Race for the Galaxy Review

Race for the Galaxy - Player of Game Review
Innovation: 9/10
Mastery: 9/10
Overall 9/10

I was up at a friend's house for the 4th and we played one of my favorite games, Race for the Galaxy, which reminded me that I haven't written a review for this game yet for this blog. As you can tell by the above scores, I think of this game quite highly.

Race for the Galaxy, or "Race" as we call it, is an outstanding economic development game which is dripping with complex mechanics and heavily codified. There are few to no words on most cards besides the title. Yet all of them are fairly easy to parse once you begin to understand the symbols used on the cards. This is one thing that I really like (although when I played this game with my parents, they couldn't understand anything).

The game mechanics are fairly complex, but the simple overarching theme is that the cards in your hand are game resources in two senses of the word: they can be played from your hand to the table but they can also be used to pay the costs of playing other cards which are more relevant to your current strategy.

The other key mechanic is the turn structure system. Turns in Race are shared, meaning that no one person is the "active" player at any one time. I strongly prefer these sorts of games as it means that everyone is pretty much in the action at all times unless the group is waiting for one or two people to make their decisions for the turn. What occurs in the turn, however, is not always (and actually is quite rarely) the same. At the beginning of each turn, all players may select one phase that they wish to occur in the turn. There are five phases, with one additional subphase which occurs only for the players that take the particular subphase, meaning that in a standard three or four player game, not all of the phases will occur. Even in five player games, usually only three or four occur, and I've played quite a few games where all players take the same phase.

In addition, players who take each phase receive an advantage when that phase occurs, which incentivizes the players to think about what bonuses they need the most and not always care about the actions other players will take. Still, there are plenty of opportunities for gamesmanship, as I often rely on another player to take the settle action so I can settle a windfall world and trade away the free good.

In addition, the game is reasonably well balanced; although not every strategy is as powerful as every other, all of them are good enough to win with if you draw enough of the cards that you need to pull it off.

Race is definitely a game that makes you think on your feet. While you may have one plan at the beginning of the game, all too often you don't draw the cards you need and need to modify or even completely scrap your old strategy. While I think some people find this annoying, and think of it as being too luck based, to me it is a point of excitement.

Race for the Galaxy, in my opinion, is one of the most unique and interesting boardgames (can I call it that) out on the market today. It is a must-own for anyone that is interested in trying many different types of games, as there is very little on the market like it.

----End of Review---

One of the interesting things that has come out of my games of Race for the Galaxy with my friends is that there are some people who can't stand this game because it is entirely too luck-based. While I see some merit in their arguments, I can't help but wonder if they are simply approaching the problem in the wrong way. In my opinion, to win Race, you need to constantly re-evaluate your strategy whenever you draw new cards, as they often don't quite mesh with the plan that you had before.

One of the things that I've noticed about a few of these players is that they are for the most part Magic: the Gathering and Poker players, two games with an "out" as a central concept. In Poker or Magic, an "out" is a card that wins you the game if you can draw it, or at least keeps you in. Given their background, and although I will be the first to admit I've never actually watched them play a hand, I think that they may be overcommitting to a strategy, and not realizing opportunities which arise in the first few trades or explores in the game.

Of course, I could be totally wrong about this. Since they didn't really like the game, my experiences of playing the game with them are rather limited. Still, it is an interesting theory, and something to keep in mind in the future.

-Jon

Twilight Imperium Impressions

News has been a little slow lately, which has been unfortunate because although I've wanted to write up a few more entries, I haven't been seeing interesting enough content worth discussing as of late. I've spent the last week or so playing Left 4 Dead, which I finally spent enough time playing to really get into. I've also been replaying the campaign for Dawn of War II, a game that appeals to me personally and I think has been underrated by the gaming public.

This weekend, I spent the week up at a friend's house near Albany NY. We saw the Star Trek movie in IMAX (which was insane by the way, go and see it now) and geeked out on board games.

We played one game of Power Grid, Puerto Rico and Twilight Imperium 3rd edition each, and several games of Colossal Arena (which is a great game for casual gamers and also great when you only have three or four people. I don't recommend playing it with more than four).

Power Grid and Puerto Rico are two games that we have played before and have really enjoyed. Power Grid in particular is a fantastic game, though our first few game experiences were significantly hampered by one of the worst rulebook layouts I have ever seen.

Twilight Imperium, though is the topic of the post. Twilight is one of those games that tries to be the "game of the ages" and attempts to bite off more than it can chew. The game costs about $80, and the rulebook for this game is intense. The basic jist of the game is that you control a space faring empire that is trying to take over the galaxy. The gameboard is built during each game and can be balanced or very one sided. There is battle, trade, sabotage, exploration, technology, alliances and mission systems which must all be understood by each player, and a lot of book-keeping to go along with the game's relatively slow pace.

