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Ok! Power is restored. Not our heating, though. That unit seems to have packed it in with the power outage. I am ready to take it out on the unsuspecting. And on that note, I have everyone's orders.

Ryan: Phase III - Settle
Laga: Phase III - Settle
omnis: Phase IV (x2) - Consume (double VPs)
Connie Neil: Phase III - Settle
chrismg: Phase III - Settle

Very interesting, this. I have many COs from players, the things they would do if only someone picked Phase II. But everyone went for Phase III for preference. We therefore have no Phase II!

Furthermore, Laga chose Phase III, and she will be playing something. That guarantees that this will be the final round. So everyone had best bring out their best play. Here it is:

Ryan plays Rebel Stronghold for 7 cards. This is the highest-defence and most valuable card in the game, with 9 defence and worth 9 VPs. Ryan can play it as non-military with Rebel Cantina, and gets -2 cost from Rebel Pact. He then draws 1 card for choosing this phase.

Laga plays New Survivalists. This is also a military world, but only 1 defence. She can play it for free with Contact Specialist. It's a Blue production world, and can consume 1 good for 1 card. It's a pretty cheap card, but it is also Laga's fourth production world. She now has enough of them to claim the "Most Production Worlds" goal, for 5 VPs. She then draws 1 card for choosing this phase.

omnis is the only one who didn't choose this phase, but he still has something to play. He plays Gem World for 2 discards. This is a Blue production world that gives 1 card draw when you produce on it. It adds 2 points to the value of Free Trade Association.

Connie plays Aquatic Uplift Race. This is a 2-defence military world. Connie normally has 1 strength, but gets +2 against Green worlds from Abandoned Alien Uplift Camp. As well as its own value, this Green Uplift card (with a Chromosome symbol) adds 2 points to Galactic Genome Project, and 3 to Uplift Code. She then draws 1 card for choosing this phase.

chrismg plays Alien Monolith. This is the second-most valuable card I the game, and has the second-highest defence (at 8 apiece). He has military strength 9 (10 with this card). It's also a Yellow windfall world. He then draws 1 card for choosing this phase.

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The final phase is Phase IV (Consume). Everyone is loaded up with goods. Let's see what they can get for them.

Ryan has 2 goods, but he has no Consume powers that he can use on them. He does have a power on Merchant World that lets him discard up to 2 cards from his hand for 2 VPs, which he does.

Laga has 4 goods and a bunch of powers. Together, she consumes her goods for 3 VPs and 5 cards.

omnis chose this phase, and opts for double points. He consumes 3 Blue goods on Free Trade Association for 6 VPs and 3 cards.

Connie has 3 goods. She consumes the 2 Green goods on Galactic Genome Project for 3 VPs, and the Brown good on Outlaw World for 1 VP and 1 card.

Finally, chrismg has 3 goods but only 2 Consume powers for them. He consumes 2 goods for 1 VP and 2 cards. (There's now 1 card left in the deck.)

Laga now has 12 cards in her layout. The game ends! We'll break out the points and find the winner next.

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As usual, we'll go through the points by category.

Consumption VPs
Ryan: 11
Laga: 7
omnis: 14
Connie Neil: 8
chrismg: 3

omnis leads in this category, having twice x2 consumed for 6 VPs. Interestingly, Ryan is in second place, despite having precisely zero Consume powers for goods. He earned all his 11 VPs from the Merchant World power, by discarding cards from his hand.

Layout Value
Ryan: 21
Laga: 13
omnis: 12
Connie Neil: 13
chrismg: 32

chrismg has a clear lead here, the product of a military strategy. Just three cards in his layout accounted for a total of 21 points. Ryan also clocked a decent score here, and also from military worlds. We'll have more to say about military strategies in the wrap-up.

6-Cost Developments
Ryan: 0
Laga: 15
omnis: 7
Connie Neil: 21
chrismg: 8

Here the big score goes to Connie whose two 6-cost developments meshed particularly well with her layout. She had four green worlds, and five Uplift cards, making Galactic Genome Project and especially Uplift Code very valuable. Indeed, such 6-cost developments as were played were generally good picks. Laga had New Economy and Rebel Alliance, omnis got Free Trade Association and chrismg had Galactic Imperium, none of them worth below 7 VPs. Ryan, alas, had none.

Goals
Ryan: 5
Laga: 14
omnis: 0
Connie Neil: 0
chrismg: 0

No results were more lopsided than this. While Ryan snagged the "Most Rebel Worlds" goal, Laga grabbed all the remaining ones that were claimed. She had three of the four "First" goals by the end of Round 5. (She also had 8 cards in her layout by then, at least 2 more than any other player.)

So who wins out? chrismg's layout, Connie's variable plays or Laga's high achieving? Next post.

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And now for the closing summary.

