Nearly two years ago (IIRC) I was fortunate enough to be invited to a gaming session at a friend's house in California while I was there attending the great Kubla Con. I wasn't able to spend much time (being a dealer is exhausting) but during one session I was introduced to an as-yet-unpublished prototype of a card game, Race for the Galaxy.

My initial reaction (after two plays) was mixed. I loved the idea of the game and the elegance of its use of cards as permanents, resources and payment. It was fun to play...but it felt to me like multiplayer solitaire. When I asked the other players (including those who had played many times) they either agreed or didn't strongly disagree with me. Tom Lehmann, who I had not met previously, didn't seem too interested in my feedback although I couldn't tell whether that was simply because he'd heard that particular perspective so many times before.

Fast forward a bit and Race is published to tremendous hype. A number of players repeat the "multiplayer solitaire" complaint but they are consistently rebutted by people who have actually played a bunch of games. That, combined with the fact that several gamers whose opinions I respect say it's truly a great game, makes me decide to order a copy for myself and to continue playing.

That brings us to today, and to this review.

Summary of Play

Race's core concept is pretty simple. Players attempt to score the most victory points by consuming goods for points and by playing permanents (called either 'developments' or 'worlds'). Permanents are paid for (in most cases) by discarding cards and then have an ongoing effect on the game, e.g. altering he cost to play certain other permanents or giving the owner a bonus when a particular phase of the game occurs. A couple of examples:

Empath World is a world with a cost of 1 (meaning to play it you would have to discard a card) and is worth 1 VP at the end of the game. It is a "windfall world" which means that it comes into play with a good (in this case a 'genes' good, the second-most valuable). This is a pretty good deal but it comes with a drawback -- this world reduces your 'military' strength by one, making it harder for you to settle military worlds.

Genetics Lab is a development with a cost of 2 that is worth 1 VP. While it is in play its owner receives one more card when trading genes goods. In addition, whenever the Produce phase occurs, the owner can produce a good on a genes windfall world.

Thus, if you had both cards in play you could trade the genes good for five new cards (instead of four, its base price) and you could produce a new good on Empath World when the Produce phase came up again.

This might make more sense with the phases covered. There are five phases and the start of each round has each player deciding, in secret, which phase they will activate this turn. If a phase is chosen by one or more players it takes place; if not, it doesn't. Each phase gives a small bonus to a player who chooses it.

Explore: basically draw cards off the deck. The base is "draw two cards and keep one of them". If you choose explore you can either draw and keep one additional card or you can draw five additional cards but not keep an extra one. Thus, assuming no modifiers from developments or planets are in effect, if I choose Explore +1/+1, player B chooses Explore +5/+0 and the other players choose other phases, I will draw three cards and keep two of them, player B will draw seven cards but keep only one and the other players will each draw two cards and keep one.

Develop: play developments. Anyone who chooses the phase pays one less than listed cost, so Genetics Lab would have cost 1 card instead of 2.

Settle: play worlds. Instead of a discount, players who choose this phase draw a card after settling a world.

Consume: turn goods on worlds into cards and/or victory points. This is probably the most confusing phase. Players can choose either Consume: Trade or Consume: 2x Victory points. In either case, the Consume phase will happen and players will be forced to consume goods according to any consume powers on their developments or worlds. Thus, if you have two goods and one of your worlds has the power to turn a good into a victory point you must do so even if you'd rather not.

Before all that happens, however, there is a "trade" sub-phase where only the players who chose Consume: Trade are able to sell one good (i.e. turn it into new cards) at a base price ranging from 2 for novelty/blue goods to 5 for alien/yellow goods. With all other phases the entire phase happens and those who chose it get a bonus but in this case the sub-phase is the bonus. A lot of new players assume that the trade phase will happen for them even if they didn't choose it because that fits with the rhythm of the game.

Produce: some worlds can produce a good (if empty -- worlds never hold more than one good at a time), and some other worlds and some developments have 'powers' for the produce phase. As a bonus, each player who chose Produce may also produce a good on an empty windfall world. (Remember, windfall worlds come into play with a good but do not, as a rule, produce new goods.)

