Race For The Galaxy: Produce, Consume, Produce, ...

It’s amazing to think that the base Race For The Galaxy (or just RFTG) game is 18 years old by now. Almost twenty years later, I still think RFTG is one of the best—if not thé best—tableau builder card games ever created. My love for heavy card play and the happy memories of many RFTG sessions will definitely have something to do with it, although the fast and tight gameplay speaks for itself.

Let’s first get the worst out of the way: the biggest hurdle you will have to take if you want to get into the world of RFTG is the elegant but overwhelming iconography. Even though the more complicated ones are introduced in expansions (and can be entirely skipped, even of you play with the expansion cards), There’s a lot to digest. Fortunately, Tom Lehmann did an amazing job properly distinguishing the different icons, colours, and explaining everything in the manual. There’s a handy reference sheet for those first ten play sessions as well.

RFTC cards are either planets (circle) or development (diamond) cards with a number in them that determines their cost—a cost you have to pay, again, in cards. Both contain Victory Points (VPs) in hexagonal shapes. Planets can be coloured—a planet that produces goods—or highlighted (a “one-time” resource called windfall). Then, every RFTG card can have one to six different powers that trigger in that respective play phase. Are you still with me? Yeah, I know, but it’ll get easier and if you play with a few friendly experienced players, you can pretty much wing it.

Winging it is kind of how you have to play RFTG anyway, and that’s one of the brilliant aspects of it. You see, RFTG is a card game. A “pure” card game—not a Mage Knight, Ark Nova, or Lost Ruins of Arnak card game that still comes with a board or worker placement or other mechanics. There’s a big stack of cards that only gets bigger if you chuck in expansions, you draw from it and go from there.

That inevitably means that the luck factor in this game is relatively big: there are awesome synergies that can be made—provided you happen to stumble across them in your game. This could result in a player totally crushing it, chaining combo on combo, while the other is barely scraping by, only to have the roles reversed in the next play session. If you are fine by that, you will find RFTG to be a wonderful game, but if you are allergic to bigger lucky swings, you might have to reconsider.

In every round, the player has to secretly select which of the phases (two for the 1-2 player count) they trigger. When revealed, all selected phases are processed. This makes for some tactical decisions: do I choose “settle” to place a new world in my tableau after paying the cost, or do I choose “explore” to dig deeper in the card stack for a combo piece and hope the other players desperately want to deploy a world so I can hitch-hike on their move whilst not giving them too much card advantage with my “explore” pick? The person choosing “settle” does get a draw bonus but more often than not it’s better to have lots of options and benefit from others’ decisions. In case that rings a bell: that mechanic creatively stolen from Puerto Rico, and I love it.

RFTG is a Race: the first to put down 12 cards in their tableau ends the game. With the first expansion called Gathering Storm, you can take on the race against a bot—that usually brutally slaughters me. RFTG is a multiplayer game: racing the most exciting against a human opponent (or two). I don’t mind losing against someone who happened to have drawn Tourist World and pulled off a great produce/consume mechanics. I do mind losing against the bot who just drew an 8 VP card just like that.

A word about the many expansions: they’re all great. Once you’re hooked… They come in two incompatible storyline “arcs” which is a nice touch. The futuristic art and theme is great, by the way, and the expansions do help with that, increasing tensions between the galactic imperium and rebels (where have we heard that before?). The first expansion, Gathering Storm, is a must-have, introducing objectives to rack up even more VPs. The second one, Rebel vs Imperium, allows you to attack your opponent seizing their military worlds which can be fun as well. The third one, The Brink of War, I simply threw in for the additional cards. Any mechanic introduced in the expansions is completely optional.

I’m always up for a game of Race. This is one of my favourite board games ever. There’s still nothing that trumps it or comes even close. Just be sure to adapt your strategy as you play: those military worlds might just not show up…

• Total plays? 30+. It’s a fairly quick race, and rematches are demanded often.
• Solo friendly? A little. There’s a bot in expansion #1 but RFTG is at heart a multiplayer game, even though depending on the expansion thrown in there’s no direct conflict.
• Two-player friendly? Yes! I’d say it’s as good with 2 as it is with 3.
• Quality? Great. The cards quality is good, the box isn’t big, your tableau is beautiful to look at.

Keep or Cull? Keep. I would never get rid of my copy and have stuffed the base box with four different expansions that guarantees endless more play sessions. If you’re still unsure, there’s a RFTG app, but it does not capture the magic of holding the cards and physically placing them in your tableau to get ahead of the race.