Race for the Galaxy
In Race for the Galaxy, players build galactic civilizations by game cards that represent worlds or technical and social developments.
Each round consists of one or more of five possible phases. In each round, each player secretly and simultaneously chooses one of seven different action cards and then reveals it. Only the selected phases occur. For these phases, every player performs the phase’s action, while the selecting player(s) also get a bonus for that phase.
For example, if at least one player chooses the Develop action, then the Develop phase will occur; otherwise it is skipped. In it, each player may simultaneously select a development from his hand of cards to build. After revealing the cards, each player adds his development to his tableau of cards on the table and then discards cards from his hand equal to its cost. Each player who chose Develop discards one card fewer as his bonus.
Explore allows a player to draw cards and select which of them to add to his hand. Settle allows a player to place a world in his tableau. Some worlds produce goods, represented by face down cards, when Produce is selected. These goods can be discarded for victory points or sold to add cards to the player’s hand by selecting Consume. With cards, players can settle new worlds and build more developments, gaining both victory points and card powers that provide advantages in certain phases.
The player who best manages his cards, phase and bonus selections, and card powers to build the greatest space empire, wins.
The winner is the player with the most victory points.
User Reviews (46)
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The base game, with 2 players presents a moderate difficulty game that is not overwhelmed by the size of the deck. However, this breaks down as players and expansions are added (don’t try to teach someone to play with a full version).
The initial game can be tough as the mechanics rely on a lot of icons. That being said, once you get the hang of the game, it is very fun. There are multiple strategies and the gameplay flows smoothly.
After all of the “it’s so confusing” comments, I was a bit scared of the first game. It didn’t seem nearly as confusing to me as the hype led me to believe.
Loads of fun, with lots of variations.
Very simple once you’ve learned the iconography used to denote cards’ actions and resource generation.
The game plays very quickly.
In many cases this is a good thing, but for me it isn’t that great.
Games of Race for the Galaxy are so short, that if you play for a while, you’re not trying to win a game, but trying to win the most games.
To me keeping score of who won how many times takes away part of the rewarding feeling you get when you win.
Personally I would rather win 1 game that took 3 hours than winning 10 out of 15 games played in 3 hours.
But once you get over it this is an excellent game.
Plays fast.
Better with 2P in my opinion.