Players - Weixun, Jason, Evonne, Jonathon, Me (Jerry)
This is the day! So called our 1st boardgame meetup, according to Jonathon. Lol. First of our regular fortnightly gaming session started out at Wei xun's place with a bang! Yeah.... There were initially four of us, and Jon joined us in our second game of 'Race for the Galaxy', making the group a neat number of five. It was a long yet fufiling 8 hrs from 10am to 6pm and we played the following games:
1. Race for the Galaxy
2. Race for the Galaxy
3. Colossal Arena
4. Saint Petersberg
5. Alhambra
6. Race for the Galaxy
Game of the Session
Why so many sessions of Race for the Galaxy (Rftg)? I think it was somewhere between Wei xun's enthusiam
, my high expectations of it, and generally how fast and neat the game really plays out once you got the symbols on the various cards correct.
Pictures of a Starting Hand
Jason, Evonne, Weixun and me played the 1st game. Bascially, it was really a familiarisation try out. I believed the first game took somewhat 45 mins, to an expected 30mins. We were given the preset handcards for each 'faction' of the game and each faction played this way has a certain skew towards certain exciting combos. From my preliminary observations, these are their specialties"
Weixun (Blue, Faction 0)- Old Earth, no preset hand cards, jack of all trades of sort
Jason (Yellow, Faction 1) - Epsilon Eridani, early advantages with blue worlds/Novelty elements
Evonne (Blue, Faction 2) - Alpha Centauri, specialist with brown worlds/Rare elements
Me (Red, Faction 3) - New Sparta, Military faction, skewed towards settling military worlds
Gameplay is divided between playing an action card and allowing your opponents to take stated actions and you receiving a bonus during that action phase. Think puerto rico with pick pinic; role selection and some intelligent guessing. Building and producing is a large part of the game, using cards as a currency and a good for building and trading for VPs respectively. If you dun need that extra card to discard for a high cost development/world card, you can chose 'Consume' to focus on a VP strategy. This is a diluted summery for what the game is about.
Round 1-4
Early game saw a few uncertainies between the players, Weixun went a balanced mix of action selection, getting a few cards here and there and running small combo engines. Nice victory points besides the threathening speed!
Jason was fiddling with some of the cards i think, still sorting out what cards could do and what they actually meant. Learning and struggling with dramtic chaos was a fitting description. Jason discovered building developing cards was fun, but just could not run an efficient combination of fitting cards before mid-game. Evonne missed out on an initial advantage, her starting world card has a good which can be traded for more cards. Lesser cards means lesser building options and lesser paying power for better combo engines. I pushed for military enhanced development/world cards, setting a military engine.
Round 5-8
By this time, Weixun was starting some production and consumption. First Blood! So was Evonne, with her 1st good on her starting world. I scored the third one, and jason subsequently got his 1st vp too. Weixun was clearly churning out his vps via consuming and production, eventually building up to ard 3+ production worlds. Jason had a ard 2 production world too, lesser interactivity than Weixun, Evonne had no problems building additional more production worlds, but was however still figuring out on how the goods should be traded. I was fortunate enough to have a alien technology world ( most exp) after almost paying out my entire hand. Lol. it gave me trading power for more military cards. In fact, i drew alot of 6-cost cards that gave me clear idea of what other cards i should play to achieve these sickening bonuses from these 6-cost cards.
Round 9 onwards
By this time, everyone was frantically producing and consuming, or reacting to them. Seeing how Evonne, Jason and me were throwing a good from its production world to a consuming card was quite comical. Weixun was of coz maintaining his cool throughout, giving clear advice on how some of the trading and comsuming between cards should work. And most of us were also trying to steal chances at building developments/worlds too, as there come with vps in addition to the other fantastic abilities. By this time, my military strength was 6, allowing me to play 6-cost military world for free. I played a 7-cost miltary world in the end, and other players had their fair share of good buildings. The game ended in a >12 cards in a player play-area condition.
Personal Feel
The game clearly rewards creativity towards formulating combos, allowing card-drawing atop producing and consuming for vps. While, the sci-fi theme feels sorta foreign, it is a matching feel to the simultaneous chaoes present in it. Generally, a player can go either balanced strategy or a aggressive 1 sided approach in vp production/consumption or military/effcient development cards. Of coz, i am not speaking enough for RFTG in this 1st game of ours, but i guessed the game's replayability is compounded by the players' ability to second guess what actions other players may play, and working along that thinking to speed up their own strategy.
In the next few games, i was generally focusing on myself instead of second guessing what others might play. In addition, we played with a randomized hand and this really changes the game, players had more freedom in their overall strategy but i felt it could also lead to unlucky draws and the early game could be an effort to encourage card drawing by 'Exploring'. This could in turn, be an advantage for others who had a good draw with a smoother building curve as they do not require choosing 'Exploring' for that extra card.
In conclusion, Race for the Galaxy is a mixture of fun and intelligent thinking. Given its playing time, Weixun's enthusiam
, our hallmark 1st boardgame session game played 3 times, and my growing appreciation of this portable intelligent game. It will see many plays in sessions to come.
