Rochester Gamers Community

At its heart, Race for the Galaxy is a development game. In the game, each player manages resources (cards) to settle and develop a community among the stars. The game involves each player selecting one phase of the turn to happen, than performing all phases that each player selects.

First things first, what do you get for your money? In the base game you get the cards, including 6 different starting planets, and the action cards, plus the victory point chips. The cards are high quality, and the chips are pretty standard punch out cardboard. It seems like the game is priced like a board game, but given the rising price of board games, its reasonable.

The five (plus one) phases of the game are where the strategy really lies. The phases allow you to do the following things:

Explore: Draw 2 cards, keep one
Action: Draw, keep an extra card
Action: Draw 5 extra cards
Develop: Pay for and place a development card
Action: Your development costs one less card to play
Settle: Place and pay for or conquer a planet
Action: If a planet settled, draw one card
Consume Trade: May sell one good and must consume the others according to abilities on cards
Consume VP x2: Consume all goods, receive double victory points for each VP reward
Produce: Players produce on production worlds
Action: Produce on one windfall world.

If you choose the action, you get the beneficial effect of that action. Each player gets to do the basic action, explore, develop, settle, consume, or produce. Trading is only performed if you select that action. Also, each card with a power in the chosen phase activates each time that phase is chosen. Some of the cards you play will give you bonuses during one or more phases, and some just provide points at the end.

To play developments or settle friendly planets, you need to discard cards to pay the cost of the card. The fun part is that the cards you discard to pay this cost could be played later if only you held onto it. Decide which ones you want to save and which ones are expendable. That’s the heart of the matter.

The military worlds deserve special mention because special rules apply. Instead of discarding cards like any other planet or development, the military worlds have to be conquered. Some planets and developments generate a military strength for your new society. It may seem like this offers a significant advantage, since each military card you play saves you cards from your hand, but other players are also trying to do the same thing, and there aren’t that many cards to go around. Plus these cards don’t offer too many other advantages while the ones you pay for with cards can.

One other set of cards that are a little different are the 6 cost development cards. Each of these cards can provide substantial extra points at the end of the game based on how many of a certain type of card you have. These cards can direct a strategy if you draw them early enough, you can base what you’re trying to do this game on what you have early in the game.

The speed of the game is one of the major draws. One game with 3 or 4 can take anywhere from 30-45 minutes, much less online or if everyone has played before. The 2 player game often goes even faster.

Overall, the game is a fun challenge of resource and action management, with a great theme.

The Gathering Storm expansion adds a lot to the game, unfortunately without adding very many cards to the deck.

Included in the expansion are about 18 cards for the common draw deck, 3 more start worlds, rules for a single player game, and variable goals for each individual game, plus the cards for a 5th player.

The cards that get added to the deck basically seem to pave the way for the next expansion, due out later this year. Rumor has it that the next expansion will allow for direct player interaction, which might be fun to see. We’ll have to wait for that one to be sure.

The goals are divided into 2 different types, those that are awarded to the player who achieves them first, worth 3 points, and those awarded to the player who has the most at the end and has taken the clear lead from the previous holder, worth 5 points. Each game has 4 of the 3 point chits and 2 of the 6 point ones.

The robot rules have both easy and hard settings. I haven’t played through these at all, but I’ve heard they go pretty easy on easy and pretty hard on hard.

Adding the 5th player just means that more people can join in the fun, and it really doesn’t decrease the speed of the game at all. I’m a fan of it, I just wish they’d picked a color a little different from the blue in the base game.

Over at boardgamegeek.com, I’ve rated both of these games an 8. I’m usually up for a game, and suggest it frequently when there isn’t a lot of time to play a longer game, or as a good starter while waiting for a couple more players to arrive.