RftG

Final phase, Phase III (Settle), and everyone has a plan.

omnis plays Deserted Alien Outpost for 4 discards. This is a Yellow windfall world, which means omnis now has every production colour represented in his layout. This boosts the value of Galactic Exchange by 4 points; it also adds 1 to the value of Galactic Survey: SETI.

chrismg plays Rebel Homeworld for 5 discards. He uses the power on Rebel Cantina to play it as non-military, and gets -2 cost from Replicant Robots. Nothing else to the story, the card's jsut worth a lot of points. He then draws 2 cards - 1 for choosing this Phase, and 1 from Terraforming Robots.

Connie discards Imperium Cloaking Technology from her layout to play Old Earth. This gives her +1 card when trading, and can consume up to 2 goods for 1 VP each.

Ryan plays Distant World for 4 discards. This is a Green production world. It also gives +3 cards when trading a Blue good.

-t has Improved Logistics, which means she can play 2 worlds if she can afford them. And she can, with 7 strength. She plays Rebel Outpost (5 defence) and Rebel Underground (3 defence). The Outpost adds +1 strength, while the Underground gives 1 card draw in Phase V. She then draws 2 cards from Terraforming Robots, 1 per world.

Laga plays Alien Data Repository for 7 discards. This is a Yellow production world. It also has an Explore power that lets her take her draw into her hand before discarding. She already had that power, from Smuggling World; but the important point is that this gives her 3 Explore powers, equal with Ryan and -t. She also grabs 3 VPs from the Research Leader goal. Finally, she draws 1 card for choosing this phase.

And with that, the game ends! Who has taken bragging rights? The final summary and wrap-up to follow.

RftG

Let's break this out into the points categories.

Consumption VPs
omnis: 9
chrismg: 2
Connie Neil: 9
Ryan: 3
-t: 0
Laga: 6

omnis took an early lead on this, enough to claim a goal. But Connie and Laga both double-consumed to get in the running. -t has 0 consumption points, not uncommon for an Evil Empire strategy.

Layout Value
omnis: 19
chrismg: 24
Connie Neil: 17
Ryan: 12
-t: 27
Laga: 16

Evil Empires typically make up for the lack of consumption by playing valuable worlds, and so we see here. -t leads on 27. chrismg, who also got into the military worlds via his starting world of Rebel Cantina, was close behind on 24. Ryan struggled to find the good stuff; none of his cards was worth more than 2 points. Well, except for his status development, as we see in the next category.

Status Developments
omnis: 19
chrismg: 0
Connie Neil: 0
Ryan: 6
-t: 8
Laga: 7

These are the variable-value developments. chrismg and Connie were let down by this category, finding no such cards worth playing. Ryan, -t and Laga each played one. Ryan got Trade League, which rewards you for Trade powers (of which he had quite a few). -t pulled New Galactic Order, which is worth your military strength. Her strength topped out at 8, so that's a nice haul. Laga had New Economy, which rewards Consume powers.

But the runaway leader in this category was omnis, who played two such cards: Galactic Exchange and Galactic Survey: SETI. He managed to hit every production colour, which lifted Galactic Exchange to 10 points, while the SETI gie him 9 points, mostly from the number of worlds he had. (In his hand, by the way, was Galactic Federation, which gives you points for developments. If he could've played it, that would've added another 10 points to his score.)

Goals
omnis: 6
chrismg: 3
Connie Neil: 0
Ryan: 3
-t: 6
Laga: 14

Finally we hit the goals, and no one came close to touching Laga here. She won two of the "first" goals and shared in both of the "most" goals. This is largely because she developed her early layout much faster than the others. Of her first 6 plays, only one of them cost her more than 1 discard.

That's the breakdown. Will first place go to -t's layout, omnis' status plays or Laga's goal haul? Next post has the answer.