Race for the Galaxy BGG Link
This is the day! So called our 1st boardgame meetup, according to Jonathon. Lol. First of our regular fortnightly gaming session started out at Wei xun's place with a bang! Yeah.... There were initially four of us, and Jon joined us in our second game of 'Race for the Galaxy', making the group a neat number of five. It was a long yet fufiling 8 hrs from 10am to 6pm and we played the following games:
1. Race for the Galaxy
2. Race for the Galaxy
3. Colossal Arena
4. Saint Petersberg
5. Alhambra
6. Race for the Galaxy
Game of the Session
Why so many sessions of Race for the Galaxy (Rftg)? I think it was somewhere between Wei xun's enthusiam
, my high expectations of it, and generally how fast and neat the game really plays out once you got the symbols on the various cards correct. Pictures of a Starting Hand
Jason, Evonne, Weixun and me played the 1st game. Bascially, it was really a familiarisation try out. I believed the first game took somewhat 45 mins, to an expected 30mins. We were given the preset handcards for each 'faction' of the game and each faction played this way has a certain skew towards certain exciting combos. From my preliminary observations, these are their specialties"
Weixun (Blue, Faction 0)- Old Earth, no preset hand cards, jack of all trades of sort
Jason (Yellow, Faction 1) - Epsilon Eridani, early advantages with blue worlds/Novelty elements
Evonne (Blue, Faction 2) - Alpha Centauri, specialist with brown worlds/Rare elements
Me (Red, Faction 3) - New Sparta, Military faction, skewed towards settling military worlds
Gameplay is divided between playing an action card and allowing your opponents to take stated actions and you receiving a bonus during that action phase. Think puerto rico with pick pinic; role selection and some intelligent guessing. Building and producing is a large part of the game, using cards as a currency and a good for building and trading for VPs respectively. If you dun need that extra card to discard for a high cost development/world card, you can chose 'Consume' to focus on a VP strategy. This is a diluted summery for what the game is about.
Round 1-4
Early game saw a few uncertainies between the players, Weixun went a balanced mix of action selection, getting a few cards here and there and running small combo engines. Nice victory points besides the threathening speed!
Jason was fiddling with some of the cards i think, still sorting out what cards could do and what they actually meant. Learning and struggling with dramtic chaos was a fitting description. Jason discovered building developing cards was fun, but just could not run an efficient combination of fitting cards before mid-game. Evonne missed out on an initial advantage, her starting world card has a good which can be traded for more cards. Lesser cards means lesser building options and lesser paying power for better combo engines. I pushed for military enhanced development/world cards, setting a military engine. Round 5-8
By this time, Weixun was starting some production and consumption. First Blood! So was Evonne, with her 1st good on her starting world. I scored the third one, and jason subsequently got his 1st vp too. Weixun was clearly churning out his vps via consuming and production, eventually building up to ard 3+ production worlds. Jason had a ard 2 production world too, lesser interactivity than Weixun, Evonne had no problems building additional more production worlds, but was however still figuring out on how the goods should be traded. I was fortunate enough to have a alien technology world ( most exp) after almost paying out my entire hand. Lol. it gave me trading power for more military cards. In fact, i drew alot of 6-cost cards that gave me clear idea of what other cards i should play to achieve these sickening bonuses from these 6-cost cards.
Round 9 onwards
By this time, everyone was frantically producing and consuming, or reacting to them. Seeing how Evonne, Jason and me were throwing a good from its production world to a consuming card was quite comical. Weixun was of coz maintaining his cool throughout, giving clear advice on how some of the trading and comsuming between cards should work. And most of us were also trying to steal chances at building developments/worlds too, as there come with vps in addition to the other fantastic abilities. By this time, my military strength was 6, allowing me to play 6-cost military world for free. I played a 7-cost miltary world in the end, and other players had their fair share of good buildings. The game ended in a >12 cards in a player play-area condition.
Personal Feel
The game clearly rewards creativity towards formulating combos, allowing card-drawing atop producing and consuming for vps. While, the sci-fi theme feels sorta foreign, it is a matching feel to the simultaneous chaoes present in it. Generally, a player can go either balanced strategy or a aggressive 1 sided approach in vp production/consumption or military/effcient development cards. Of coz, i am not speaking enough for RFTG in this 1st game of ours, but i guessed the game's replayability is compounded by the players' ability to second guess what actions other players may play, and working along that thinking to speed up their own strategy.
In the next few games, i was generally focusing on myself instead of second guessing what others might play. In addition, we played with a randomized hand and this really changes the game, players had more freedom in their overall strategy but i felt it could also lead to unlucky draws and the early game could be an effort to encourage card drawing by 'Exploring'. This could in turn, be an advantage for others who had a good draw with a smoother building curve as they do not require choosing 'Exploring' for that extra card.
In conclusion, Race for the Galaxy is a mixture of fun and intelligent thinking. Given its playing time, Weixun's enthusiam
, our hallmark 1st boardgame session game played 3 times, and my growing appreciation of this portable intelligent game. It will see many plays in sessions to come. Race for the Galaxy BGG Link
Last edited by Sweetslut on Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:07 pm; edited 4 times in total
heehee 
