Image Courtesy of goobus
This review continues my series of detailed reviews. I have tried to cover every aspect of the game and as such you may prefer to skip to the sections of most interest.
Summary
Game Type – Card Game
Play Time: 20-45 min
Number of Players: 1-6
Mechanics – Role Selection, Hand Management, Card Combinations
Difficulty – Moderate (Can take 5-10 plays to fully comprehend rules and the basic strategy)
Components – Excellent
Release -
Designer - <PERSON>( The City, Pandemic: In the Lab, Pandemic: On the Brink, Pizarro & Co., Roll Through the Ages: The Iron Age, To Court the King, All things Race for the Galaxy)
Overview
Race for the Galaxy – Rebel v Imperium is the 3rd and final expansion in this arc of expansions for the base game Race for the Galaxy. If you are not familiar with the base game or the first two expansions but would like to understand them better I would recommend reading my reviews,
Race for the Galaxy - A Detailed Review
Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm - A Detailed Review
Race for the Galaxy: Rebel vs Imperium - A Detailed Review
before continuing on, as I will not be covering any of that ground again, which includes the general flow of play and mechanics.
The Gathering Storm (TGS) as an expansion focused more on the inclusion of Solo Play and maintaining a good card balance, offering up a new set of only 22 cards.
Rebel v Imperium aimed to rectify that low card count and offered up a further 44 cards and a new play mechanic in the introduction of Takeovers.
The Brink of War adds a healthy tally of 48 cards to bring the overall total in our beloved galaxy to 228. That is one heck of a deck to shuffle and prepare for each play. <PERSON> and the design team also seemed hell bent on not being lazy here as they implement another new mechanic in the form of Galactic Prestige and it is a meaty inclusion that demands that players pay attention to it or perish in the process.
This review will look at the new card inclusions in a broad sense (how they change the game) but I will outline in detail the concept of Prestige and the impact on the multi-player and Solo Game as I have racked up almost 80 plays in short time (it’s just that good). Cool.
The Theme
If there is one disappointment for me about RftG, it is that the back story to the game isn’t that well fleshed out in the game itself (I would buy novels set in an RftG universe).
This is of course a fan gripe and something that <PERSON> may not have anticipated that gamers would want when he was developing it.
But <PERSON> has released a thread to offer greater detail around the design of the game and how the story arc progressed with each new release. 299
I highly recommend you have a read of these as we don’t often get invited into the mind of a designer.
The Secret History of RftG: The Brink of War
What do we know…
The Galaxy is effectively at breaking point now due to years of border skirmishes and things are about to get ugly. The Imperium and Rebel factions are now engulfed in all but outright war and the galaxy begins to arm itself with powerful weapons (Imperium Planet Buster). Determined to hold onto total power and control the Imperium creates a symbolic Imperium Capital and launches the devastating Imperium Invasion Fleet.
This only hardens the Rebels resolve and they form a Rebel Council, create the Rebel Freedom Fighters and establish a corp of Rebel Troops. They also escalate their training techniques to include guerilla tactics such as Rebel Sneak Attacks.
The rest of the galaxy is simply waiting to see which side will prevail. Some decide to try and play it neutral and they create the Federation Capital and look for peaceful solutions (Intergalactic Mediator, Universal Peace Institute, Pan-Galactic Security Council).
Neutral worlds are unsure as to whom to side with so factions are actively involved in gaining Prestige (Pan-Galactic Affluence) through great acts in the hope that it will lure worlds to their cause or allow them to extract concessions. Where once the lines were easy to decipher, now it is impossible to tell who is friend or foe and no one is safe from upheaval (Interstellar Casus Belli).
All of this uncertainty naturally lends itself to darker fringe elements and Galactic Power Brokers seek to make their mark.
Finally the galaxy ends its collision course with history as an Alien Research Team uncovers the final mysteries of the ancient ones and uncover the Alien Departure Point, which is protected by a great Alien Guardian. 963