Race for the Galaxy

[The Schaef]

I've talked about this game before, briefly, in other threads, but I'm actually not writing specifically about this game.  What has me excited at this exact moment is that the first expansion is now in stores!

Race for the Galaxy
Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm

Race is one of my favorite new card games, and along with Dominion (and many people would say Fairy Tale works in much the same way), I think this is where card games are going now that the CCG craze has pretty much settled down to the old timers and the occasional Franchise Cash-In of the Month.  They are card games that are expandable, but not collectible: the box ships with all the cards included.

Race is the spiritual successor to San Juan, which was a card-game version of Puerto Rico.  There are 5 different phases to a turn, but you do not play every phase every turn.  Instead, each player selects the phase that he wants to play this turn, and when all selected phases are revealed, those are carried out in order by each player, and the ones that are not selected do not happen at all that turn.

Example, the 5 phases are Explore (draw), Develop ("build" a non-planet card), Settle ("build" a planet card), Consume ("sell" the goods you have produced), and Produce ("produce" goods on planets that have the ability).  If the four players in your group select Explore, Settle, Settle, Produce, those three phases are carried out, and no Develop or Consume phase happens that turn.  Players also get a small bonus for the phase they select for themselves.

The neat aspect of Race (and San Juan) is that they function similar to a board game, but the cards serve multiple purposes.  Needless to say, the cards have a face value that count towards the territory you develop when you place them onto the table.  They also serve as currency; in order to place a card on the table, you have to pay their cost by discarding X number of cards from your hand.  They also serve as goods; when you Produce, you place a card face-down from the draw pile onto your production world, and then, in the Consume phase, you discard those cards and get a payout for selling them, usually in points or drawing more cards.  Compare to games like Puerto Rico, where you have the little "building" pieces you put on your island card, the punch-out "coins" that serve as currency, and the wooden cubes that represent "goods".  In Race, the cards serve as any or all of these things at the same time.  So the trick is figuring out which cards you have to hang on to, and which you can bring yourself to spend as cash.  This gets agonizing when you have a critical 4-cost world in your hand, and you just have to have at least one of the other four cards you're holding.

The original game was for 2-4 players, the first expansion pushes the game in both directions, so you can play with up to 5 players, or a solitaire game against a "robot" opponent represented by a small play mat.  There are a few new cards but nothing to get extremely excited about.  It does expand the usefulness of certain cards that had identifiers ("uplift" and "imperium") which previously meant nothing in the base game.  Still no direct player conflict, but I am told there will be some in the second expansion.  Goals have also been added to the game, which give bonus points to the players that are the first to accomplish certain tasks, and to players who have the most of a certain quality (similar to the "Longest Road" or "Most Soldiers/Priests" bonuses in Settlers, the "most" goals can change hands throughout the game).  They also added rules for a "draft" variant, where instead of everyone drawing and discarding from a single deck, players draft their own deck five cards at a time, and then draw and discard only from their own deck for that game.

As if the length of this post didn't make it obvious, I'm very excited about this new expansion and can't wait to try it out.

[soul seeker]

Schaef, does your store sell either version and how much are they?
   like Settlers of Catan, do you need the original version of the game first?

[JSB23]

Looks cool

[The Schaef]

Schaef, does your store sell either version and how much are they?
   like Settlers of Catan, do you need the original version of the game first?

PM sent.  I have the base game at my store but didn't want to turn a game thread into a shill session. 

You do need the base game to go along with Gathering Storm.

[TimMierz]

I've played with the new expansion. The additions to the deck are nice, but nothing earth-shattering. It's also nice to be able to support 5 players. I played with the goals just once, but it was a nice way to direct play and get some further interaction into the mix.

I personally don't own the game, so I haven't tried solo play. My friend who does own the game does like the robot player, saying he's challenging but beatable. This is also the friend who has created a dice-based version of the game, which I personally prefer. He's currently working on getting Roll for the Galaxy accepted by a publisher.

[The Schaef]

I'd say that's a fair assessment.  It's not the number or type of cards that make the expansion, but the various small ways it expands the base game.  I've enjoyed playing with goals so far, and I've played the robot a couple times.

The one significant difference is that sometimes people make speculative choices for their phase (especially consume), but the robot's decision tree, while tweaked by the starting world he draws, is still a random roll of a die.  You have to adjust your thinking because you're playing against the mat and the odds only, and not against the opponent's tableau or anticipation of his tendencies.  It's a different experience than a live game, but not a bad different.  A good different.

[Red Dragon Thorn]

I realize this is a super necro-post but still

Anyone excited for the expansion Rebels VS Imperium???

I love playing with goals in two player. I find that in three or four player games they become harder to get.
The other thing I really like about this game is its balance - nothing is extremely overpowered and nothing is extremely underpowered. The tableau size is perfect, and 12 victory points per person is a really good number - A friend and I tried to play with slight modifications to these numbers and we find that it works better with the origional numbers - so they obviosly did a very good job playtesting it.

End necropost

[The Schaef]

I know I am.  I've been floating between several different games in recent weeks and I've been away from Race for too long... so this is what I'm looking forward to at the moment!

[Red Dragon Thorn]

I played the new expansion Rebels VS Imperium the other day and wow are some of these cards crazy... Hidden Fortress is sweet, Its the perfect card for military strategy.

