Time for another installment of my top 10 games on BGG.

#3: Race for the Galaxy

When Race for the Galaxy first came out I was instantly addicted. It has a theme of galactic-level advanced civilization, as well as a design that is mostly straightforward, but just complex enough to provide a mutli-faceted experience, with lots of strategic choices and multiple paths to victory. It has secret role selection, a mechanic I like a lot, since it creates tension and the opportunity to second-guess and bluff. It also has a rich variety of cards, with each card being unique (mostly), but all of them interacting in a myriad of ways – a feature I always appreciate in a game.

Another thing I love about this game is that it incorporates sci-fi concepts that come from the venerable traditions of the genre, going back to earlier generations. It’s pretty obvious where its Rebel v. Imperium theme comes from. Then there’s also a mysterious vanished Alien race, which looks like a callback to Frederik Pohl’s Heechee Saga, and the Uplift idea, straight from Dave Brin. One card, Terraforming Engineers, reminds me of the planet designers from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The game does have iconography that can be confusing at first, and one drawback it has is that it requires a learning curve to familiarize oneself with the card set. A player who knows the cards has a decided advantage over a complete novice. Luckily for me, there were plenty of other gamers in the late 2000s/early 2010s who also loved this game and developed the expertise to play it. It got a ton of plays back then. I was even logging plays on BGG at the time (which I don’t do any more), and this game has the most plays of any on my list, at 191 total. This game was also the subject of a couple of early session reports, including this fun one: RftG is baptized.

The game has been expanded a bit, and I love all of the expansions. The first expansion arc is a must have, and I prefer to play with all three of its sets, and all the complexity they add. And even though they are a bit more fiddly, so to speak, I also enjoy the Alien Artifacts and Xeno Invasion expansions. When I bought them, I also bought a new set of the base game to go with them, since the set I had already was mixed with the original expansions, and is well worn from being played so much.

The game has also been reimplemented, and I have tried a couple of its reimplementations. I liked the Puerto Rico-esque board game version, New Frontiers, a lot. Roll for the Galaxy I thought was well designed, though dice versions of board games are not really my thing, and I don’t much hanker to play it. I still haven’t tried Jump Drive, which is sort of a simplified version of it to my understanding.

Alas, all those old Race for the Galaxy gamers are not in my sphere any more. Everyone’s moved to different parts of the country (including me). It seems that no one at conventions wants to play, like it’s really fallen in popularity. And it’s a hard game to bring to new players, especially given that there are so many easier to learn options out there these days.

I still play, though, against the AIs, as there are several exellent digital implementations. I mostly play the Steam version. I must have a thousand plays by now, and there are so many combinations of cards that every game is unique, and it just never gets boring to me.

Out of my way, I’ve got a galaxy to conquer!