Race for the Galaxy

23rd April 2019.

Tuesday night rolls around again and to 'The Sovereigns' we go for board gaming goodness.

The evening began with 'Race for the Galaxy' an engine building card game about forging a cosmic empire in the vastness of the galaxy.

Race for the Galaxy is a 2-4 player game, but there is no interaction between players. The galaxy is a large​ place!

What's in a game?

Each player is given a hand of cards that are their 'Action Cards'.
Each player is then given a second hand of cards are which are their 'Game Cards'
Action Cards and Game Cards are always kept seperate.
Each player will have their own playing area where they can play their cards to create their empire (called a tableau).

A number of victory point tokens equal to the number of players x12 is placed in the central playing area.
A deck of game cards are placed into the central area

Each player will have a start world, which must be placed immediately into their tableau.

That's it for components and set up.

How does it play?

Action Cards.

Each player will have a separate but identical set of action cards.
At the start of each turn, all players choose an action that they want to carry out and plays the relevant card face down in front them.

When all players have done this; then all players simultaneously reveal their cards.

Here's the clever bit: Not only do you get to carry out the action on the card you played, you get the opportunity to also carry out the action(s) on any or all of the action cards played by other players. This means several things:

• The amount of actions played in a turn is dependent on the different actions chosen by other players.
• If the same action card is played by several players, there is still only ever a single action of that action performed.
• The maximum player count is 4. There are 5 different types of actions. So at least 1 type of action will not be activated in a turn.
• When performing the action on the action card that you played, you will be granted a extra benefit or bonus to that action. Thus if it's a card that you did not play, you only get to play the basic action.

​Each turn consists of 5 different phases, played in this order. There is a basic description of what they do below.

I: Explore

• This allows players to draw more cards.
• The basic action allows a player to draw 2 cards and keep 1
• There are 2 different Explore cards.
• +5 allows the player to draw an additional 5 cards. Thus; draw 7 and keep 1. This is the option to use if you're really desperate for a particular card
• +1, +1 allows the player to draw a total 3 and keep 2. A little more useful if you want more cards.

II: Develop

• This action allows players to put developments into their tableau.
• Generally developments grant the player bonuses or benefits to other actions. They also frequently allow players to earn more victory points.
• The basic action allows the player to play a development at normal cost.
• The bonus action confers a '-1' to the cost.

III: Settle

• The settle action allows players to place planets into their tableau.
• Planets tend give players the ability to generate resources and bonuses to resource trading.
• Planets are divided into 'normal' and 'military'.
• Normal planets must be paid for in the normal way when putting them into your tableau.
• Military planets have no cost; but the player must have 'military strength' equal to the cost in order to play the card. How do you get military strength? Generally you get military strength from developments and other planets.
• The bonus action allows the player to draw a card after placing the planet.

IV: Trade

• This allows players to trade their resources for either currency or victory points.
• The basic trade action forces players to sell all the resources that the planets in their tableau has generated. This is done using the trading abilities of your planets. These either give you currency or victory points
• There are 2 Trade cards, each one confers a different bonus.
• The $ Trade card allow the player to trade 1 resource for currency before basic trading.
• When the X2 card is played, all victory points gained by the player in that turn are doubled.

V: Produce:

• This allows players to generate further resources. Generally, only planets can produce resources.
• When the Produce phase is triggered all planets (that are able to) generate resources. There are 4 types of resources
• There is type of planet called a 'Windfall Planet', when a windfall planet comes into play it comes with a resource on it. Unlike normal planets, windfall planets do not generate resources during a Produce phase.
• Why am I telling you this? Because the Produce bonus action allows the player to generate a resource on a windfall planet.

That's it for the phases of the game, which which is most of the rules, but there are a couple of other things to mention.

Currency & Resources
I've been talking about currency and resources, but have not explained how they work.

For planetary resources, cards are drawn from the deck and placed face down on the respective planet card. When that resource is traded away, the face down card is placed into the discard pile.

With regards to currency: A players hand of cards is also their currency. Thus:

• When a player needs to pay for a development or settlement, it is done by discarding a number of game cards equal to the cost from your hand.
• Conversely; when a resource is traded for currency, the players draws a number of game cards from the draw deck equal to the currency they have acquired.
• At the end of the turn, players cannot have more that 10 game cards in their hand.

Thus a player's hand is both their hand and their currency at the same time!

This is proper 'evil genius' stuff going on here. When having to pay for something, it's frequently agonising when deciding what your going to discard to do it.

Endgame
The end is triggered when either all of the victory points have been claimed or someone has played their 12th card into their tableau. Everyone concludes the current turn and victory points are totted up.

Victory points also come from cards in your tableau.

Highest victory point total wins!

Overall

Race for the Galaxy is a good solid engine building card game.

As previously stated, the currency mechanic is genius. Constantly forcing you to make meaningful decisions. It can be so hard using cards to pay for things, especially since there are pretty much no bad cards in the game.

The engine building mechanics are great too.
​Essentially there are 2 engine building areas in the game, one for developing/settling and one for trading/producing, although there are cards that work across all areas.

There is only one small criticism I have of this game: There are a lot of symbols and icons on the cards to remember. I mean a lot and it can make the learning curve a little steep.

Otherwise, if you like engine building card game. I have no hesitation in saying this is a good game.