Play continues until a player has twelve permanents in play and/or a player consumes the last victory point chip (the pool is 12 per player). At that point play continues to the end of the round and then scores are tallied. There is no actual limit to available VP chips (just an end-of-game trigger) so if there are four chips left and you consume for 6VP you just use extra chips.

Strategy

I'm not even going to try to give a real strategy guide at this point -- instead I'm just going to talk about a few of the main areas of strategy as I currently understand them.

Engines/synergy. This is not a game about play a world, consume the good, draw cards, play more stuff. There is tremendous synergy among the cards and one of my favorite things about the game is that the possible synergies amongst the card pool are incredibly diverse, facing you with frequent meaningful decisions.

A relatively straightforward example is Terraforming Robots with a military strategy. Let’s say your starting world is New Sparta, giving you a military value of 2. There are a lot of military worlds with a “defense” of 2, so you have a good chance of being able to settle one early on. Terraforming Robots lets you draw a card whenever you settle a world, so you may be able to settle a world and draw two cards (one for choosing Settle and one for the Robots). Take a moment out every now and then to Consume: Trade one of your windfall resources and Develop whenever you have the opportunity and you’ll have a good chance of filling your tableau more rapidly than your opponents.

Timing. The above ‘engine’ is a good one for beginners, but given time it will get outpowered by someone’s Consume/Produce engine. One key strategy of the game is estimating what could be called the second derivative of your engine...or, if you don’t want to be so geeky about it, how well your victory plan compares over time to those of your opponents. You will often be able to speed up or slow down the end of the game by a turn (sometimes more) and knowing which direction to go in is important.

Player action prediction. By reading your opponent’s board and hand you can often predict what their actions will be and make a more advantageous choice yourself. Sometimes this can be very dramatic: if you’re sure that an opponent is going to choose Settle and you have a windfall world in hand, you might choose Consume: Trade. If you’re right, you’ll get to sell the good immediately and then use the new cards to do something more dramatic next turn.

Other times it’s more modest, but still considerable. Let’s say you’ve got a good Development and a good World but don’t have enough cards to play both, but one or more of your opponents has a full hand of ten cards and their board suggests that they’re going to choose Develop or Settle. You may be better off choosing neither so that you can do the one play you have the resources for while reducing the chance that your opponent will get to make two powerful plays.

Parasitic play. This links into player action prediction but goes way beyond it. There are all sorts of ways to benefit from actions taken by other players and developing your board (and planning your turn) so that you can do so is both powerful and really fun.

Let’s say you’ve got a few planets that produce Novelty/Blue goods (the least valuable, but thus also the easiest to get multiples of). If you lay down some permanents that convert goods into a card and a VP or two cards or even just one card you can often eschew the Consume phase entirely yourself. Someone else will be dropping a windfall world and then trading the good for 3-5 cards and you’ll be happily producing and letting them run the consume phase for you while setting it up so that you’re outproducing everyone else and likely drawing cards in the Produce stage as well. In a recent game I chose Produce three turns in a row before finally doing a 2xVP consume to end the game.

The Big Question: Is Race for the Galaxy Interactive?

I think it all comes down to how you define interactivity. Most classic forms of interactivity are absent from Race. You can’t stop your opponent from doing something, you can’t attack their permanents and you can’t trade with them. You can’t raise them like in Poker (and thus force them to take a decision) or move caballeros into their territory like in El Grande or cut off their road like in Settlers. As far as I can tell, the only direct ways you can mess with an opponent are choosing the Consume phase (since consume abilities are mandatory and thus you might force them to turn in a good for a VP rather than being able to trade it for cards) or, on a very minor note, not discarding cards that are important to their strategy so that they don’t get shuffled back into the deck.

There also seems to be less social interaction than in many games, although that’s harder to judge. It could just be that Race is strategically intense, so the chitchat of other games is replaced by furious concentration. I suspect, however, that the lower direct interaction is a cause of the lower social interaction.

