 Anyway, so race of the galaxy is one of those board games that is well card game actually Sort of it is a table top. It is one of those like staple games that like has cemented itself in the tabletop Board game culture and is like always in every game library. Everyone knows how to play it's up there with settlers carcassone Dominion right race of the galaxy is like up there as one of those games that will always be there. Yeah a bunch of expansions There's apps There's roll for the galaxy that is basically the same game with dice instead of cards. It's not as good I think it's better, but anyway, I don't think so, but anyway, we're only talking about race of the galaxy today So it's expansions to a degree. Yeah, so the deal with race of the galaxy is it's a lot like Puerto Rico actually yeah, right every round every Puerto Rico you take turns choosing what's gonna happen like I'm gonna captain and Scott says well I'm gonna craft right so when rim captains he captains Super captain because he chose it, but everyone else just regular captains right in race of the galaxy Everyone chooses at the same time and people can actually choose the same thing as each other Yeah, and you could just choose the same thing over and over again, but if you choose trade you do super trading But now everyone else gets to do regular trading if they also chose trading because two people might choose the same thing Everyone could choose the same thing. Yeah, then any answer that happens anyone who chooses does super version of that task But everyone else gets to do regular version So sometimes you get to do everything because everyone shows something different and sometimes you don't get to do very much because everyone Chose the same thing now. That's already a huge huge difference from Puerto Rico because in Puerto Rico I choose a role and then the next player so Scott knows what I chose Can't choose that and decides based on so every role you choose Informs the decisions, but also restricts the decisions of all the further players in race of the galaxy You're trying to guess who I want really need trading to happen, but I don't want to pick it I don't the benefit of picking trading you have to pick you can't trade unless you pick it Oh, right, right, right, but okay. I really want to settle right now Yeah, but the benefit of settling is only a minor benefit. It's like a one discount or something, right? Yeah, like I don't need the discount. I'm good. I just need to but I do want to settle So I want settling to happen But I really don't want to have to play settle because it would also be nice to produce happen this turn Yeah, I want to do this and I hope that Scott settles Jojo explores rim gonna produce if he produces then I can just settle I need to settle if he produces But if he's I think he's gonna settle which is great So I'm gonna produce and then you really hope you can guess what other people gonna do it in this Psychological element is the number one fun great thing about race of the game I played a game that I remember to this day where the game started and in the first two rounds Nobody picked settle everyone picks explore in the early everyone picked explore develop predict like other stuff To two times in a row except military. So eventually even military guy So eventually so two rounds about a military game No one has settled like couple people built like all development Mm-hmm, and everyone assumes now because everyone's got a pile of cards in their hands except one jerk that Someone's gonna pick settle. No one picks it. No one picks it. They kept trying to mooch off someone else We went six rounds where no one picked set colonizer So what your hands really shitty or what well people like people to developments instead Oh, okay other stuff but no one settled no worlds were put out on the seventh round everyone picks That'll everyone except one person picked settle the smart a winner But that happens a lot and that is a big fun part of this game the other part of this game But that that's the most like there's a whole bunch of other stuff going on in the game But that aspect of that we're that part beginning of the term where you choose what you're gonna do and you're trying to Guess what the other people are gonna choose that is like more than 50% of the fun Strategy and quality in this game and that's why it's fun to play over and over and over and over and over again Just doing that thing over and over again. It's so great Yep I don't get I don't get tired of that aspect and the game is if you look at it You never played it before it looks terrifyingly Bullshitty complex like it looks like the most ridiculous nonsense game that you will do anything to avoid playing with some guy at a Thing is this game isn't actually that complex as far as games go It is too complex for a complete beginner, but it is not as things go. It's not advanced squad leader It's not even it's easier than eclipse. It's easier than a lot of games What like it's a game that it takes forever to teach someone who's never played games before right? But once you start playing by like two rounds and they're like, oh So the main thing is that the cards have so much information on them But the information is coded in all these various symbols and what the symbols mean isn't really that crazy But you have to learn to read the symbols maybe and the graphic design It's like maybe you could do better to make the learning easier, but I can't imagine a way you could I think they've done it as good as they can some of these symbols are shockingly complex But if you really look at them they actually make a lot of sense once you look up what a symbol means You're like, oh, that's what that does that makes perfect Any good or one victory point and one car right it's like oh it makes perfect sense So you get to learn to read these symbols and that makes getting into the game a little bit difficult the first times You play it you're gonna be constantly like looking at the book and asking people who know like what is this card? Do what does that symbol mean? What is the summary card that comes with the game looks terrifying? Yeah, at least there is a summary card which helps you out, right? But once you learn to read the symbols and you don't need the summary card anymore The game is almost strangely like a solitaire thing right where there's you interact at that fun part that I mentioned The good part where you choose the role that you're gonna do that turn or the activity whatever the action And that's the interactive part with the other players But other than that like once everyone chooses an action everyone just heard it goes okay and does their own thing Yep, and like you