Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm - Tips & Strategies

Logisitics is a pretty interesting card – it doubles the amount of action you can take in the settle phase.

The first thing you learn about Logistics is that if you’re paying a high cost for worlds, you can bankrupt yourself in short order. Just because you have the opportunity to settle mediocre worlds, does not mean you should do so. Always have a coherent plan. It’s the only cost-3 development in Gathering Storm I can think of that doesn’t have a cardflow bonus of some kind.

One of the most powerful abilities of Logistics is to go “goal hunting”. With your ability to put down more carp, you can aspire to simultaneously pursue Most Blue/Brown, Most Production, UpliftUpliftUplift, AlienAlienAlien, First 8, First Rainbow, First 4 Goods, Most Explore, Most Consume, Most Rebel Military Worlds, the list goes on.

But unless your draws are lucky, you’re going to need to keep a large hand size in order to get critical mass on so many potential targets. Thus, it’s important to get worlds for cheap. A small military – say Space Marines or Mercanary Fleet – often suffices for goal hunting. Replicant Robots is a nice “virtual military”, and when it’s paired with Contact Specialist, it’s particularly versatile.

Expanding your virtual hand size is also important. Getting the Settle phase bonus for yourself is not enough, since it only fires on the first of the two settles. Cards that draw on settle are very nice to have: Terraforming Robots, Terraforming Guild, Galactic Markets, and Imperium Fuel Depot all can lead to a self-sustainaing settle rampages. You may never need to call Trade again.

The decapitating roundhouse kick of Race for the Galaxy comes in two player advanced, when one player gets Improved Logistics, a decent hand size, a 6-dev that scores lots of points for worlds (Terraforming Guild, perhaps), a settle rebate power (Terraforming Guild, again perhaps), some settle discounts, the right cards, and calls Settle/Settle. Possibly two turns in a row to get a size-15+ tableau.

Sometimes you don’t have exactly the right cards, and you call Settle/Settle anyway, and hope. It’s a gamble, and if you fail, we call it “crapping out”. There is no dishonor in this. Getting the decapitating roundhouse kick set up takes the entire game, and it’s possible to get wrongfooted in the setup stages. Sometimes you’re badly behind, and need a high-variability hail-mary to get back in it.

Because the goal hunting and decapitating roundhouse kick abilities are so explosively powerful, your opponent is not going to call build phases for you if you’re looking like you’re mostly ready to go. This has two important implications:

1) You can actually play Improved Logistics to deter your opponents from calling Settle when you have nothing. Making a big show of this never hurts. There’s this thing where I mime placing Logistics like the card weights 10 pounds, then all the surrounding cards are bounced into the air by it’s impact on the table. That gets the message across, even in chaotic 6p games.

2) If you can surprise with Logistics, then you can draft others’ Settles for maximum effect. The extreme case is 2pa, where you put down Logistics and some other essential development just when they call Settle/Settle to lay down a bunch of slow-yield production infrastructure – say they’re placing Doomed World for Lost Species Ark World. If you end that turn with 8+ tableau, that move was almost a complete zero for them, and a huge point scorer / card cycler for you.

The big problem with Logisitcs is that the setup for the truly powerful moves takes multiple builds and good hand management. You’re probably going to have to get speculative at some point, and either assume you’ll draw some good builds, or assume your opponent will call build at a convenient time for you.

Of course, one freedom you have with Logisitics is to not build it. If you can’t get this crazy settle machine wired up and ready to go then don’t pay the cost for some machinery that doesn’t help you. Funding and building the beast takes maybe 5 turns, and that’s often too *ed long.

A good closer for your settle rampage is Pilgrimige World or Galactic Markets – better to turn all those goods into VPs. For a more sophisticated move, you can transition to a produce-consume strategy. What are they gonna do? Call settle on that? I think not. They can draft, or they can call Develop and maybe shoot themselves in the foot when you place Dropships and transition back to a settler strategy.

Improved Logistics is a flexible card, and one you should be loathe to discard because of it’s explosive surprise power.

one of the great things about this expansion is that it adds the goals in. It is important in games that use these to not lose site of these goals! Often, the margin between winning and losing is pretty slim, and a few points (even a two-point goal!) can make all the difference. It can even help cope with a runaway leader, which can happen in this game.

Instead of playing this game in the standard way or in draft mode, how about in deck construction mode? If you have multiple copies of the game, try having each player make a 60 or more card deck and choose a set of homeworlds that they can play with.