This review is long; be warned.
I wrote this review mainly to address some common concerns people have when playing the game for say, 1-10 times. Negative reviews are often given special importance by readers (including me) but can be misleading, particularly for this game, so I wrote this review to address the downsides of the game from the perspective of someone who has played this game several hundred times. If that’s what you’re looking for, skip straight to the Common Concerns section.
What is Race for the Galaxy?
Race for the Galaxy is a card game where each player, starting in separate corners of the galaxy, tries to build the best galactic empire, symbolized by victory points. To obtain these, players build developments, settle worlds, and consume goods to further their empire. The winner at the end of the game is the player with the most victory points.
Lengthy rules summary
For simplicity’s sake, I’ll start with the 3-4 player rules here. The game is focused around a deck of cards, which also serve as currency within the game. 12 points are added to the middle for each player. Each player begins with a randomly selected starting world on their tableau and a hand of six cards and then discards down to four cards in hand. Each player then secretly selects a phase, which also gives them a special bonus for that phase. After all players select a phase, they are then resolved one at a time based on their numbered order. No phase can happen more than once per turn. The phases are, in order:
1. Explore (Explore +1/+1 or Explore +5)
Each player draws two cards and keeps one of the two. Picking the phase will give a bonus of either seeing and keeping one more card (Explore +1/+1), or seeing five more cards (Explore +5) during the phase.
2. Develop
Each player gets to play a single development from their hand, done by discarding the cost in cards from their hand and then places the development on their tableau. The discount from picking the phase decreases the cost of the development by one.
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Settle
Each player gets to settle a single world from their hand by discarding the cost in cards and then placing the world on their tableau. Windfall worlds, marked by a colored outer circle, gain a good when settled, symbolized by placing a card on top of the world. There are also special military worlds which can only be settled by having military power on your tableau greater than or equal to the defense of the world. With that amount of military power, the military world can be placed without spending any additional cards. Picking the phase allows the player to draw a card after settling.
4. Consume (Consume:Trade or Consume:2xVPs)
(I highly recommend reading phase 5 before this one.) Each player consumes goods, from production or windfall worlds, using any consume powers they have from their tableau. Consume powers can award cards or victory point chips. Picking the phase will allow you to either trade a good for its value in cards before using consume powers or gain twice the normal amount of points from consume powers.
5. Produce
Every production world gains a good, symbolized by placing a face down card on top of it, if the world does not already have a good. Picking this phase allows you to produce on one windfall that does not already have a good.
Role selection cards
Players discard down to ten cards at the end of their turns. The game ends after all selected phases are resolved if there are 12 or more total developments or worlds on a player’s tableau, or all victory point chips have been taken by players. At that point, scores are tallied and the player with the most points is the winner; in case of a tie, the player with the largest cards + goods total is the winner.
With an understanding of what each phase does, the fundamental gameplay is fairly simple; pick a phase, then resolve them, paying the cost for any developments or worlds played. However, the game bogs down for many new people when it comes to reading the cards themselves. The cards are largely explained by symbols; how easy they are to understand varies for each person. More on this in the Common Concerns section.
The two player version allows players to pick two phase cards at once and adds duplicate cards for phases two and three, allowing for two develop or settle phases to occur in a row. This adds a new level of strategy so players can focus more on playing to their strength or their enemy’s weakness. More on this in the Common Concerns section. 629