Race around the worlds: Race for the Galaxy review

There are any number of space games where you get to explore, conquer planets and trade various alien bits for fun and profit. But how many of them come in the form of a single deck of cards and provide an exciting 4 player game you can finish over a lunch break?  This compact package promises all this, capturing the core feeling of sci-fi strategy gameplay without the weighty complexity, playtime and table footprint of heavier 4X games like Eclipse or the mighty Twilight Imperium. Set a course for Rave Planet as we warp into Race for the Galaxy.

Race for the Galaxy
Designer: Thomas Lehmann
Publisher: Rio Grande Games
Players: 2-4

Race for the Galaxy is a tableau-building card game focused around a role selection mechanic. Each turn players simultaneously choose one of 5 roles, or action types, corresponding to one of the phases of the turn. Then the chosen phases are resolved in order, with the player(s) who selected that role getting a bonus to that action and the rest performing the basic version. Any role/phase that was not chosen does not happen at all that turn. As all the chosen roles are revealed at once, a key part of the game is second-guessing your fellow players, trying to plan out what actions they are likely to take and how you can optimally exploit their choices while taking the most benefit from your own bonus.

A set of role cards is given to each player in addition to their hand

The object of Race is to have the most victory points when a player reaches 12 cards on their board, or depletes all of the available victory points in the supply, ending the game. While that goal sounds like a stock standard dry-as-dust euro, Race is well served by a thoughtful theme and enough interactivity to differentiate it from its spiritual predecessor San Juan. And it does owe a great deal to San Juan: from the role selection mechanic, the single deck that is both cards to play and resources to play them, even down to the 12 card tableau end condition. There will be a lot of comparisons here as they are very, very similar games. However Race is put together in a way that is more refined and engaging, and is really demonstrative of the important role theme plays in a boardgame. But more on that later.

The game components of Race consist of a set of role cards for each player, a single large deck of game cards and some chits to track VP. The galaxy deck is made up of Planets and Developments, cards which you play onto your tableau and which usually confer some kind of one off or permanent benefit in addition to their worth in victory points. In order to play these cards,you must pay for them by discarding a number of other cards from your hand equal to its cost. This clever (if not precisely 'innovative', as stated San Juan does this exact thing) mechanic immediately sets up a tension between the tactical desires to play a card now and the long term strategy of holding on to high-scoring (and thus highly costed) cards until you have enough resources to play them. And every card discarded to meet a cost is a card you can't play. Most every turn will require a number of hard choices, and it's interesting decisions like this that drive a good boardgame. There is rarely a trivial 'best' or arbitrary choice, you'll always need to weigh your options and decide what best serves your immediate needs and end-game goals.

A blue goods production planet with a consume phase power

Cards come in two types, developments and planets. Developments are generally static bonuses, or powers that modify your actions during specific phases - for example allowing you to look at extra cards during the explore phase. Planets similarly provide VP and powers, but may also be 'production' or 'windfall' worlds that create goods that can be sold in the future for more cards and victory points. Planets are further divided into civilian and military worlds, with military worlds being 'settled' by having a military score at least equal to its cost rather than by discarding cards to pay for them.

Military and civilian planets

Each turn players will all secretly select a role, then reveal their choices simultaneously. Then for every role that was chosen by at least one player, that phase's action takes place. Choosing a role confers a bonus in that phase to each player who selected it. This is subtly different from the same mechanic in San Juan, which requires players to choose one after another and disallows multiple selection of the same role, so it's more likely that a given role is chosen by someone every turn. It really works well in Race as you can't guarantee you'll be able to free ride on a Settle or Develop every turn while you pick up cards from Exploring, some time you'll have to commit or be left without a meaningful action you needed. There are 5 roles, two of which come in two slightly different formats for a total of 7 possible actions to choose. Phases are resolved in the same numerical order the actions are listed in.

The Explore action lets you draw additional cards. The icon on this format of Explore denotes that you look at 5 additional cards when choosing this role.

1) Explore - Coming in two flavours, explore allows you to draw additional cards into your hand. Each player draws two cards and chooses one to keep, discarding the other. The two formats of explore allow the selecting player to either draw 5 additional cards to look at, or to draw 1 more and keep 1 more.

2) Develop - Develop allows you to play a development card from your hand by paying its cost. Choosing this action gives a player a 1 card discount on the cost of their chosen development.

3) Settle - Settling allows you to play a planet card from your hand by paying its cost (for civilian worlds) or for free if your military value equals at least equals its defense (military worlds). Choosing this action lets you draw a card after placing your planet.

4) Consume - All players must, where possible, use any consume powers they have on the board to trade goods (or sometimes cards from hand) for VP/Cards. Cards with a consume power will have an icon listed next to phase IV and generally take the form of discarding one of your goods (sometimes of a specific colour) for a number of cards/and or VP chits. Using the Trade version of this power allows a player to first sell any one good for its "market price" (usually a better deal than consume powers provide, but only for cards) before activating regular consume powers. Selecting the 2x VP format of the Consume action allows you to claim double victory points from any consume powers used this turn, a powerful bonus when used at the right time.

5) Produce - All players produce 'goods' on their production worlds that don't already have one. Production worlds are denoted by a colour-filled circle in its cost, which also shows which of the four colours of goods it produces. Goods are represented by a card drawn from the galaxy deck and placed face down on the production world. Players who choose the produce action may also produce a good on one of their empty 'windfall' worlds, marked by a coloured halo outside the circle at the top. Windfall worlds start with a good on them already, but do not produce any outside of the bonus provided by choosing the produce role.

