Imagine if you will a card game that seems to capture on at least a small scale the “4x” spirit of games like MASTER OF ORION or GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS. Sounds pretty cool so far, doesn’t it? Now, what if that card game had some really cool sci-fi artwork and played in less than hour and featured some neat, thematic mechanics? Online hype is high, reviews are outstanding, and many are heralding the arrival of a new classic. It’s a done deal at this point right? But before you rush out to buy it, what if I told you that in this game you never have any opportunity to affect, interfere with, or otherwise interact with other players beyond communally selecting which action phases would take place each round? Suddenly, it all comes crashing back down to earth and RACE FOR THE GALAXY ends up as a could-have-been-great miss that lacks any sense of drama due to the solitary, isolated nature of its gameplay.

Designer Tom Lehmann has been around for awhile and some of us veterans might remember his pre-Eurogame explosion work with TimJim games (THRONEWORLD, FAST FOOD EMPIRE). Others might remember his completely worthless yet wildly popular YAHTZEE variant TO COURT THE KING from a couple of years back. RACE FOR THE GALAXY was in its earliest incarnations Mr. Lehmann’s attempt at designing a PUERTO RICO card game and as such the game we’re discussing bears a very striking resemblance to it as well as its own official card game iteration, SAN JUAN. If you’ve played either it or PUERTO RICO, then you’re not really going to be surprised by anything on display here other than a few tweaks to the role selection process and a complete abandonment of even the most rudimentary player interaction models featured in its predecessors. The theme this time is space exploration and I definitely prefer aliens and robots over slaves and corn so by and large it actually works a little better. The goal of the game is to generate victory points by settling new worlds, developing technologies, and the production and consumption of goods. Just like its predecessors, it also features bonus buildings which encourage long term strategies by rewarding players for accomplishing various goals such as settling certain types of planets.

Players select roles each round and everyone gets to perform that role’s action but the selector gets a special bonus. The key difference between this game and PUERTO RICO /SAN JUAN is that each player has their own stack of role cards—meaning there’s no possibility of another player taking the role you wanted, certainly a blessing for the anal retentive control freaks. So if nobody picks ‘Settle’, don’t plan on setting up shop on that new world you just drew this turn. Planets and technology developments might impart certain bonuses to the player in some phases, for example, a world might let you look at an extra card during the Explore phase or give you a discount during the Develop phase. Just like in SAN JUAN, a player’s hand of cards is essentially their money—most settlements and developments are paid for by simply discarding cards.

Surprisingly, I think this all works pretty well if only because it worked in PUERTO RICO and SAN JUAN to begin with. Make no mistake, this isn’t an innovative or challenging design and those inclined to enjoy those games will likely love this one just as much. Sadly, the game could have been something really special if Mr. Lehmann had married this economic model to a game system where the larger, more interesting ideas, such as diplomacy and conflict, of games like the aforementioned MASTER OF ORION were realized then RACE FOR THE GALAXY could have made what is a dry, very mechanical system come alive.

Sure, there are cards like Space Marines and various hostile planets that give you military strength which can be used to subdue planets in lieu of settling them the nice way, but there’s no opportunity to disrupt your opponent’s novelty goods-powered economic gravy train by invading his Vacation Planet. You just sit and watch while other players add planets and developments to their collection. Or you don’t. In every game I’ve played, I haven’t paid a lick of attention to what anybody has out apart from the one-of-a-kind bonus cards. There’s no reason to even care, except to gauge if it’s worth ending the game by exhausting the victory point supply or adding your twelfth planet or development to your “tableau”. In fact, almost everything in the game can be done simultaneously without concern for what other players are doing. There’s not even an auction to at least make the players feel like they’re playing the same game.

RACE FOR THE GALAXY takes the idea of “multiplayer solitaire”, a criticism levied at many economic Eurogames to an all-new level. Many Euro designs offer fake player interaction through a variety of mechanics such as having only three desirable items in a four player game or card drafting, but RACE FOR THE GALAXY’s only feint is that an unselected role goes unplayed. There’s no opportunity to bluff, fake out, or otherwise mislead other players so it’s not like you can willfully screw someone, and since they have the same cards anyway, any player can play the phase they need without interference. If you want to sit and play a solitaire game of this nature, I’d definitely recommend a computer game or you could simply throw out three-quarters of the RACE FOR THE GALAXY deck, choose a phase and randomly select one for each phantom player and work through the game by yourself for high score; the effect would be practically the same. The impression overall is of playing MASTER OF ORION but never encountering another race.

The fundamental problem with RACE FOR THE GALAXY is the same one that plagues PUERTO RICO and SAN JUAN: they’re excruciatingly mechanical games that reward players who are able to best exploit their systems. I do think the design of all three games is interesting, and in fact quite good, but I don’t think they’re any fun at all beyond a few plays. There really needs to be some sense of drama, unpredictability, and player interaction to really shake things up and impart a sense of excitement that these games can’t muster except in the hearts and minds of middle managers, accountants, and flowchart gurus.

Questions or comments for Michael? Send them along to gameshark.feedback@yahoo.com .

Previous Cracked LCDs: