placed face down. Once all your Suns are face down, you are effectively out of normal auction participation for the rest of that epoch unless a rule gives another action.
Disasters remove matching tiles
If an auction lot contains Disaster tiles, the winner must discard the required matching Auction tiles after taking the lot. Drought removes Flood tiles before Nile tiles when possible.
An epoch ends from Suns or the Ra track
Scoring begins when all players’ Sun disks have been used or when the Sun Boat reaches the final space of the Ra track. Reaching the final Ra space ends the epoch immediately without an auction.
Score after every epoch; Monuments wait until epoch 3
Most Auction-tile categories score after each epoch. Monument tiles remain and score only after the third epoch, when Sun-disk totals are also compared.
Source: 25th Century Games current Ra rules. Checked September 21, 2026.