I have a lot of thoughts on this game, good, bad, and some that I’m rather indifferent about thus the middle of the range rating. Let me go into this by saying I wanted to love this game, it was on my list of wanting to play and own and have on my shelf and it be this really cool colored box and I dreamt of friends asking what is that game and can we play it. Sadly, Black Angel isn’t that game, it sits on the shelf of games that I left friends borrow; the shelf of I’ll never play it unless someone else really wants me to teach it to them.The Good! It’s quite a striking game on the table, it has some funky interstellar space colors that just jump out and speak to me as someone who loves space board games. The modular board components that you actually pick up and move as the Black Angel thrusts itself towards plant Spes on journey over several millennia is a great interactive concept. I loved this in Solenia and it plays great in Black Angel also. And can I just say wow, the theme and the story behind the game, humanity is lost, a new planet is found, it will take millennia to get there so an ark of human DNA races through space with player controlled AI’s leading the way to our hopeful future resurrection. This is great stuff, the stuff that great Sci-Fi movies are made of, good job for pulling me into the game hook, line, and sinker.The Bad! There are a lot of choices for what you can do on a turn in the game, not so much that you can never decide what to do, although this game is an AP player’s nightmare, the choices require a lot more in calculating what is best for you, and in turn what will be a detriment to your opponents. While there isn’t direct confrontation it is easy to evaluate the dice an opponent has, work out a few of their possible moves, see that they don’t have the resources to do them, and then to top it all off you can go as far as to then actively take away some of their dice or simply choose to take the turn they may likely take. This may seem like a petty way to play, but in a game of robot AI’s these calculated assaults against what your fellow players seem to be the norm rather than the exception. The tech tree part of your personal player board is sure fire way to also send your AP players into a full blown meltdown and the end game reliance on a lot of points coming from there makes this a third game board you have to manage and do well on just to compete in points.The Meh! The dice allocation for how many times you can perform chosen actions is fun but also quite limiting at times, you don’t often have the resources to take powerful actions as dice rolling is mostly luck with possibilities of augmenting some of your rolls. The attacking Ravager species are an element I enjoyed quite a bit, if you’re traveling across the universe you’re bound to eventually bump into some space jerks who want to annihilate you just because that’s their role. I would have liked to have seen more interaction directly with both the Ravager alien species and the other three friendly species that you acquire tech from. There is a possibility that the Ravagers even destroy or prevent the Black Angel from ever reaching its destination but it plays out in a rather boring way.The Summary! I can’t label Black Angel a good game or a bad game, I think it could have benefitted from another year on the drawing board, a bit more polish, and something more to make this “just another space game.” This isn’t one I will revisit, it has an interesting story behind it, gameplay that mimics the scenario well; however it has enough clunky bits and repetitive gameplay that I just can’t get behind it.