[The Schaef]

I'm normally not one to share PMs or encourage other people to do so, but there's nothing particularly personal about this, so I decided to reply openly to allow other people to judge for themselves as well.

I've heard good things about a game called Race for the Galaxy.

First, would you recommend it? (for a 20 year old avid strategic gamer who wants to bring a new game to college this year)  If not, do you have a different suggestion?

Second, if I do get it, should I get any/all the expansions?

At present, I have the base game plus the first two expansions.  The third expansion, the Brink of War, seems to have just come out a couple months ago.  I enjoy the game very much but this is a purchase that - probably more than any other - I recommend people evaluate on a case-by-case basis.

The amount of strategy and brain-burning gameplay in Race is immense and intense.  The people who are into it are WWAAAYYYY into it.  The hard part... is getting into it.  Phase selection may be a new concept for a lot of players, unless they were fortunate enough to have played something like Puerto Rico or San Juan at some point in the past.  The symbols indicated on the card are a big part of the steep learning curve for this game.  At first it will seem like a jumble of pictures and people will grumble "why don't they just write everything out".  But once that hurdle is cleared, the symbology is a great tool for being able to assess your entire tableau at a glance, and better yet, see what the other players are doing without picking up and examining every... single... card.

Another thing to be careful for is the blend of strategic play versus tactical play in this game.  Having played games with pre-built decks, it's easy to fall into the trap of gunning for one particular strategy over another, and there are three or four broad-stroke strategies into which a lot of winning tableaux will fall.  But most of the time, it's not about selecting a strategy early and then going shopping for the cards you want.  In addition to the random nature of this game, there are also a LOT of cards to go through the more expansions you have, and the chance that the card you want is held by someone else, or being used as a produced good, or something like that.  And unless people are spamming Explore, you're not likely to go through the deck more than once or sometimes maybe twice.

So what you have to do is adapt and adjust at a moment's notice.  You have to see what your opponents are playing and plan around that.  You have to see what cards you get and maybe go down a different road than you intended.  Maybe you wanted to try a combination military-alien strategy but you get a lot of cards in hand that boost the Uplift world you have.  If you lock in to one strategy and wait to implement it, you WILL get left behind.  So you have to constantly be guiding your game in one direction or another on each new turn.  That can be a difficult concept to embrace and even harder to master, if the player is expecting a somewhat lighter game.

The one other thing is that some people felt the original (plus first expansion) game felt like "multiplayer solitaire", where if you just played your own hand and didn't worry about anyone else, you'd be fine.  I would argue the subtle interaction of phase selection is an important part of gaining advantage over your opponents, but instead I'll explain direct interaction in the later expansions.  "Takeover" rules in Rebel versus Imperium are narrow, strict, and difficult to really wrap your brain around.  You have to have a certain amount of stuff in your cards at a certain time and your opponent has to have this other thing, and... in short, I have never played a live game with takeover rules.  But they do exist.  In Brink of War, they have another way to build up some kind of empire points or something like that, which you can eventually use to take over planets.  It's my understanding that this is an easier and more common way of directly affecting your opponent's tableau.  So take that for what it's worth: I play without direct conflict and enjoy the game just fine.

So if you enjoy intense strategy games, and have friends who are willing to muscle through learning this game and digging into the strategy, then by all means go for it.  If you worry that might be too steep a hill to climb, then maybe try a HeroCard title instead.  Or Cutthroat Caverns.

[redemptioncousin]

I don't know... without actually seeing the cards or the game ever played, that last post made no sense.  Basically I have played Dominion, Settlers, Arkham Horror, Puerto Rico, Risk, Axis and Allies and enjoyed them all.  Out of all of them, Arkham Horror was easily the most complicated.  I don't really want to go more complicated than that (to many pieces and rules to bring to college).  My friends picked up Settlers and Dominion in a flash and really enjoyed them, but I want something else for this year (settlers was freshman, Dominion was sophomore...).  Initially, I was going to go with Puerto Rico b/c I have played it and enjoyed it, but don't own it.  But I thought I'd ask out here to see if someone else had any other suggestions...

[The Schaef]

Race is probably the closest to Puerto Rico of all those, for obvious reasons.  I guess the point I wanted to make is that this is a tough game to learn, but very rewarding once you figure it out.  In your case, I'm concerned it may be a turn-off for your friends, but that's a tough assessment to make from the outside without knowledge of how they work.

Agricola or Stone Age might be a good option if you want to get them into a worker-placement type game, or for cooperative games you could go with Shadows over Camelot (roughly-Settlers-tough) or Battlestar Galactica (close-to-Arkham-Horror-tough).  OH!  Or Pandemic or Forbidden Island.  Also cooperative games but very accessible.  Small World is a good choice if you want something a little more cutthroat.

[redemptioncousin]

Okay... I've read some more stuff and I think I'm going to go with Race.  Do I get the expansion(s)

[JSB23]

Okay... I've read some more stuff and I think I'm going to go with Race.  Do I get the expansion(s)

Get the first expansion (Gathering storm) if you like it then get the next one (Rebel Vs. Imperium) and if you absolutely love it (especially the take overs) Then get the last expansion (Brink of War)