Game Preview: Race for the Galaxy Designer Preview #3

By Tom Lehmann
October 8, 2007

Publisher: Rio Grande Games / Ystari Games
Designer: Tom Lehmann
Artwork: Mirko Suzuki (graphics) & Martin Hoffman and Claus Stephan (illustrations)
Players: 2-4
Ages: 12+
Playing Time: 20-40 minutes
Release Date: October 2007
Price: $34.95

[This is the third of three previews that BGN will run before RftG is published, and it includes a downloadable English rulebook. The long wait is almost over...]

In this final preview before Race for the Galaxy is released (expected release at Essen), I’ll touch on some issues that arose during its development.

Race for the Galaxy’s initial development was extremely smooth, mainly because I reused so many card ideas from my old Duel for the Stars prototype. In one week, I constructed the first deck, tested and revised it, and had a working game which was quite popular with playtesters.

One choice I made was to have a very large card set (over 90 different cards, some with multiple powers), but not to overwhelm new players with lots of “specialized” powers.

Most powers are “parameterized"—that is, variations on a theme. For example, drawing one extra card when you sell a good and drawing two extra cards when you sell a good are two separate powers, but once you’ve learned one of them, learning the other power is trivial. Depending on how you count variations like this, there are about 37 different powers in the Race for the Galaxy base set. For comparison, San Juan has about 20 different powers for its roughly 30 distinct cards.

Within a few weeks, the base card set was fairly stable. Most revisions to base set cards have been to balance them with respect to expansion cards. Two-thirds of the cards in the base set have not changed since that first month.

My initial prototype used simple graphics, with chits and screens to select actions. Enter Wei-Hwa Huang. He really liked the game and developed alternative graphics for it, including giving each player a set of action cards to select their actions and bonuses. Eventually, we merged our graphics together.

After alea decided not to publish Race for the Galaxy, Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande Games expressed interest. He challenged us to develop an icon only version, for ease of translation. Wei-Hwa and I spent a lot of time devising consistent icons and reference sheets, only to find that while experienced players could still play the game, most players—many of whom had been playing the game ten times a week for over a year—now didn’t want to play any more and new players found the game too hard to learn.

Jay, however, really wanted lots of space on the cards for artwork, so we ended up dividing the powers into two groups: standard powers with card icons and no text which are briefly described on the reference sheet; and special powers, which have brief “hint text” on the bottom of their cards overlaid on the artwork (with all powers having a full explanation in the rules). This resulted in roughly half of the cards in the base set having no text at all (other than their titles). We tested this version with both new and experienced players and found it worked quite well, increasing the learning curve for new players by just a bit in exchange for more room for artwork.

One year into the project, the game was still so popular with playtesters that I devised an expansion, looking to provide enough cards for a fifth player, to introduce additional variety with new start worlds, and to flesh out some strategies which could be achieved in the base set only if a player got exactly the right cards.

This expansion was well-received. Several months later, I presented it to Jay and he gave me some feedback from his own testing. To accommodate this, and to further flesh out the game, a second expansion came into being.

Why not combine these expansions into the base game? For several reasons, even ignoring commercial and art considerations—and getting all the artwork finished was already delaying the base game’s publication!

First, each expansion adds a few cards that dramatically alter the “landscape” of the game, forcing players to rethink and adapt their play styles. I fully expect to hear that one card in the first expansion “breaks” the game, as I heard it from my testers until they adapted, developing a more flexible play style, at which point their complaints ceased. Combining these cards into the base game, and thereby forcing players to develop a very flexible play style right from the start, would be, in my opinion, a mistake.

Second, some powers work best for experienced players who already know the card set. For example, the base Explore action is draw two cards, keep one of them. Now, consider this power: Mix the cards drawn during Explore with your hand before discarding. With this, you don’t have to discard any useful cards drawn during Explore; instead, you can discard a card from your hand that doesn’t fit with your plan. We observed that while new players can pick among just two alternatives (the regular Explore action) without much difficulty, picking which one card to discard from their entire hand—when they don’t know the card mix—was both time consuming and a bit frustrating. By putting this power in the second expansion, however, experienced players can make use of it without slowing down the game.

Third, while variety, potential synergies, and possible strategies go up as new cards are added, the streakiness in which cards each player sees also increases. Consider the game Nuclear War. The base game, either alone or with just one expansion, works quite well. But if you combine all the Nuclear War expansions together, the streakiness in the cards that a given player draws really rises. Often, a player will have a hand of all warheads, with no missiles to launch them (or the reverse). This pitfall results from increasing the deck size, even while maintaining relative proportions, in games that draw from a central deck.

Many of the Race expansion cards are designed to work for several different strategies, to offset this increased streakiness. Despite this, the overall streakiness does increase when playing with both expansions. This both puts a cap on how many more expansions could be published without breaking the game and forces players to do more “chaos management” by being more flexible and adaptable depending on which cards they draw. Acquiring this play skill is easier for experienced players.

