Race for the Galaxy

Race for the Galaxy
In race for the Galaxy, each player takes command of a fledgling world, seeking to establish its dominion over the known universe by accumulating prestige in the form of victory points. Starting off with the bare necessities (a home world and four cards in the hand) they must use all their resources and cunning to earn victory points, either by colonising planets, developing technologies, or through one of the many card combinations that can be found.
The game turn begins with the hidden selection of one of the strategy cards that make up the phases of the game. Once each player has chosen, they’re revealed and only the phases revealed are carried out, with bonuses being given in the phase to any player that played the relevant strategy card. The Phases are: Explore-each player must draw two cards from the shared deck and discard one face down, whilst keeping the other. Develop-Each player gets to play a Development card from their hand by discarding cards equal to its cost. Settle-Each player gets to settle a planet card from their hand by either paying its cost in cards or by equalling its military value. Consume- Goods cards on planets can be exchanged via card effects, for more card draws or victory points. Produce-each player gets to add a good card to their empty production worlds.
The Tableau is the player’s area of influence. Starting with the home world, up to 12 cards can be placed in the Tableau, with the game ending after the final phase on which any player has 12 or more cards placed, or when the Victory point pool (12 per player) has been exhausted. Looking along the Tableau from left to right clearly show the bonuses generated by your empire and makes for easy bookkeeping.
Playing a strategy card is a total mind-game, as each phase only occurs once a round, you must try and second guess what your opponent will do. Will you pick Explore to get more cards to pay for the planet you’ve been wanting to place? Hoping your enemies will chose Settle which will allow you to play it. All of your foes have no goods? Well pick Consume to earn some Victory Points, trusting that some poor fool will Produce, enabling you to restock your freshly depleted planets. It’s a great system which rewards forward planning and keeping an intense eye on what the other players are trying to do.
The cards themselves are not just dead weights of thickened paper. Aside from providing goods for the Production phase, many planets also have special abilities tied into the different phases themselves, giving further discounts, allowing cards to be exchanged for Victory Points in the Consume phase, drawing and keeping more cards in the Explore Phase, as well as earning you points at the end of the game. Development cards make up almost half of the deck and seek to enhance the cards already in your Tableau or coming into play. There are also the six cost developments, such as Galactic Survey/SETI or New Galactic Order, which grant massive Victory Point bonuses at the end of the game, depending on the cards in your Tableau.
The Rulebook that comes with the game is drier that the surface of Mars. Sure it is very detailed and places important rules in the sidebar for easy reference, but there are no play examples and no general character or background is added to the game. The cards also lack flavour text depicting only the function symbols, luckily exceptional card art goes along way to adding personality and anyone with a good imagination can come up with a narrative.
Gameplay is exceptional. With each strategy choice being vital, games often come right down to the wire. Once you figure out how your adversaries are trying to win, stopping them flipping the switch on the massive card engine they have built, whilst maintaining your own, is seriously challenging. Card synergy is amazing, with very few if any ‘wall paper’ cards in the mix. Tableau choices are agonising, knowing when to hang onto, or burn cards for a planet, can really test your mettle. Race for the Galaxy is fantastic game, but it is a Euro so don’t expect much for you cash. Behind its simple components lies a game of great depth and with play time averaging 45 minutes, further expansions planned for solitary and player vs player combat, there really is no excuse not to pick up the cards and build yourself an empire!