The double-sided player reference sheets.

The available roles give you a pretty easy to digest view of what exactly you can do on a given turn, but the potential of what other players will choose and what cards you already have on the board add plenty of enjoyable complexity to the decision space. There will always be turns where you want to do more than one action, but can you accurately predict what your opponents are likely to do? You may be able to play both a development and a planet, but only if you choose develop for the 1-card discount and someone else takes settle for you - but if you really need the ability on that planet to set up your next turn, can you risk nobody else playing settle in order to gamble on the development? Can you rely on the player with 2 empty production worlds to choose produce while you explore for new cards, or will you misjudge leaving your own 3 worlds empty when next turn someone cashes in on a big consume phase? Choosing roles feels every bit as important as which developments and planets you play, which is great as the core mechanics all integrate seamlessly with one another. It doesn't feel like either half of the game is tacked on to the other, choosing roles influences what developments and planets you want to pursue, and likewise the powers on your tableau cards influence and enhance the role selection phase.

6-Cost developments are worth variable victory points and reward a consistent building strategy.

And when it comes to powers on cards, there is plenty of variety and opportunity for strategy. There are a couple of broad paths to victory to pursue in each game. There's a building strategy centred on getting raw VP from planets and developments. You could also go the production route, spending early turns setting up an engine of goods-producing worlds and efficient consume powers and running away with the game in the later turns before the builders get their 12th card down. Or you could try settling lots of high-value military worlds for free once you've got your military power sufficiently boosted. And there's plenty of variation within these general strategies depending on the cards you get and what you choose to build. The big 6-cost developments have the ability to really drive your end-game choices as these will award variable VP based on the other cards you have at the end of the game, rewarding pursuit of a coherent strategy. Coloured keywords like REBEL and ALIEN appear on multiple cards and allow synergies of planets and developments that become more powerful the more heavily you commit to a particular theme. There is quite a deal of flexibility here but outside of the raw develop for VP strategy, there is definitely a euro engine builder hiding underneath the surface of this game. You'll really be rewarded for making efficient choices, building a set of cards that work well together and running it to victory. Even though for your first few games "drop the biggest VP cards available" seems like the easiest winning strategy. It's a pleasing progression that adds plenty of replay to an already replayable game, even if it necessitates having a decent handle on the cards in the deck before it all starts to come together.

A copy of Rave Planet with a misprinted title. Acceptable alternate title: Daft Punk Album Launch

Speaking of getting a handle on things, one area where Race gets some criticism is in it's system of iconography. Very much like 7 Wonders there are a host of icons that will take a while to understand. There is a large, double sided player reference card for each player, and you will be checking it. A lot at first. However also like 7 wonders, the icon choices largely make perfect sense once you've been told what they do. It's just a question of remembering initially until they become second nature. They're mostly consistent across different cards, they're all tied visually to the specific phase they occur in (all of which are listed down the side of every card), and for one-off powers that don't appear on other cards, there will also be a text summary box at the bottom which explains the card without needing to check the reference sheet. For the most part its quite elegant with just a few outliers. Some are easy enough to understand at a glance - Eye with a +2 next to Phase I means look at 2 additional cards in the explore phase, simple enough. Some others though there's just no interpreting on the fly, you'll need to read the text boxes and remember what they mean (Contact Specialist anyone?)

Yeah, I mean, obviously right?

The card design in general is very nicely done. The art is bright and colourful without being too cheesy. It can be a little bit "generic sci-fi" in some cases but it mostly conveys the theme well, and the cards display at a glance all the information you need. The theme is also carried very well by the mechanics of the game themselves. Space is of course a go-to boardgame theme, and to be fair it gets overused in places as a catchall pasted over any set of mechanics. But the core gameplay of settling worlds, producing and trading works with the setting here. It may not be an exact cut to fit but all of your actions make sense within the stated premise of the game, and effort has gone in to link mechanics, artwork and theme together. Contrasted to San Juan - It's similar enough mechanically to be considered almost the same game, but I never want to play it because the theme feels like it could simply not be there and the game would be unchanged. Card names and what can be called 'artwork' only very generously isn't enough to carry that set of mechanics, there's nothing to tie the whole package together and really give you a reason for doing what you're doing. Race conveys this whole thing much better, and as such its easier to get immersed and engaged in the game. There's also a greater degree of interactivity the role selection, in the consume powers and the end-game developments. I feel this gives it a leg up on tableau builders like 7 Wonders which can often feel like multiplayer solitaire with their limited scope for interacting with your own board and other players. Being a single deck, setup and breakdown time is next to nil and simultaneous role and action selection means that once you've got some familiarity with the icons and cards you can knock out multiple games in a very short timeframe. That "once you've got some familiarity" thing really applies here though, expect your first games to take closer to the hour mark than 20 minutes, especially if there are players prone to AP in your group.

Overall Race for the Galaxy is great, it's a tight set of mechanics meshed with a pleasing theme and is quick and engaging to play. There's enough meat to lift it out of the 'light' games category, but fast enough for experienced players to break out in between longer games. As it's pretty much a single deck of cards and some tokens you can even dispense with the unnecessarily large box and player sheets and it makes a perfect travel game. And as it's available to play for free on Boardgame Arena you can try it out before buying a physical copy, so there's no reason not to give it a bash and see if its your thing! There's a pile of expansions too so there's plenty of galaxy to race across if you end up liking it as much as our group has, highly recommended.