That said, Race is miles away from being multiplayer solitaire. Among players of equal skill at the fundamentals of choosing which cards to play and which phases are most advantageous, the winner will be the one who leeches the most effectively off of his opponents. While this can at time feel like guesswork there is much more to it than that.

Other things to consider

Race for the Galaxy is a remarkably quick game consider the depth of play. You can probably fit in two games in the time a typical Eurogame would take and it has much less setup time as well.

Complaints about luck of the draw seem to diminish with experience. It’s extremely rare now that I get a hand that I don’t consider playable, and usually the outcomes of our games come down to superior play (or at least seem to). To the extent that bad draws can really keep you out of a game, at least it doesn’t take very long to find out and even desperate struggles can be a good learning experience.

I often think of games in terms of the good, the bad and the ugly...where the ugly are things that aren’t really flaws but are still worth being aware of. In Race the main “ugly” is that you handle and shuffle the cards a lot. The quality is good but they are going to show wear. Assuming you want to add in the expansions as they come but not have massive visible differences you may want/need to sleeve your deck. At that point the size of the deck becomes rather massive; it wouldn’t surprise me if I end up using some sort of deck shoe to handle it.

Overall Conclusion

Race for the Galaxy is the real deal. I’m seeing constant improvement in my own play and understanding of the game, consistent with the predictions of the game’s elder statesmen, and I suspect that my rating will continue to tweak upwards over time. It is engaging, challenging addictive and a game you can grow with.

Not to be nitpicky, but its "Skeptic". Your spelling reads more like Septic. Which would be a bit more of a view on this game that I would agree with. Though I doubt thats how you mean it.

What seems ironic about this game to me, is that while those who claim that playing it once or twice and hating it isn't an indication of how much you'll enjoy the game if you stay with it--it also seems true (at least for me)--that after playing it 10 or 15 times and loving it doesn't indicate how much you'll keep enjoying it after 25 or 30 plays (and with plays coming in at around 20 minutes each, that isn't a ton of play).

The game has a definate learning curve and takes a while to appreciate it, but it lacks the depth that I need to make for a real long-term favorite.

Anyway, funny how both the lovers and the haters can be right, even if they shift from one mode to the other at various points in their learning process

Initial post edited for typos.

Alexander, I suspect that you're incorrect about Race's depth. I would guess at this point that my total plays are north of 30 and wouldn't be surprised to find that I've had over 40 plays. Not only am I still learning, I have the impression that I will continue to learn for quite a while to come.

You know, that gives me a great idea - a review based upon my first 100 plays...

Nah... the last many games I played with skilled players were ruled by luck. It was easy to tell what strategy each person was going for based largely off of starting hand. There is flexibility in the first few turns, but by mid-game, we were mostly locked in to what we're doing.

Then, it mostly comes down to draws: that's the problem. Once you've committed to a strategy in mid-game, it's not really possible to change it. Having committed, you are largely looking to luck to fill your hand out as needed. He who gets the most luck wins in these cases.

As is always the case, once you get good at a game with a solid portion of luck, the luck will determine the winner more often than not. The real qusetion is how much luck is there, and in this case, it is pretty high. If all other things are fairly equal, luck will determine the winner. I've absolutely lost badly due to luck issues of which I had no control. That is what I mean by lack of depth.

Could I do *some* things to help mitigate that luck? Sure, but it will often not be enough, since the other players are doing the same thing.

Chaos is also a factor. If I have a strong military hand to stand, the pure luck of if another player also has a strong one is something out of my control. Sure, I can see that they are going military and change strategy, but what about the guy who had a great economic hand to start? They'll probably win in this case.

Seems pretty obvious to me.

Is it then possible to keep getting marginally better at luck mitagation so that, for example, you'll win a slightly higher percentage of games, even vs. good players? Sure... I think it's pretty obvious that, for me, that isn't going to be worth the effort.

I'd rather put my energy into games that really reward skill a deep and enduring manner. Where my many extra games will cause many extra wins, not just a marginal percentage increase in them.

