The first session of 2008 and three of us got to try out Race For The Galaxy, at last. This was designed by Tom Lehmann and published by Rio Grande and can be succinctly described as San Juan in space.

Each player simultaneously chooses a role for the round and then those roles picked are carried out by everyone, with the player(s) who picked the role getting a bonus privilege. The roles range from Explore (gain cards), build Worlds / Developments, each of which gives both VPs and usually advantages in later rounds when certain roles are carried out, Produce a good on your built Worlds, and finally Consume goods for VPs or additional cards. The game ends when someone has built 12 Worlds / Developments or when a predetermined number of VP chips have been taken. Bonus VPs are awarded to players who have built certain 6-cost Developments and then most VPs wins.

This game has a much steeper learning curve than San Juan because there is a much greater variety of cards with lots more interactions between combinations of cards and also because the iconography used on the cards is not immediately obvious in many cases. Knowledge of which cards work well together is a big advantage and this only comes with familiarity of the game play and the cards. I don’t think you will get anywhere approaching optimum scores until you’ve played a number of times. That said, it does play very well and, after 3 or 4 rounds, we all had a good idea of what we were trying to achieve.

My initial world suggested I go down a military strategy which worked well for a while but ran out of steam towards the end. Nige went hell for leather down an alien technology route which towards the end saw him get lots of VPs through his Consume x 2 role. This made it critical that we end the game quickly and we did so that he only got to benefit twice. Mark K on the other hand managed to build two 6-cost developments and these worked well for him at the end giving him 18 bonus VPs and just enough to beat Nige by a single point. I knew I was lagging behind but wasn’t as far adrift as I thought when the final scores were revealed. We all rated the game highly and these ratings could improve as we try out different strategies. An excellent first game for 2008.