fen
United Kingdom
Cardiff
The Vale of Glamorgan
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I very much enjoy playing RtfG, as an ex-CCG player there is a lot about this game which appeals. It has the elements and feel of a collectable card game without many of the drawbacks and costs that I associate with them. As such it's easily in my top played games right now, but I was getting a little tired with the excessive x2/Produce games that were running about in our group. My hope was that The Gathering Storm would shift focus away a little from production by widening and deepining other strategies. Also since I heard about the goals I was hoping that they would change the game and increase interaction somewhat, personally I don't mind the straight race style of the game but I know some of my friends prefer a more interactive game.
This review is going to look everything, but the cards in particular detail. As a general disclosure most of my seventy odd games since this expansion got into my hands have been with two players, but I have played around a dozen or so three player and a few with four. (I forgot to keep track of exactly how many).
The Cards
First up come the cards, these are the part of the game that I (and I'm sure most of us) were looking forward to getting. Now there is good news and bad, as I'm just just about all of you have noticed we get only twenty three cards and some of those are duplicates. There are some blank cards included but really they're not of that much use, nice to have but I would prefer to get more cards that actually do stuff.
Homeworlds:
These cards are the ones that shift the game most of all, increasing the number of start worlds from five to nine shakes up the balance of games as these worlds both increase the combination of starting worlds, shift the empathis of your play style and vary the value of other cards drawn.
The Seperatist Colony is the most simplistic of the four to understand, it makes you very good at getting quality stuff from draws. It lends itself well to an Explore/Military Settle strategy, especially when combined with Improved Logistics (more on that later) and any developments/worlds that improve your explores. But, SC is not just limited to this, the +2 see is excellent when used passively and the single lone military can be used to settle some early windfall worlds and power any number of other strategies. It's a very flexible start world that has military leanings but isn't railroaded into it. It's also a decent card to draw for other start worlds (especially if you're having trouble getting your military up) and it's worth an extra 3VP when combined with SETI.
Ancient Race is a straight powerhouse card, there's nothing clever about the world. You discard to three and then get to draw four, it's a world which lends itself exceptionally well to produce/consume trade plays and piggybacking other players actions in the early game. But it's pretty much free to go wherever it pleases. The best early drop I've had so far is either the Genetics Lab (which opens up a strong genes strategy when combined with the GGP) or Galactic Engineers. Both of which allow the Ancient Race to produce on other people's turns while also giving you an extra card when you trade it. But; apart from these early synergies and the obvious links with GGP, Terraforming Guild and the Pan-Galactic Alliance, the Ancient race is a spring board for whatever strategy you'd prefer to follow. When drawn during the game it's just another 2/1 Genes windfall world, nice but nothing special.
It's similar with the Damaged Alien Factory, but this time it's a production world that earns you a net gain of four cards per $/Produce but with the added difficulty of having to discard a card before you get to produce. This can be strategically difficult at times, especially when you're trying to place high cost cards and replenish your hand but on the whole it's pretty strong. Naturally the DAF lends itself well to an Alien strategy and also has a part in any production strategy. It's worth noting that my highest VP game to date @94VPs came from a pure alien strategy that was powered by this start world. But more on Aliens later. Outside of the start world scenario it is also an exceptionally useful card, it's within range of a New Military Tactics for non-military players and it's also a military production world, which is great for shifting the balance between military and P/x2 while also allowing for more blending of strategies.
Last but certainly not least is the most innovative and fun of the start worlds. The Doomed World, it's simply a +1 See colony ship planet but it has so many applications and potential paths that it's possibly my favourite planet to use. Normally you want to settle a decent production planet with it, I'd avoid putting down a windfall planet because the gene ones are so cheap to play anyway that it's a waste. It's important to remember that this card will cost you tempo, your tableau will be behind the other players when you use it. So holding off for the right planet is well worth it if you can. Naturally the best drops are the 5/3 cycle of production planets - Arc World, New Earth and Galactic Studios - but you should also always keep in mind that this card is brilliant when combined with a Contact Specialist as it allows you to get those military planets, especially the Rebel ones, when you have very little military. I have surprised my opponent by dropping the Rebel Homeworld on the final turn and swinging my VPs upwards by 8. (This is the same trick as the colony ship one, it'll become obvious over time in your group but it can catch people on the hop.)
6 Cost Developments:
The six costs all have a huge impact on the balance of the game, each one of them has pushed a previously weaker strategy forward and made it more viable. The Galactic Genome Project (GGP) is my personal favourite of the three, it's honestly a better drop than the Pan-Galactic League a lot of the time as it has synergy with both windfall+labs and the genes production planets. Also as it's one of the 2 Goods for 3 VP cards it's a massive potential source of VPs in the game. But the big issue with Gene worlds is that you need either 2 to 4 military or the contact specialist to make this work. There are precious few black genes planets, six in total and one of them is the rather fiddly to play Empath world.