Well I played 34 games this month. I haven't felt that many of those plays have come down to luck. However, most of the players in our group are poor players so I don't think it is fair at all for me to really make that judgement. We have 1-2 other good player in our group of maybe 8 players. I'd love to play a game with all good players and see, it may well come down to luck. Overall I like the game so far.

Good review by the way.

I find it interesting that many people judge a game based on how often they win.

I'm personally drawn to RftG over and over again because even when I don't win, I still greatly enjoy playing the game.

Isn't that what it's all about? Maybe I'm just not that competitive...

Hold on... this is a Tom Lehmann game? I hadn't realized that. I was on the fence about picking it up, but thanks to your review and my fandom of his previous work, I will definately be picking it up. Thanks!

That's funny, because I think the reason I don't play this game much is the learning curve is too steep. The people who have played thousands of games, beat me every single time. I think you're way, way, way off in your analysis of how much there is to learn.

I don't know if it's that the curve is very steep -- rather, it seems to be very, very long. The people who have played thousands of games are so far down that curve that you can't possibly match them.

In any case, thanks for inviting me over and starting my 'relationship' with Race!

Not in these parts.

It's "Sceptic" in the UK.

Yes, maybe that is a better term.

and down here...

Have the game, studied it some, but haven't had the chance to get it on the table yet (every time I think we are going to be four players, a fifth shows up). But, from studying the cards and reading these threads, it appears to me that a mindset similar to that needed for M:tG is indicated.

In M:tG, understanding and responding to the meta-game and knowing the card combos/interactions intimately is key. M:tG has more of both than is contained in the relatively small, by comparison, number of cards so far in RftG. Still, the play of action cards among four players and the interaction between the cards and the phases, and each other, is going to take some time to fully master and exploit. It is a stretch to compare the alternative approaches in RftG to the meta-game in M:tG but it is what it reminds me of so far, however the card combo comparison is obvious. The aspect of deck-building/tuning is absent from RftG (so far) which makes it appear that this game should be a little more chaotic than the other but I expect that developing your "permanents" to mitigate this will rapidly become a standard part of competitive play.

Judging by the response this game has received in a relatively short time since its release it should be clear that there will be no lack of expansion possibilities to keep everyone on the edge of their seats (and cards involving more direct player interaction could be a distinct possibility). I'm confident that if I can ever get this on the table we will love it! I expect that it will quickly become our default filler* for four - and even more so when it will take a fifth player.

*Filler: You've played your main game for the session but still have a hour or so to fill in. Thus far Citadels has done this for us - RftG looks to be the game our group will likely prefer.

Easy way to find out, have some tournaments. I predict that there won't be a consistent winner over many tournaments. If there is one, then I'd be surprised.

If the game is so deep that a substantial advantage can be had be being a bit better (and I'm sure it isn't the case here), then since very few players will put in a very large amount of time, you'll get only a few steady winners.

I'll acknowledge that I could be wrong, but my opinion is that luck does play a large enough role to start trumping skill when the players are fairly (not very) close in level. Especially over a few games. Over many many games, the skill will, of course, come forward.

Another test would be for someone who claims to be really great at the game (you apparently), to play with 3 other very good, but not great players. If what you are saying is true, you'll win nearlyevery time by a large margin. I'd bet a lot of money that it wouldn't happen.

I'd bet that even in our group that's only played 30ish games, you'd lose quite a few over an afternoon of play: if so, the game would prove to have a substantial enough luck component that skill isn't really able to consistently overcome.

As I wrote, of course I can do some things to limt luck. By when I try really hard in a game and a few bad draws lose it or me, I don't find that particularly fun, even if it did take skill to try and limit my luck exposure.

Things that would help increase skill:

-If the game were longer, skill would have more time to come forth. By mid-game, only a few turns remain... a bad draw or 2 can seal your fate. The game doesn't have to be short, but it is.

-Two player, no doubt, has more skill as it removes the multi-player chaos.

-Playing for money would create a long term score-keeping mechanism that would reward skill over time.

Not at all. You are totally misrepresenting what he said.



