Friday Night Gaming: Race for the Galaxy
November 7, 2008
Race for the Galaxy
With just Merwin, Zach, Brian, and myself and a little forewarning, we pulled out Race for the Galaxy, which I had refused last week. At least Merwin was reading the rules when I got there. RftG has a steep learning curve as you learn what all the phases, actions, and options are the cards. It has heavy iconography which takes getting used to. Indeed, our first game took over two hours for this 30-60 minute game. Once we knew what we were doing, the second game only took an hour.
This game is often described as multi-player solitaire, and its a fair description. It is from the same designers as To Court the King and has the same feature that you don't really need to pay attention to what the other players are doing. As Brian pointed out, this is bad because sometimes you need the other players to make sure you don't screw up or inadvertently cheat (as he did, but then caught himself).
There are two sources of tension in the game. Obviously, you want to beat out the players in this race, which means getting down your developments and settlements in time before the game ends and hope that you've earned enough points to win. This prevents you from using your producing planets to simply churn out victory points every other turn and instead have to pick your moments to strike. The other element is that you will want to perform multiple actions, but you can guarantee one; you have to rely on the other players to choose actions that you too want to perform. This means there is a little thought about what the others players will do and so you might have to stop and pay attention to what they are doing. But at best, it's an educated guess.
The strategy of the game is very much dictated by the cards you get. In both games, I was focused on acquiring settlements through military might. I had few settlements that produced and/or consumed. There are many synergistic possibilities between various cards (reminded me of Fairy Tale, actually), but you have no control over whether or not you get all the connecting pieces. I enjoyed the game, but this lack of control bothers me. I am reminded of the crayon rail games, which I enjoy. Those games have a similar issue of control, since you are limited by the load cards you get, but I just love building the network of tracks. In RftG, the empire you end up building is just a bunch of face-up cards, which simply lack the aesthetic appeal of other empire- or network-building games.
Traditional card games are all about doing the best with the hand you're dealt, and RftG is no different. But when I won the second game, I felt it was more due to the cards I drew than my skill and planning. Also in that game, Merwin lost (no idea if he could have won) due to a significant error in not fully reading an expensive card that ended up being useless for him. I often paraphrase a quote that I attribute to Knizia: well designed games make the winners feel they won through skill and the losers feel they lost due to bad luck. Unfortunately, in RftG, this was reversed (at least in our second game).
Race for the Galaxy
With just Merwin, Zach, Brian, and myself and a little forewarning, we pulled out Race for the Galaxy, which I had refused last week. At least Merwin was reading the rules when I got there. RftG has a steep learning curve as you learn what all the phases, actions, and options are the cards. It has heavy iconography which takes getting used to. Indeed, our first game took over two hours for this 30-60 minute game. Once we knew what we were doing, the second game only took an hour.
This game is often described as multi-player solitaire, and its a fair description. It is from the same designers as To Court the King and has the same feature that you don't really need to pay attention to what the other players are doing. As Brian pointed out, this is bad because sometimes you need the other players to make sure you don't screw up or inadvertently cheat (as he did, but then caught himself).
There are two sources of tension in the game. Obviously, you want to beat out the players in this race, which means getting down your developments and settlements in time before the game ends and hope that you've earned enough points to win. This prevents you from using your producing planets to simply churn out victory points every other turn and instead have to pick your moments to strike. The other element is that you will want to perform multiple actions, but you can guarantee one; you have to rely on the other players to choose actions that you too want to perform. This means there is a little thought about what the others players will do and so you might have to stop and pay attention to what they are doing. But at best, it's an educated guess.
The strategy of the game is very much dictated by the cards you get. In both games, I was focused on acquiring settlements through military might. I had few settlements that produced and/or consumed. There are many synergistic possibilities between various cards (reminded me of Fairy Tale, actually), but you have no control over whether or not you get all the connecting pieces. I enjoyed the game, but this lack of control bothers me. I am reminded of the crayon rail games, which I enjoy. Those games have a similar issue of control, since you are limited by the load cards you get, but I just love building the network of tracks. In RftG, the empire you end up building is just a bunch of face-up cards, which simply lack the aesthetic appeal of other empire- or network-building games.
Traditional card games are all about doing the best with the hand you're dealt, and RftG is no different. But when I won the second game, I felt it was more due to the cards I drew than my skill and planning. Also in that game, Merwin lost (no idea if he could have won) due to a significant error in not fully reading an expensive card that ended up being useless for him. I often paraphrase a quote that I attribute to Knizia: well designed games make the winners feel they won through skill and the losers feel they lost due to bad luck. Unfortunately, in RftG, this was reversed (at least in our second game).
Labels: Other Games
posted by Patrick at 8:24 AM
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