Ryan
Victory Points: 11
Layout Value: 21
6-Cost Developments: 0
Goals: 5
Total: 37

Laga
Victory Points: 7
Layout Value: 13
6-Cost Developments: 15
Goals: 14
Total: 49

omnis
Victory Points: 14
Layout Value: 12
6-Cost Developments: 7
Goals: 0
Total: 33

Connie Neil
Victory Points: 8
Layout Value: 13
6-Cost Developments: 21
Goals: 0
Total: 42

chrismg
Victory Points: 3
Layout Value: 32
6-Cost Developments: 8
Goals: 0
Total: 43

VP Pool: 20

She fell short last game by just 1 point, but now she's claimed her first victory.

Laga wins!

chrismg claimes second place over Connie by just 1 point. Ryan's single goal makes the difference for him to claim fourth place over omnis.

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Woot!

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wow what a game! I thought chris or Connie was the winner for sure! I think luck of the draw had a lot to do with it. Also, if it wasn't for Chris's Hidden Fortress I would not have had time to play my last Production World.

Very interesting.

Thanks again for being the best GM in the galaxy, billytea.

So who wins out? chrismg's layout, Connie's variable plays or Laga's high achieving? Next post.

Congratulations Laga! Good job.

Funny how Ryan and I were twins for the first half of the game, but huge score differences.

Thanks again to our amazing GM, BillyTea!

Of possible interest to folks: Geek and Sundry is hosting a Pathfinder one-shot tonight (at 7pm board time) on their Twitch channel with Phil Lamarr and Ashly Burch among the players.

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Congratulations Laga! A fine victory. This was a victory of focus, with the 14 points she claimed from goals more than accounting for her lead over Connie and chrismg (both of whom racked up impressive scores of their own).

I have two observations about the flow of the game this time around. First is the prevalence of military strategies this game. At game start, all players had a choice between a military-themed starting world and a non-military one. Four out of the five chose the military world. The one exception, Laga, still played six military worlds, equal with the 10-strength chrismg. (Everyone managed at least two.) With that said, there's more than one way to use the military, as we saw in this game.

• chrismg took the obvious route of building enough strength to take on anything.

• Connie never built more than a few points of military strength, even including specialist strength (she got +2 against Green worlds). But that let her play three cheap windfall worlds for good card flow. (And she converted it to points too, courtesy of a couple of well-fitting 6-cost developments.) Even 2 or 3 strength can pay dividends.

• Then there's Ryan and especially Laga. Laga had -1 strength, but no one played more military worlds than she did. (Ryan played a respectable four worlds too.) Their avenue was a power that let them play military as non-military, and in both cases, at a discount. Laga didn't play expensive stuff - aside from her 6-cost developments, she never paid more than 2 discards for anything. (Ryan, on the other hand, played the biggest world in the game, Rebel Stronghold, for 7 discards.) You don't see this power worked into a strategy so often, but it can be effective. The second expansion helps here, with rebel Cantina, Rebel Pact and Rebel Alliance, all of which either provide the ability or make it cheaper (or both).

(I left out omnis. He started with New Sparta for +2 strength, but struggled to increase it. Ultimately he turned instead to Blue world consumption. Worth noting that while starting worlds provide a bonus for one direction or another, they don't close off other avenues, if that's what the cards support.)

In summary, you can make military strength a dominant strategy; or build just enough for cheaper worlds and windfall card flow; or you can even run a low-intensity or high-intensity campaign of conquest with a military-to-non-military power and a source of card flow.

The other comment concerns the name of the game, i.e. Race for the Galaxy. The biggest difference between Laga's game and the others, or at the other end, Explore Bros omnis and Ryan, was their tempo out of the gate. Recall that Laga favoured cheap cards. By Round 3, she'd played two more cards than anyone else, a clear lead. Meanwhile, there's a reason Ryan and omnis kept exploring. They both had some nice cards at game start - too nice. What they didn't have were cheap cards that could get them started. By Round 7, they each had only five cards in their respective layouts, at least three fewer than anyone else.

You don't have to gun it at the start to win. It worked for Laga, but both Connie and chrismg found a middle ground that still let them pile on points in the later game. And Laga's strategy saw her load up on low-value cards. At game end, she was at the low end on consumption points and layout value. Why did her strategy work here?

That brings us back to goals. The "First" goals all rely on beating the other players to fulfilling some criterion. Laga's plays were cheap but not haphazard. The goals were the bonus points that made the cheap plays worthwhile.

How about at the other end - what could Ryan and omnis have done differently? Unfortunately, sometimes the cards just be that way. There may not be much to be done about it but continue to explore and hope you get the first stepping stone. (Cheap windfall worlds often make a good starting point, thanks to the card flow from trading. But you still need to pick one up first.)

The third expansion actually has a mechanism (continued...)

( continues...) to help with that. It lets every player, once a game, search for a card matching a certain criterion (there are nine such criteria that the player can choose from). Two of those criteria are either a cheap non-military windfall world, or a cheap military windfall world. (One can also seek a development that gives +1 or +2 military.) But for the moment, every so often a player can find themselves just at the mercy of their draw.

In summary: outpacing the other players can be a viable strategy, especially if you can ensure bonus points from goals or 6-cost developments or such like. Falling too far behind the other players is likely to hurt. It's something to avoid, but that's sometimes easier said than done.