Imperium Lords doesn't provide a huge amount of VPs for the military player, there are just three Imperium cards to link with one half of the VPs, but the draw ability is of huge benefit to any military player. Piggy-backing from opposing produces by refueling your hand is of great import and it has power when combined with Improved Logistics, also it increases the chance of getting the military consume + produce planets so you can reduce the impact of the x2 play somewhat. I suspect we'll be seeing more of the Imperium in the future.
Last of all is the Terraforming Guild, which is a deceptively brilliant card. Windfall worlds are cheap and plentiful, this card restocks one of them on a produce, draws you an additional card when settling, has synergy with a rare earth windfall world + terraforming robots and often doubles or even triples the value of your windfall worlds. It's great when combined with a Contact Specialist and or Improved Logistics and it's capable of ending a game very quickly with scores in the fifties without much consumption. It's also one of my favourite drops following an Ancient Race start.
The Other Developments:
With the increased need in the game for Contact Specialists, plus the utter dependance on the Pan-Galactic League to find one, it's great that we've been given an extra copy of the card. Honestly it's still not quite enough because I've noticed that this card is a popular play for many different strategies and as such it can be tough trying to get one.
Of the other two cards, Space Mercenaries are nice but nothing special. They don't really add any VPs (apart from the military when combined with Galactic Lords) but they do allow for a low range military play that hovers around 3 or 4 and boosts up to six when needed. Improved Logistics on the other hand is a seriously powerful card that can swing things around greatly, it's one that was very much needed in this game, allowing settle players to bring a fast halt to a game before any serious x2 cycles start to come along. Sadly there isn't a version of this card for developments, and as such development strategies have taken a hit. But IL is superb for Terraforming, Alien, Genetic and Military strategies. So good that there's a real fight for them in most games, but I have noticed that players do overrate the card, it's not so hot if you're only going to use it once all game. So think hard, look at the number of planets you plan to drop and decide if you really need a double drop on one settle.
The Military Worlds:
There's not a lot to say about the military worlds, Hive World and Rebel Colony are useful as they provide military production and consumption. Likewise the Uplift Lab provides consumption for a military player. In truth the uplift part of selling isn't as useful as you'd first imagine, it's too hard to locate this lab for any strategy so you can't build around it. Sometimes it'll turn up and give you a fist full of cards, most of the time it'll just give you another consumption military world (nothing to sneeze at there). Smuggling Lair is a world that allows for card drawing without the $ action and Rebel Sympathisers is a version of runaway robots that works with Rebels and Novelty strategies.
The Non-Military Worlds:
There's an updated version of Gambling World, I don't know about you, but I've never found Gambling World to be all that useful or exciting. I occasionally play it for the 1 consume it has and normally use it to pay for better worlds (through discarding it). Volcanic World is a decent rare earth production world that can be great early on, especially for Alpha Centurai. The Deserted Alien World is superb as a drop even if you're not following the Alien strategy in any depth but it is worth noting that when combined with the Rosetta Stone World and the Alien Tech Institute that you get every Alien world you draw on the table for "free". The Galactic Bazaar is essentially a combination of a novelty windfall planet and Deficit Spending, I'm always pleased to draw this card as it's flexible and provides a decent source of VPs, it's certainly superior to the afformentioned Deficit Spending.
I've glossed over these a little because they pale in comparison to the final pair of planets. Galactic Studios is now the best production/x2 planet in the game, it pretty much beats out the Arc World because it's able to consume it's own goods and still manages to draw you two cards. It's not as good if you're planning to produce/$ but it's an absolute gem of a world that's powerful without being out of kilter.
Alien Toy Shop on the other hand is a card that can just hand the game to a player in certain situations. Not only is it a part of the potential run away juggernaut alien strategy but it's also the best windfall planet in the game, great to sell from and frankly disgusting when combined with x2/P plays. Broken? I'm not sure, but miles above any other windfall and most production planets yes. This one is pretty much a no brainer to play most of the time.
The Goals:
 
Honestly the goals are not as good as I'd hoped, while they do give something for other players to achieve and help provide direction for a game, they're not that interesting in a two player game. I can take or leave them depending on what the other players in the game want, I'm not going to be upset if they're being used but I'm just as happy if they're not.
The Robot:
The Robot/Solitare game is an exercise in pain. I genuinely feel that the robot wasn't tested by enough different people before being released. It's a solid challenging game, but unfortunately things are so heavily stacked in favour of the robot that you spend a lot of time playing damage limitation. The main issues are twofold, first of all the robot has two piles of victory points it can collect from. The 24VP that are available for both of you (and trust me it's grabby for those) and it's own personal pile of 6 or 9VP chits that it can get on development phases. This by itself wouldn't be so bad, but it's compounded by the sheer power of the robots x2 action. On an x2 for the robot it not only gets to consume for anything up to 10VPs (normally about 4 to 6) but it also gets to increase it's economy, essentially producing at the same time. Needless to say the turns where it develops + x2s can be seriously brutal.