RftG

Closing Summary

omnis
Victory Points: 9
Layout Value: 19
6-Cost Developments: 19
Goals: 6
Total: 53

chrismg
Victory Points: 2
Layout Value: 24
6-Cost Developments: 0
Goals: 3
Total: 29

Connie Neil
Victory Points: 9
Layout Value: 17
6-Cost Developments: 0
Goals: 0
Total: 26

Ryan
Victory Points: 3
Layout Value: 12
6-Cost Developments: 6
Goals: 3
Total: 24

-t
Victory Points: 0
Layout Value: 27
6-Cost Developments: 8
Goals: 6
Total: 41

Laga
Victory Points: 6
Layout Value: 16
6-Cost Developments: 7
Goals: 14
Total: 43

VP Pool: 43

omnis wins!

In the final round, omnis added a whopping 16 points to his score to take a comfortable lead. Laga had led for most of the game thanks to the goals she claimed, and held on to second against a late surge by -t. Last place, alas, was taken by Ryan, who struggled all game to get decent card flow. My son!

Woohoo! I still have no idea what I was doing (other than Evil Empiring in a general way) but that was fun!

Yay! A very good game.

Wow what a surge at the end. Good game everyone. Thanks for a good, final game!

Thanks,as always, to BT for running a great game, and invaluable advice.

Congratulations to omnis, and also to Laga and -t who played some fine games. Commiserations to our other players. Often it seems that the difference between doing well and doing poorly is finding that one card that'll get your card flow rolling.

So how did omnis do it? He had a little bit of everything going on - decent layout, some consumption points, his fair share of goal points. But what put him over the top was playing two status developments. That's partly luck, in picking up some good ones, and partly card flow, in being able to pay for them. By game end, mnis got bonus card draws from Developing, Consuming, Trading and Producing.

I'm going to take that as a lead-in to discuss having six players. Actually first let's ask: how did people find the game with six players? Much different, or basically the same experience? I'd suggest the main change is that any given phase is more likely to get picked in a given round. In theory; most rounds we still only had three phases, and we never had all five in a single round. But nonetheless, if more players leads to more phases per round on average, then it becomes a strong benefit to pick up bonus cards in multiple phases. It becomes more likely you'll cash in on other players' choices.

Laga based her strategy on picking up goals. Is that viable? Well, she led for most of the game, and if Galactic Survey: SETI had wound up in her hands instead of omnis' it would've been a different story. But it's risky with that many players. Usually, one would struggle to take so many goals against so much competition. As a general principle, going for goals is worthwhile as long as it doesn't impair your layout.

For the next game, I'm thinking of introducing a new element, and would like to see what people think. It's a search card, that each player can make use of just once per game. It allows a player some measure of control over the vagaries of the card draw. Here's how it works.

• A player who wishes to make use of this card in a round plays it instead of their action card.
• Before we get into the phases, the player conducts a search:
• They pick a category of card from a list of eight. They then turn up cards from the deck, one by one, until they find a card that matches the category they're looking for.
• They then have a choice: keep that card, or keep looking. If they choose the former, they take the card into their hand and we go to the phases as usual. If they choose the latter, then they keep turning over cards one by one, until they find a second match. They must then take that second match.

The categories are designed to remedy times when the cards are against you. For example:

• Want to run an Evil Empire, but can't get your military going? Look for a development that adds +1 or +2 strength.
• It's early in the game, but you just can't get your card flow started? Look for a cheap (1 or 2) windfall world. You can specify either military or non-military, whichever suits you better.
• It's later in the game, and you're looking to pile on the points. Evil Empire? Look for a military world with at least 5 defence. Want to go produce-and-consume, but don't have the Consume powers? Look for a world that lets you consume 2 or more goods at once. Or for pretty much anyone who wants some high value action: go looking for a status development (6 cost, variable value).

That's the basic idea. If you do fine finding the cards you need on your own, that's fine. You don't have to play it, and it won't change your game. But if the deck's against you, it'll give you a way to take control over it.

How does that sound? Should we give it a try?

Sounds like a plan.

Ok, let's get planning underway for game 11 of Race for the Galaxy. I suggeted we allow each player a one-time use of a Search card, and in the words of Dr Zoidberg, I'm not hearing a no, so we'll go ahead with that. Aside from that, we'll use the same set-up as we had this game. Sign up here or send me an email. Who's interested?