It took us about two hours of explaining the rules to the new players (only three of the players knew how to play the game) before we finally felt comfortable starting the game up. We had taken some time beforehand to make sure that all player's starting stacks were somewhat balanced (so one person didn't have too much production, influence, etc). We were also playing with all of the errata for the game (yes, there is a lot of errata in this game), including a custom change for the Imperial action to make it require players to control Mecatol Rex in order to get the 2 Victory Points.

Still, after all that errata, it really wasn't a good play experience. The game becomes bogged down with several of its elements, and many mechanics seem to reward sitting back and hoping that the other players take each other out with you moving in for the kill. We quit about 5 turns into the game simply because noone wanted to make an aggressive move until we got bored enough and had played nearly all of our units.

The biggest problem with the game for me was simply that I got caught between the two "best" players at the table in my estimation. I had a pretty defensive race, which I didn't realize when I picked it but was made abundantly clear as the game went on. At one point I wanted to move on the player to my left, but the best that I could do was attack one of the worlds adjacent to his homeworld, beat up his small fleet there, and get counterattacked by his fleet at the adjacent sector after he had built at his homeworld in the interim.

The whole experience made me realize one thing about game design: design games that encourage people to take risks and PLAY THE GAME. By the time we stopped, no-one could tell who was in a strong position simply because it was so difficult to identify all of the ships in one space, so even evaluating attacks required us to broadcast our intentions to the rest of the group.

I think TI might have worked better in another group that was more risk-taking and perhaps had a better grasp of the rules. Still, it is sometimes fair to judge a game on the merit of a single playthrough, and although I will probably end up trying TI again at some point, I can certainly say that the game would be better off if it was a bit easier to understand and encouraged players to take risks.

-Jon

Complexity in Games

I've been thinking a lot about complexity in games, specifically board games, recently. Several individuals that I have been speaking to (and whose opinions I value) on the matter are of the opinion that all of the best games can be explained in a sentence or less, and that all of them have shallow learning curves.

Now, call me a masochist if you will, but nearly all of my favorite games have steep learning curves. This may be the economist in me, who is a fan of all sorts of modeling and game theory, but there is just something special about sitting down for an hour with a game and figuring it all out. Many of my games, not surprisingly, fall into the simulation and puzzle categories.

I specifically take issue with the idea that people love rolling dice. There is something interesting about leaving your fortune in the hands of lady luck, but I find that it is always overshadowed by frustration when your carefully laid out strategy is demolished in a heartbeat due to a few bad rolls of the dice.

Not that I prefer games that are all strategy. Players should be able to balance off of each other (this is why I prefer 4 player games to 2 player games). Players should be able to walk away from every game session with a sense of accomplishment (I may have lost the game, but man, I laid the smack down on Mike when he tried to invade Africa!). And luck can have a proper role in games. I think that Catan and Vegas Showdown are two games which handle their luck elements very well.

-Jon

Monopoly vs. Catan

Wired had an excellent article two weeks ago on German styled board games.

Follow the link:
Monopoly Killer: Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre

The article focuses on Settlers of Catan, a fine game that is mechanically more dynamic than traditional American board games like Monopoly and Risk. While still a relatively simple game when compared to other German board games such as Puerto Rico or even Power Grid, Settlers is a game that seems to walk the fine line between simple and complex.

When I was a kid, I was sure that by the time I was an adult, board games would be a thing of the past, and that people would be looking primarily to video games as a stay at home social activity. While the second half of that is probably true, the first half is certainly not (or at least that is my experience).

The truth is, I don't think that most popular American board games are any good. Risk is far too simple (though I will confess to being a fan of the 2210 variant and I haven't played the updated board game), Monopoly is just a dice-fest with little to no strategy, and Scrabble's game board is so agonizingly painful to play on that my friends and I replace the double and triple word tiles with additional double and triple letter tiles (Word games should encourage you to build long words that open up additional playing opportunities for other players, not limit your vocabulary to words that don't open up double and triple word tiles for your opponents).

I'm glad to see that some more complex board games are making the transition to mass market. As a game designer, it means that more and more people may be interested in the kooky and crazy games that I would like to develop. As a gamer, it means that I might actually be able to find other players for more challenging and fun games such as Power Grid or Race for the Galaxy (take it from me, don't try and teach your parents that one).

If you've just tried Settlers of Catan, or another more complicated board game for the first time, feel free to comment on your experience, and I encourage you to continue trying newer and more complicated games. As time goes on, I will be posting more and more recommended board games to this blog, but if you are looking for a recommendation right this second, I will simply point you to http://www.boardgamegeek.com.

Jon