If you want a longer game that the better player wins more often, why can't you just play a match to 2 wins? Or 3? You don't need to change the game for that. And I think you'll get a more consistent win rate for the better player, if you play a match of several short games, than if you were to play a single longer game, in which a single random event could dominate.

Only to the extent that he didn't address my post. If he want to agree that luck is in the driver's seat, that's what I also said. If we wants to claim that high skill can cause consistent wins, then my test is perfectly reasonable.

If he wants to agree that there are things that can be done to somewhat mitigate luck, I also wrote this in my first post.

(I take back the "by a large margin" though... 1 point is all that is needed to win, that phrase was, indeed, not relevant to my point).



It's not the same thing. As I wrote, few turns limit strategic depth nearly by definition.

Try playing Go on a 9x9 board, then try it on a 19x19 board. The depth is much greater due to a longer game, and doing 3 games on a 9x9 board still won't bring skill forth anywhere near a single game on 19x19.

You could also score PowerGrid after the first 3 turns... simply wouldn't be anywhere near as much skill.

He said he tends to win most games, but only by a few points. You restated that as saying that he should win every single game, by a large margin. That's not an accurate restatement, it's a disingenuous strawman argument.



Go always starts with the same empty board, so that's totally different. RFTG starts with a random set of cards; deciding what to do with those initial cards is different each time.

I guess you would argue that backgammon is all luck, because a novice can easily beat an expert at one game. Yet, in a match of any significant length, an expert will beat a near-expert very consistently. There's plenty of depth to the game, but "win every game you play" is just the wrong thing to expect.

On the contrary, Backgammon is a great example of a game that has a chucnk of luck, but so much skill that--as you pointed out--in a tournament, the better players will dominiate in most cases.

It is also a gambling games which has the benefit that if my skill occassionally gets trumped by luck, I can remember that I'm still well ahead on total money won due to my skill.

That's why I used a tournament for an example... I'd think that very good players of RftG would not be able to distinguish themselves over the span of a tournament. This is partially true, as I pointed out, due to the multi-player chaos issue that doesn't happen in Backgammon either.

Finally, the cube is a powerful tool for a better player to mitigate luck once they get a lead.

To me, Backgammon is a far deeper game than RftG... quite a bit deeper, and one that I have spent some time learning to good effect, and don't feel I'm anywhere near mastering it after 200 or so games.

Chad, outstanding review. Thank you! You've really captured a lot of what's going on in this game.

Don't get me wrong, I like RftG and feel it is a very nice little short card game. It was worth my purchse, that's for sure.

It is when a review starts waxing poetic about how amazingly deep it is that I can't get behind. I thought this might be the case 5 or so games in also, but changed my mind when the main strategies become obvious to us, and the luck started stepping forward more and more (never fully of course! Skill always plays a role).

I think it will be a long time before we have significant actual data, but I'm sure you're wrong, assuming of course the tournament is long enough and properly structured. I think if you played a full-day tournament with 100 players, you would find the same few coming out at the top every time.

I've played the game maybe 100 times, and I get very consistently beat by the people who've played 1000s of times. Even people who would agree that I'm better at most games than they are. As Chad says, there's a very long learning curve. (I think Chad played quite a lot of competitive Magic: The Gathering CCG, so he knows about long learning curves.)

Funny you should mention that. MtG is a great example of, if just use constructed, a game where there is a lot of luck involved. So much so, that I don't believe their tournaments do a good job at all of determining the most skillful players.

There is ample evidence that top players get knocked out even before the top 8 is determined: this just won't happen in Chess except in exceptionally rare circumstances, and wouldn't happen in a game that doesn't have a large luck component.

In any case, I agree that the data isn't in. It is still interesting how I've used MtG many times (including wins by 14 year olds of world championships who were unknown and who never did nearly as well in future tournaments) as a great example of a game that many people seem to believe is high skill, but is amazingly high luck in a tournament format where luck has too little time to balance.

The facts onthis don't seem to deter their opinion on this at all. That's the really interesting part.