Race for the Galaxy
My recent obsession has been Race for the Galaxy. It's a "board/card" game that has a very interesting feel. It's a sort of Magic: The Gathering meets Puerto Rico meets Star Trek meets Settlers of Catan. The game is very "low maintenance" in terms of pieces. It cleverly utilizes cards as resource, markers and playing cards. Basically, each player has a hand of cards and each card has a cost associated with it. You pay this cost by discarding cards. Cards on the table can produce goods which are also represented by cards (face down). This makes the game ideal for playing in a limited environment. There are "victory point" chips but these could be tracked by hand just as easily using pen and paper (in fact, this might even be a better solution).
The game is one of the few games I've ever played that plays just as well for 2 players and 5 players. The game scales really well in this regard. The game has numerous, interwoven paths to victory and choosing correctly amongst those available to you is one of the biggest decisions you'll face in a game.
Some of the criticisms that I've heard are also strengths in my opinion.
1) The game doesn't last long enough. My wife feels like she just gets her strategy on the board, gets one good turn and then the game is over. I like that the game is quick personally. I like that it forces you to pursue your strategy in a minimalist way. However, if this issue really bothers you, the levers are there in the game to make it longer. By the rules, the game ends when someone has 12 cards on the table or when the players have collectively accumulated 12 * # players in VPs. If you want a longer game, play to 13 or 14 and it should be just fine.
2) You can't play all the cards you want. Because cards are the chief mechanic but also the chief resource, it is not uncommon to be forced into a situation where you have to decide whether or not you use Card A to pay for Card B, use Card B to pay for Card A, or wait a turn and hope you draw enough to do both. Again, I think forcing the players to make hard choices is enormously skill testing. In a game that has a high degree of luck involved (by the very nature of the deck mechanic) having skill testing things like this really helps to even the game out.
3a) Steep learning curve. This is a bit of a myth I think. It took me about 1 game to get used to the symbology on the cards. It is very "dense" but that density allows them to pack a surprising degree of complexity into a small space and still have it be understandable at a glance.
3b) Steep learning curve part 2. There are a lot of moving parts in this game and a lot of viable strategies. Admittedly, it takes a couple play throughs to learn what the cards do but you'll eventually have a good working knowledge of the deck and can make decisions about what you MIGHT find if you draw. There's also a statistical breakdown in the rulebook that can prove helpful.
4) The game isn't interactive / It's multiplayer solitaire. The game does feel like this at first. The first time you play it takes a lot of brain space to figure out what your board is doing. The second time you play, you can kind of keep track of your opponent too. The third time you play is when you start to realize that your choices impact your opponent and vice versa. Because you're blindly choosing actions each turn, anytime you can accurately guess what your opponent is going to do you have an advantage. There are numerous occasions in the game where you can save yourself some time / cards / resources by choosing a different action that will benefit you more because you KNOW your opponent is going to do something else. It's yet another way to test skill.
If anyone else has played this game, let me know. I'd like to get your thoughts. If you haven't tried it, I suggest checking it out. It's relatively cheap, fairly quick (20-30 minutes per game) and very deep strategically without being overwhelming for people who aren't "war gamers".
