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Author Topic: Race for the Galaxy?  (Read 5048 times)

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Trogdor the Burninator

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Race for the Galaxy?
« on: September 03, 2014, 07:27:07 pm »
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Has anyone on the forum played Race for the Galaxy before? It looks like it might be an interesting game but I'd like a second opinion on it before I go out and buy it. I also know it has expansions, for those that own expansions for Race for the Galaxy, which one is the best one for beginners?

Thanks,
Trogdor
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rrenaud

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Re: Race for the Galaxy?
« Reply #1 on: September 03, 2014, 09:04:08 pm »
+3

I played it a lot.  I recommend you find some equally unacquainted with the game and buy the just the base game.   It's complicated/a bit hard to learn, but very good, IMO.  The base game easy has 50 or 100 plays before getting remotely stale.  If you still like it, get the Gathering Storm instead of Alien Artifacts, IMO.
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Voltaire

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Re: Race for the Galaxy?
« Reply #2 on: September 04, 2014, 06:01:21 pm »
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I love Race for the Galaxy. I also have no idea how to play strategically (shhh no-one tell me, finding out is half the fun). I think anyone who likes Dominion is highly likely to enjoy Race.
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pacovf

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Re: Race for the Galaxy?
« Reply #3 on: September 04, 2014, 08:11:24 pm »
+1

If you want to try it out before buying, there is a play-against-the-AI version here. The AI is quite good, it will definitely give you a hard beating at first.

If you intend to buy it, don't play too many games with this, or you'll murder your friends when you finally play. The learning curve is a bit steeper than Dominion*. Still a very good game. The expansions add some variety and shift the optimal strategy around, but you'll take many games to discover what that is in the base game anyway, so you don't really need them.

*Not talking about the rules themselves, more about the "oooooh shiny actions" -> "Wait, just money is good" -> "What if I trash coppers and estates with chapel..." -> "Wait maybe this comboes?" -> "success!" kinda learning curve that takes some games to discover, and RftG is a bit less forgiving.
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Ratsia

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Re: Race for the Galaxy?
« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2014, 03:59:59 am »
+3

I think anyone who likes Dominion is highly likely to enjoy Race.
It depends a lot on what you like about in Dominion. Even though these two games are often mentioned in the same discussions, it is largely because for a long time they were the two highest-rated card games that also happened to be released roughly the same time (nowadays Android: Netrunner is ahead of them, and 7 Wonders is quite comparable in popularity amongst players in general). The games have very little in common, so I don't see any particular reason to expect Dominion-fans to like RftG any more than any other group of boardgame fans. Both games fit fairly similar occasions, taking roughly as long to play and both being good games only for small groups of people, but this is roughly where the similarities end.

Also BGG stats support this. The list of games rated high by Dominion fans has RftG only on the 4th page of results (two of the expansions are a bit higher, as expansions usually are, but still not even within top-100). This compares very poorly to the fact that RftG is ranked 24 overall in BGG. The highest positive correlation Dominion has is naturally with its own expansions, but a lot of other games rated by hundreds or thousands of Dominion players are ahead of RftG, including most of the games ranked above RftG in BGG in general. This result suggests that Dominion fans do not like RftG any more than other gamers, but also that they do not hate it either -- it's just another game out there, liked by some and not by some others.

I personally do not like RftG that much. It was good around the time it came out and one of the expansions made it better, but in the end I have no urge to play it as it feels a bit boring and repetitive (whereas Dominion I would still play any time). Compared to Dominion it loses big time in two important things. First, it is way harder for new players, so it cannot be played casually. For expert players, in turn, it reduces too much into a game where you have to pick your strategy based on whichever cards you happened to see during the early game. The game has a lot of powerful combos and strategies just like Dominion has and I can understand how learning those could be interesting for people who like Dominion, but the big difference is that the game does not offer as convenient way of learning these things. In Dominion you see the whole kingdom and can always choose at the beginning of the game a strategy to try out, to learn more about it or any of the individual cards. In RftG you cannot do that, but instead you might end up playing 5-10 games before you get your first chance to even try out some particular strategy you are interested, or 10-20 games before you see some particular card for the first time. Of course you can still learn the game, but the process is very different and hence likely to attract different kind of players. Because of this observation, I have actually converged to saying that San Juan is better game than RftG (for me), because it feels much more friendly as a learning platform.
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assemble_me

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Re: Race for the Galaxy?
« Reply #5 on: September 06, 2014, 03:51:53 am »
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I played it a lot.  I recommend you find some equally unacquainted with the game and buy the just the base game.   It's complicated/a bit hard to learn, but very good, IMO.  The base game easy has 50 or 100 plays before getting remotely stale.  If you still like it, get the Gathering Storm instead of Alien Artifacts, IMO.

RftG is a great game. I bought and played it a lot with my wife. You probably already know that it's the card game version of Puerto Rico or San Juan in Space. If you like the mechanics of those, you'll probably like RftG.
I haven't been familiar with those, I usually watch game rewievs or other videos on youtube if I'm interested.
I also have bought Gathering Storm as my first expension. You get some new cards and objectives within there which remind a bit of the "longest street" card or the "strongest knight force" (roughly translated, I don't really know how they're called in English) card in Settlers of Catan.
I have to disagree with rrenaud a tiny bit: It's actually not the game itself that's hard to leard, it's the sign language used on the cards. It's quite overwhelming first, but usually people learn it in one - three games. There's also a help sheet for each player where all the symbols are described, but, as said, you probably won't look at it after your second or third game.

PS: I usually end up watching The Dice tower reviews first:
« Last Edit: September 08, 2014, 05:17:59 am by assemble_me »
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Trogdor the Burninator

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Re: Race for the Galaxy?
« Reply #6 on: September 10, 2014, 02:43:11 pm »
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I usually watch those reviews, too. I was just looking for a 2nd opinion, that's all.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Race for the Galaxy?
« Reply #7 on: September 10, 2014, 03:27:30 pm »
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I like the game when it works out in my favor. There are some really great combos you can pull off. Whether or not you'll ever see the cards is a different story, especially if it's obvious you're building up an Imperium plateau and another player is holding onto your key Imperium card.

It can be frustrating to watch another player pull off this masterful combo while you keep drawing cards that butt up against each other.

Being able to draw 5 cards each turn and choosing one can help a lot, but you'd have to know what you're looking for.

It's a fun game, but there are moments where it feels like I'm playing Ascension. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely a swingy thing.
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thespaceinvader

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Re: Race for the Galaxy?
« Reply #8 on: September 19, 2014, 05:32:26 am »
+2

You can always try it on your computer for free before you buy http://keldon.net/rftg/
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Re: Race for the Galaxy?
« Reply #9 on: September 19, 2014, 12:36:18 pm »
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I hate it. Just thought I'd say it to signify that loving Dominion doesn't mean you'll necessarily love RFTG. I never "got it". I've played it 7 or 8 times and I never felt like I had any clue what I was doing. Maybe that's just me, but I ust never got the flow of the game at all.

I much prefer Glory to Rome, in the same style, where I was utterly confused in my first game, but picked it up quickly after that.
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