It’s rare that you get games that encompass the struggle to raise a
galactic empire, rarer still that those games can be played in less than an
hour, and even rarer than that that they’re actually a good game to play...
Imagine my cheerfulness upon finding Race for the Galaxy...
The game mechanics are simple, both players choose a single order for
the turn, then draw from the same deck of cards and act according to the orders
that have been chosen. Each player makes
use of the orders that have been chosen, but those who played the orders get a
bonus on that particular phase that only they (and any others that have played
the same order) may use. The first person
to reach twelve planets or developments within their card structure finishes
the game and then the total points scored are added up to find out who has
actually won the race. It’s possible to
build an empire very quickly with small planets, but if your opponent has
managed to put together a few large point worlds, it’s entirely possible for
them to win over the mass of smaller planets.
Perhaps it’s in the nature of the points scoring that people don’t want
to play it, something like the building of an empire should not be resolved by
the person who managed to put most points on the board, but rather they that
built the most powerful empire and it conquered everything else.
Either way, while it was popular a short while ago, even going to far
as to bring out rules so that you could play the game in a solo format, it
hasn’t seen much popularity since that point, an isolated game here or there to
be sure, mostly to show someone how to play it, at which point, the comment of
“Interesting” gets issued, which typically translates to “Didn’t mind playing
it, won’t be playing it again” and that’s where the problem stems from...
I can’t figure out what’s bad about this game...
I understand that there’s only so many expansion you can put into
something like this and I understand that there’s no way of customising the
deck so that you get to play a particular strategy, but that’s a part of the
fun of it for me, you don’t know what you’re going to get, but you’ve got all
the cards you need to form a strategy and look for the cards or developments
that you need to fit the strategy you’re working with, it’s well balanced and
there’s no way that I’ve seen to break that balance, which brings the
inevitable question...
Why doesn’t anyone play it?