This is not to say that the robot is unbeatable, it is very much beatable in most setups (though I'd like to see someone manage a better than 50% win rate against Old Earth on Hard level) but you end up having to manipulate and play the odds to try and get the robot to make suboptimal plays, forcing it to waste credits on worlds and cheap developments instead of the chits and attempting to protect your own x2 consumes by placing a produce at the same time.
It also doesn't help that the rules and iconography are not that clear, lucky for us on BGG we can follow this sample video ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/355317) to get an overall idea of how it works, but still it's darn complicated to get into at first. Clear once you understand, but foggy otherwise.
The solitare game is a challenge and it's quite fun in it's own aspect but honestly it's not like playing RtfG against human opponents. It's pretty much a seperate game which just happens to have similar mechanics.
The Other Stuff:
So how does The Gathering Storm impact on RtfG? First of all hybrid and military strategies are stronger, also the addition of a viable windfall strategy has opened up a new path to finishing the game quickly. The pure Alien strategy is an absolute killer, but it's entirely draw dependant, you need to have at least two of the three Alien enablers (ARS, DAW with pref ATI as the second) and an Alien windfall world or two, but from there it will often start rolling and garner massive scores very quickly.
Genetics gets a shot in the arm as well, but the strategy is still somewhat faulty. Sometimes it will hit a wall as it requires a hybrid mix of production planets, windfall planets, military and ways of restocking windfalls. It's not as strong as the rare earth variant but it's good fun when it does work. The biggest problem to get around is the Pan-Galactic League and Empath World, without a Contact Specialist these two cards are pretty unplayable early on.
As I mentioned earlier, pure production takes a hit. It's still strong but there are other strategies that can hang with it and normally hybrid strategies tend to win. One strategy which has become seriously weak is the development based strategy, it's fallen behind settling and x2/P strategies by a lot.
The Draft Variant of the game is excellent and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a bit of variety and excitement in their starting game. It's very interesting, especially when combined with goals.
The Final Word:
If I'm honest The Gathering Storm is a great addition, but for it's price it's not all that it could have been. I honestly expected and hoped for more cards because they were the primary reason for purchasing this expansion. The cards that you do get are great, they really change up the balance of the game and open up the field, but I'm not happy with the price tag attached. The entire expansion feels and looks like it should have been a lot less than it is, especially when you consider that not everyone is going to want to goals and/or the robot.
The cards are amazing for the game and hopefully the next expansion gives the players a lot more of them. Honestly I do feel a little jipped at the price, I payed it grudgingly and I expect to get better in the next expansion.
But price aside there is a lot to recommend for this set and I'd say that the cards in particular are must haves for anyone, the other two sections (goals and robot) are more down to personal taste and are not essential.
Acknowledgements:
The individual photos of the cards are from: Who has made it very easy to reference and review the cards as they have been photographed in categories. Please go give thumbs for them.
Likewise the pictures of the goals come from
Luîs
United States
Mesa
Arizona
Thumb your appreciation if you'd be so kind. (You'll have to hunt them down in the gallery as I needed to direct link in order to get them to sit inline.)
I'd also like to thank the various people I've had a chance to play games with, including but not limited to:
Matt Clementson
Wales
Cardiff
Jim Patching
United Kingdom
Cardiff
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great review! you put a lot of work into it...
i am happy with the gathering storm. the goals are not great but ok (i only played 2 player, maybe they shine with more players?) but the extra cards really improve the game.
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Everett Scheer
United States
Madison
Wisconsin
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ckremer2 wrote: great review! you put a lot of work into it...
i am happy with the gathering storm. the goals are not great but ok (i only played 2 player, maybe they shine with more players?) but the extra cards really improve the game.
The goals reward a different play style/strategy. I believe they are good for the game, even though I'm not extatic about them. New and more ways to victory generally equals better play experiance IMO.
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Ben Hodgson
United Kingdom
Tiverton
Devon
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It's worth mentioning that the Galactic Bazaar 'discard for VP' power may only be used ONCE per phase IV unlike the deficit spending and merchant world cards which may be used twice.
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Wei-Hwa Huang
United States
Mountain View
California
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Quote: Likewise the Uplift Lab provides consumption for a military player. In truth the uplift part of selling isn't as useful as you'd first imagine, it's too hard to locate this lab for any strategy so you can't build around it.
So, in other words, you're saying it's clandestine? 
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fen
United Kingdom
Cardiff
The Vale of Glamorgan
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I might be saying that, yes.
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Posted Mon Nov 17, 2008 12:35 pm