Despite all these reasons, based on playtesting, I believe most players will prefer to play with both expansions. That’s not to say that the base game is incomplete—after all, it existed and was quite popular with several playtest groups that played it regularly for over a year before any expansion existed! However, for the above reasons, I think that publishing Race for the Galaxy as a base game, followed by two expansions, is best for overall learning and enjoyment.

Each expansion includes more than just new play and action cards. In the first expansion are some blank cards, so players can invent their own cards, plus a contest entry card for players to send their best card idea to Rio Grande Games. We’ve left two slots open in the second expansion, hoping to get a really neat card idea or two from our players.

One advantage of having the expansions already finished is that we could highlight terms (such as Imperium or Uplift) in the base set that have play effects in the expansion sets. Another is that we’ve been able to commission all the artwork as one long project, gaining artistic continuity. A third is that I could revisit the base game and rebalance it in light of the expansions, tweaking a few cards up in power relative to those that are more synergistic with the expansion cards. This is a luxury that few designers get!

Along the way, in the almost five years since Richard Borg and I had our initial Puerto Rico card game idea over breakfast, I’ve come to appreciate that the mechanic of paying for some cards by discarding others offers some of the variety and deck design possibilities of collectable card games in a non-collectible package. Players are effectively designing their “decks” as they play, by what they discard in payments and during exploration.

It’s been exciting to see the very positive feedback that Race for the Galaxy has received from playtesters, and I hope that the final product is as well received. I do worry a bit about the game getting over-hyped. Some descriptions I’ve seen from non-playtesters on the web seem to be turning the game into something other than it is!

I’d like to thank Rob Watkins, Richard Borg, Andreas Seyfarth, Stefan Brück, Mirko Mazuki, Martin Hoffman, Claus Stephan, and, especially, both Wei-Hwa Huang and Jay Tummelson for helping making Race for the Galaxy a reality.

Enjoy!

(And now, let’s find out what captions Eric has placed on this final batch of sample artwork!)

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	“I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
	In a world gone mad, when the only beings left alive are the miserable scum of the solar system known as pirates, then all they can do is steal from each other for a change. Let’s see how much they like it then, when the shoe’s stolen from the other foot...
	“Is that you, Ripley?”
	Exprès universel—ne pas partir le système solaire sans lui.
	Why would a game set in space include a card for French soup? Oh, wait, never mind...
	The back of an action card? Are you serious, Tom? I’m supposed to come up with something funny for this?! How about an alien picking its nose or a spaceship getting split in two by an unexpectedly sharp wire stretched at neck height across the spaceport entrance? Heck, even an exploding gas cloud would be easier than this. Forget it—I’m outta here...

---

Comments:

You must register with BGN in order to comment. Registration is free, but if you appreciate the news, previews, reviews and other material posted on Boardgame News, please consider becoming a member to keep the info flowing to your screen!

Interesting background on the game, thanks for that Tom!! Posted by Phil Schwarzmann on Oct 8, 2007 at 07:20 AM | #

I’ve several times tried to download the rules file but have each time received the message “The file is damaged and cannot be repaired” Do other folk get this same message or is it just me!!! - Derek Posted by Derek Carver on Oct 8, 2007 at 08:40 AM | #

It’s just you. Posted by Robert Ramirez on Oct 8, 2007 at 08:49 AM | #

Derek, I just downloaded the rules again from the BGN site and it worked fine. The file is pretty big, so perhaps there are download limits on your end? I’m not sure what else to suggest… Posted by W. Eric Martin on Oct 8, 2007 at 08:51 AM | #

Thanks, Tom.  Very interesting reading, and good luck at Essen! Posted by Jeffrey D Myers on Oct 8, 2007 at 10:02 AM | #

It’s just you. Posted by Robert Ramirez on 10/08 at 08:49 AM Hmmmm. Worrying that.  It’s clearly time I upgraded to a PC that runs on electricity! - Derek Posted by Derek Carver on Oct 8, 2007 at 10:17 AM | #

I am very excited about this game.  I really enjoy San Juan and enjoy CCGs(but hate the collectible aspect).  The idea of simultaneously choosing actions and the diversity of the cards make for an incredible idea for a game and should provide incredible replay and make me want to play this game a lot.  I love the theme.  I love games that have an economic/victory point type building engine.  I love learning them and trying to figure out the different ways you can mix things to get to your goal. The one thing I am a little concerned about is the icons.  I am hoping the icons are better then and easier to learn then the icons he used in Phoenicia(which is a great game).  Also hoping the game does really well so we see the expansions. Posted by Raymond J. Dennis Jr. on Oct 8, 2007 at 02:56 PM | #

For some reason they’ve offered 300 dpi hires pdf rules. Not a standard procedure for sure. If they’d create 100 dpi standard pdf it would be 2-3 mb (estimated from the ammount of pictures in rules). Posted by Filip Murmak on Oct 8, 2007 at 08:30 PM | #

Pending the success of the base game, what is the expected release timeline of the expansions? Posted by Matt Fullenwider on Oct 8, 2007 at 08:56 PM | #

< Back Home