Woot! I kept staring at Galactic Federation and my other cards that gave minuses for Developments and going "Does that really mean a 6-Cost only costs 2?" I kept waiting for billy to say "Um, no, you're counting that wrong."

For each player, Round 14's points account for 30-40% of their total score.

I forgot about the 2x consume. Good job Laga! That definitely kept me out of second. Good game everyone!

And of course, thanks to our amazing GM.

RftG

I had two thoughts in particular concerning this game. Thought the first was on the importance of building up a good value-generating engine. Scoring in Race for the Galaxy tends to be back-loaded; in this game, for instance, every player in the game scored more ponts in the last three rounds than they did in the first eleven. Value-generating engines come in more than one flavour. Production and consumption capacity is one. So is high military strength. Connie effectively built one around Galactic Federation. (Typically, even before the value-generating, one needs a card-generating engine. The easiest, but not necessarily the fastest, way to generate cards early on is by trading.) The faster you can turn card flow into point flow, the better off you'll be.

Thought the second occurred to me when I saw that for the final round, we were going to run through all the phases that give scoring opportunities - Phases II (Develop), III (Settle) and IV (Consume). Each of these phases got picked by one player, but got used profitably by everybody. For instance, Connie chose Phase III (Settle). Her play improved her score by 3 VPs. But Laga got to piggy-back off it, and her play raised her score by 5 VPs.

One of the key design features of Race for the Galaxy is that the phase you choose may be exploited by every player. Oftentimes you don't necessarily want to choose the phase that's best for you; instead you may want the phase that's best for you, relative to other players. Consuming for 8 VPs is a worthwhile idea; but if it lets your competition consume for 10 VPs, it may not be your best choice.

Of course, you can't necessarily tell what someone else will do with your choice of phase. But you can often get some idea. If they have lots of powers affecting a given phase, they're more likely to benefit. (For instance, omnis chose Phase II in the last round. Connie's powers gave her -3 cost, bonus points for any development and a card draw after playing one. She added 10 points to her score by piggy-backing off omnis' choice.)

(Conversely, you can also try to take more advantage of others' choices, by spreading powers around a number of phases. For instance, after playing Interstellar bank, Laga got a card draw from it four turns in a row, without ever choosing Phase II herself.)

So in summary: it's ok not to be earning too much early on, if you're building something that will earn good points later on. When choosing your phase, consider how easily the other players can piggy-back off your choice. Will it help them more than you? And finally, if you get some powers spread over multiple phases, you can get more benefit from the phases chosen by other players.

Thanks again billytea for being an excellent GM. Maybe next time I will need even less coaching!

This senile old lady has finally figured out that what she has is called Tabletop Simulator and if you had it too we could play boardgames in real time through our computers.

here's Tabletop Simulator.

OOh! Cool. I'm game (pun intended). And hey, it's on sale!

Could make gaming a bit easier, even here in LA. I remember when we played Serenity, and getting us all together in LA was an ordeal.

Seems the hardest part will be scheduling a time when BT can join us.

Downloading it now. My steam name is same as in here, omnis_audis.

OK, taking initiative here. Created a Buffistas group in Steam, It's not public, to help keep riff raff out. Add me as a friend, and I'll invite to the group. My profile has a pic of me in a tux trying to be James Bond.

I'm new to Steam, so be patient as I figure stuff out.

Dang. That steam app heats up my macbook air something fierce.

Dang. That steam app heats up my macbook air something fierce.

That's what you get for using Steam-powered gaming platforms.

Sooo... how would this Tabletop Simulator thing work? What can you play on it?