don't even Not even be paying attention to what the other people are doing you should because then you learned how to you know You can pay vague attention like Scott played another green Windfall world. Okay. Oh Joey Jojo got a little more military. I better watch out. You might try to end the game quicker, right? But it's like, you know, you don't have to like super You know normally in a game everyone does their turn and says everything they're doing and you see every action They do and the next person goes and race you can play fast when everyone knows what they're doing because everyone Just sort of does their own shit Simultaneously and then you can sort of look at some you can look at everyone's boards. They're all public you can very See what they did you just need to look at their board state to get all the information you need to make your own decisions It's actually very similar among skilled players to how seven wonders tends to play out Yep, you you know you pass you look at other people's boards to say, okay I'll pick this card, but then once your turn happens like I'm building this. I'm taking these points Here's money. Here's money. Give me money. Okay Yep, but the symbology of this game is way better than seven wonders Yes, seven wonders does have that similar problem to learn the language of the symbols But I find that in seven wonders I have to keep looking things up every time I play hardly because they there's too many Mechanics that are really weird especially when you add all the expansion and race to the galaxy They just sort of combining the same symbolic language over and over and cards that need it Just have words on them. Yep A lot of the fancy development cards just have words on them to explain themselves You know, you don't need to look anything up So I do need to look things up when there's new things or an expansion or the few really crazy cards But it's a lot less common than seven wonders you start off like oh these leaders got to look them up Yep, every time now the game unexpanded is fun, but It's got maybe maybe 20 plays right before the game is complete random nonsense You know there is you don't make any decisions the game is so simple The game the in it just the core set the race of the galaxy box Doesn't have a lot of cards in it So once you have played it a bunch to the point at which you don't need to look up symbols anymore It just gets really repetitive like you see the same cards over and over again You know exactly what to do on your turn. It's sort of pre-pres you're not making interesting decisions anymore Which is why it's good that that exists so that a new player can get into the game easily like that But anyone who's played this enough or is it playing it semi-seriously or is a Somewhat hardcore tabletop gamer like us you have to combine a whole bunch of expansions in there to get a whole bunch of extra Cards to mix things up and keep it exciting get the replay value. Yep It's good because there's a lot of expansions. Well, there are two main expansions I don't know what other expansions there because these are the ones that I've played I haven't played any you want at least these two main ones especially but there are other ones The gathering storm and rebel versus imperium right you now You basically need those like if you're buying this game And you like I recommend not buying it if you haven't played it right play it And if you like it and think you're gonna play it a lot by it and those two expansions all together yep now Be warned the expansions add more cards and they've actually made the game way better like especially just gathering storm That's the minimum because that makes the game start way less random Yep, because once you play the original enough the start the random like what you start with Determines the whole game and there's almost no way back from that initial set But with gathering storm you have some sort of you can tune what you want to do What strategy you want to go to a small degree when you start the game? Mm-hmm The only real bad expansion I think because they had there's like some goals and there was one that came out that I haven't played too much they had like a board with alien guys moving around on the board or something, right? There's a scenario The in Rebel versus Imperium that I am not interested in at all And more importantly it adds a mechanic that I think is actually pretty bad Around actually attacking other players and taking their shit. I feel like that that that's not good because then suddenly you Get the whole solitary element goes away You start had to really think about what other people are doing and that is just as bad as Carcassonne expansions that let you knock other people's meeples off the board. Yeah, like that is bad news So it's like not all the expansions for this game are good But the good thing is that a lot even the bad expansion like the one with the miniature board where guys move It just has a bunch of cards in it So you can buy the expansions and not use all of the rules that they come with and not use all of the garbage in there And like it's like buying a carcassone expansion and just taking the tiles and not using those like you can buy We bought what the tower about the tower. We don't use the tower We just added a bunch of tiles to the carcassone right so you can buy race the galaxy expansion You just add a bunch of cards And you're not gonna be able to add all the cards We can they will add most of them and get mix up your game and get some interesting things happening without having to use All of the extra weirdo garbage in there. I guess that the most interesting thing about this game I mean we didn't get too much into the mechanics because it's better if you just learn the mechanics are pretty simple It's like you're basically you're getting cards cards or planets Cards are also currency. Cards are everything right cards are everything So it's like you want to build this planet that costs for will discard for other cards It doesn't matter what they are just cards And you hope you draw when you want to draw cards because drawing more cards gives you a more options But be more currency to actually play some cards that are more expensive, right and then you Planets produce things so they get goods on them some do some don't you can turn goods into victory It's not only produce things once when you build them and never again Planets are military and then there's developments which do fancy stuff and get victory points and basically all the abilities on these cards Enhance your regular ability. So it's like oh this card has a thing that happens when you produce So for now on every time produce happens You