Race for the Galaxy

At the latest game night, I played Race for the Galaxy with Dee, Ed, and Joe, and my winning streak was snapped with authority.

I started out following a very focused strategy of playing only worlds that gave me either a produce power or a consume power. I had 7 cards played and was getting my engine going when Dee ended the game. The points produced by his 12 cards easily dwarfed mine.

The first game or Race that I played, I won by getting huge points from producing and consuming, and I keep trying to go back to that strategy. Obviously, you win by getting the most points, and playing cards gets you points. Next time, I'm going to try optimizing VP production better.

MAGDAR!

Ed and I wanted to try some new, quick games, so I went to Other Realms and picked a couple up. For our first play, we went with Magdar.

Overall, I had a lot of fun yelling MAGDAR! Other than that, there's not much to get excited about. The game seems to involve way too much luck based on random die rolls and no real strategy. There are some tactical considerations regarding which boulders to mine, but there's no chance to use them in any meaningful way because the game ends too quickly.

Ed and I started out even with 8 gems and 1 mithril apiece. He got a bit to greedy, and I was able to take out a 16 point gem while establishing one of my dwarfs mining a boulder behind his guy. I added 16 points and a mithril while he added another 8 that counted.

I can't recommend the game as great fun or something that makes you think. The only real plus is that it doesn't completely suck, and it takes only 10 to 20 minutes to play with a fairly short set up time. I guess it has value as something people can play on a game night while waiting for others to finish.

Stone Age - 3 Player

Ed was busy trying out St Petersburg while I really wanted to get in at least one game of Stone Age. Since Steve had just finished playing a round with 3 other players and wanted to move on to another game, I was only able to corral two other players, Eve and Josh.

Three player has slightly different rules than the four player version - out of food field, the mating hut, and the tool hut, only two can be occupied and once a resource has two players occupying it, it is full. Other than that, and the fact that each player gets more turns because there is one less person fighting for cards and huts, the game plays similar.

I followed what is becoming my favorite Stone Age strategy:

• Get as many Tribespeople as is prudent. I've never tried the starvation strategy, instead I try to get only as many as I can support. I ended the game with 9.
• I try to keep my permanent food production within 2 or 3 of the number of Tribespeople that I have. The number gets skewed a bit at the start of the game since I start with 5 tribesmen and no food. Fortunately, I also start with 12 food, which keeps things stable until I'm able to increase my production. I added 2 food production before I added my first new Tribesperson.
• I cherry-picked the cards that I wanted and only paid more than two resources for one late in the game. By that time, I had 6 different symbols and was willing to pay whatever it took to get the extra 13 VPs that the 7th symbol would provide. My opponents were a bit inexperienced and allowed me to take whatever cards I wanted with very little opposition.
• I'm rapidly losing my love of tools. I ended the game with only 2.
• Whenever possible, I put all my resource gatherers on one task instead of spreading them around. Without a lot of tools, luck plays too high a role otherwise. After one round of rolling two dice for gold and getting snake eyes, I abandoned the one or two on a resource tactic unless I was forced into it. Note: an obvious exception to this is food. With one guy and one tool, you're guaranteed at least one food and could get as many as three. By the same token, if I only absolutely need one wood and I have a tool available, I feel reasonably comfortable devoting only one or two tribespeople to the task.
• Buy huts early and often.

I ended up with 154 pts on the track, good for second place before bonuses were counted. Unfortunately for them, my opponents did not understand the true value of the cards. After adding up bonuses, I had 303pts compared to Eve's 218.

I swear that I will post game reports of games that I lose as well, but I've won 6 straight since deciding to start this blog.

Race for the Galaxy

Ed and I went to the club game night at Ray's place last Saturday night. Our first contest of the evening was Race for the Galaxy. Ed had read a lot about it on board game geek and wanted to try it out. Dee agreed to teach it to us, and Josh, who had played before, joined us as well.

It took a turn or two to figure out what was happening with the different phases, but, by the end of the game, I felt like I was an old pro. The path to victory became pretty clear: get a lot of cards and then play the ones that get you points and more cards. I apparently got a pretty good starting hand and lucky early draws because I was able to play a lot of cards that produced goods.

My early strategy was to produce and then consume/trade, giving me a few points and tons of cards. A couple of the other players made the mistake of producing on turns when I had picked consume, which helped me out tons. With a good engine going, I switched to consume/2x VP, and ended up winning with 43. Dee was a close second with 41.

After playing Agricola, Ed wanted to play Race again. Dustin and Kwan joined us for their first time to play the game.

This game was much slower for me than the last time. I had a hard time getting my engine going, and, since that's the only strategy I knew at the time, it hampered me quite a bit. It was also slow because all of us were inexperienced players. For example, in the first round, every single one of us picked explore.

Being as it was their first time to play, Dustin and Kwan seemed to focus on playing as many cards as possible, regardless of value, making the game end sooner than I think it would have normally. I was never able to get my produce/consume engine going and ended the game with only two VP chips. I thought that my, at that point, four-game win streak was in jeopardy.

In the end, though, the two first time players hadn't collected any VP chips and had played a lot of cards that didn't have a lot of value. Ed had 6 VP chips but had screwed himself early in the game by misreading a card that he spent his whole hand to play. Thus, he ended up playing only 6 or 7 cards the entire game. I had only played 9 cards, but most of them were at least worth 2 VP each. I won again with only 21 points.

I was unsure whether I liked the game or not after the first play. I grew on me the second time, as I had a bit more understanding of the game mechanics. I like that it plays fast - 30 to 45 minutes seems to be a max for this game so far - making it perfect for the start of game night or a nice distraction while waiting for someone to finish up at another table.

I haven't come up with any in depth strategies yet - I'll need to play a lot more for that - but I do have a few tips:

• In my limited playing experience, it seems that the winner will finish with somewhere between 20 and 50 total VPs. This total is relatively low, so every point counts. Make sure that every card you play has value, ie has a way to get you either cards, goods, VPs, or a combination of all three. Don't discount the value of playing a world that gives you 4 or 5 VPs even if it doesn't do much for you otherwise; those extra points may just win you the game.


• Keep a constant eye on how many cards your opponents have played. When they get close to ending the game, maximize the points that you can get in your final turns.


• Set up a produce/consume engine. Cards that give you a card and a victory point for consumed goods in phase IV are extremely valuable. Combine these cards with cards that produce a good of the same type. Use the 5 extra card explore to get the right cards in your hand.

That's all I have for now. I need to play it a lot more! Hopefully, after Christmas, I'll add it to my collections.