can do the fancy thing on this card and you're basically upgrading your machine and your machine is made of planets and Goods and Development so again like Puerto Rico when someone reaches a certain number of cards in front of them Well, there's two ways the game is over and also in Puerto Rico There's an end race of the galaxy There's a pile of victory point chips if you run that out If you run out the chip pile of victory points the game ends and then you see was the highest score So just build the build the best machine and got the most points and grant it efficiently in the same number of turns Yep, and in that aspect that's why it's a race. It's a race in Strategy the strategies of this game are Shockingly similar to the kinds of thinking you do in Puerto Rico as well Mm-hmm like are you gonna build goods and ship them for victory points? Are you gonna build a bunch of fancy planets and developments gave your victory points that way you can legit win the game? never Shipping stuff and you can legit win the game pretty much doing nothing but shipping stuff and just building you try to end The game quickly by like military especially just getting planet planet planet planet planet planet If you get a good draw, yeah, just get fill up the you know victory point condition and just end All right There's a lot of different things you can do in the game and you look this is why it's not you have to look at what other people Are doing you have to make good decisions and there's also an element that Puerto Rico doesn't have of luck Right if you start with the military world new sparta And you draw a military world that you can just get right away And then you draw another one that you get you can get right away You can just roll through the game But if you draw a bunch of other kinds of things that military isn't helping you with it's just like you can sit there in Slug where someone else who may be started with a blue world and draws a bunch of blue worlds to go with it and gets A hand of full of synergies is gonna take off and so even if you're really good at the game You won't win all the time against other people who are good at the game And if everyone's good at the game It's a card game like the better you all get at the game the more the randomness influences the winner because the game Which is why you want to have more cards because then even though you say more cards to make it more random it does But more cards also means there's more cards to go around so it's not like oh you got the only thing That's I needed to win because there's only one of those in the game It's like oh now there's a huge fucking deck of cards There's gonna be some other cards I can get even if someone took those ones But I'm not just getting a lot of skilled players that random is a big factor partly because the game will be Shockingly tight. I would say. Oh, yeah Ten to twenty percent of all the games I play this have at least two players who are tied at the end of the game Oh, yeah, if people are really who know what they're doing are playing Properly in fact you guys are really really close I was playing the Apple I was pooping a four player game against the hardest AI it was a four-way perfect tie Like that happens in this game Shockingly often even that you think it's like it's so complex all the shit you're doing all over the place But everyone's doing mostly the same actions because they're all sharing the actions Yeah, and you're drawing from the same decks and you're taking the same exact number of turns So the same number of victory points per turn on average You can get ties even though you have these complex machines being built if everyone's doing a good job But the game is also so tight that like if you have won against skilled players If you have one turn where like you did a suboptimal thing like you're gonna catch up You're done. You're you're out unless everyone else fucks up bad at the same token if you have one mega play like oh my god I somehow managed to build this really amazing development way early next to trade way early and got like 12 victory points Oh my god I was able I was a I traded and sold this good at like this crazy high price and drew a fistful of cards on a turn Where no one else was able to trade anything, you know, and it's just like whoa I guess I'm in charge. I'm in the lead now. Good luck catching up bozos Yep, this game also kind of pushes the envelope in terms of for a tabletop Card game you play a really fast like it and but it it's fast But it also really pushes the limit of the acceptable level of complexity you can have in a game like this It is really surprising how fast it plays considering how complex it is, right? It's like you're getting a pretty you know, it's not super deep You're getting a significant gaming experience in a short amount of time with a minimal investment of setup because it's just Dealing out cards pretty much and counting some chits or whatever, right? And that's why this game has is a staple of that game library, right? Especially because once you break it out you put it on the table you play it once You can sit there and play it like six more times before you put it away and like just keep play over and over and over again It's so quick and the other thing is it starts out This game will start out when you're first playing it as like the meat game Right, you'll warm up with a spot it and then go into a race for the galaxy But once you get good you can use this as a filler game in between your eclipses Right, it's just like because you can play it so fast now your filler game is a serious game It's like whoa, that's pretty I buy because nursery max is kind of done like I play I think I've played it a hundred percent out That's but that's another that takes more setup, right? If you're not doing the digital yeah, but now that there's a good app on Android for race for the galaxy This is my pooping game Mm-hmm I can play an entire fully expanded game of this in one poop like as fast as the nursery max the next time I need a phone game I think I might buy or see wait for it to be on sale or something and I'll make it my pooping game as well But the fact that you can play so many games at the table Let me see how much it is right now on the I kind of kind of mitigates the randomness because yeah There's a lot of randomness in the game's tight But if we sit down at pecs we'll play it five times So the better players gonna win the majority of those games much more likely even if they lose one due to randomness So this game's got a lot going for it. There's a reason it has so much staying power This has been geek nights with rim and Scott special thanks to DJ pretzel for the opening