Race for the Galaxy: Alien Artifacts

[Frouvne]

Rio Grande Games har nu annonceret den næste udvidelse til Race for the Galaxy: Race for the Galaxy: Alien Artifacts.

http://www.riograndegames.com/games.html?id=411

Endnu findes der kun en ganske kort beskrivelse på Rio Grande Games' hjemmeside:

This new expansion for Race for the Galaxy will take the basic game in a new direction. It will not be compatible with any of the first three expansions.

Tom Lehman har dog tidligere afsløret en smule om udvidelsen på BGG:

Sure, I can discuss the next Race arc a bit more now. It is a single expansion, called Alien Artifacts, consisting of two parts:

* ~45 new cards and start worlds to add to (only) the base set, plus a set of action cards and start hand for a fifth player.

* ~45 cards and Alien tokens used to represent the Alien Orb which players jointly map and explore, gaining tokens of various types that provide powers and VPs. There are also five new Explore action cards used to map the Orb (instead of gaining an additional card or greater card selection).

The Alien Orb scenario provides a new RFTG experience, as players have to balance how much effort, resources, and actions they wish to put into exploring the Orb versus developing their empires.

Military is used to get past certain doorways and to open some caches. Various Alien artifacts (tokens picked up), in turn, affect the empire portion of the game, by providing discounts, one-shot abilities, and counting towards some of the new 6-cost developments.

Depending on how closely the Alien survey teams bunch up within the orb, choosing Orb Explore becomes important in order to have your survey team move before other teams to grab a token (the players that chose Orb Explore get to add to the map and move before the players who didn't choose that action). This adds another tension to the RFTG action choice mechanism: do you race other players to grab tokens or move away from them and then just leech their Orb Explores to pick up a token or two?

The number of Alien Orb cards used scales with the number of players and mapping the entire Orb is another game end condition.

Everything gets used in the Alien Orb scenario, while players can also play the base game with just the new cards and start worlds.

Because of this modular nature, I split this expansion's development into two parts: first, just getting a card set that plays well with the base set, and then getting the Orb scenario to work. In particular, I wanted to make sure that the various developments that interact with the Orb scenario were still viable without it, though a bit weaker or more specialized.

I'm happy to report that the new card set works quite well and is fairly stable (just one card has changed in the last month). The expansion plus base set (without the Orb stuff) currently totals 160 play cards and start worlds. That's a nice number (20 less than RFTG + GS + RvI), that is neither too hard to shuffle nor has too high variance.

Three things I strongly wanted in this "reboot" were: A) to keep things simple (so even brand new players could easily play with this expansion); B) to keep the "power creep" in the new cards under control; and C) to ensure that all the base set cards remained useful. I'm pretty happy with the results.

There are only ~10 new powers (+4 powers for just the Orb scenario) and only 3 somewhat complicated powers in the entire set. Over half the cards don't have any text at all. Yet, I managed to come up with a lot of interesting twists using just existing base set powers.

Here's a concrete example:

***Imperium*** Stealth Tactics, 2 cost, 1 VP development, +1 Military, may discard this card from tableau for +3 Military (additional) this phase.

Essentially, this is New Military Tactics glued to a +1 Military power. It's very flexible, but costs 2. Would you rather have New Military Tactics, Expedition Force, Space Marines, or it?

Typical winning scores with this expansion are in the 30-45 point range, rarely getting to 55. This is very similar to playing with just the base set, which indicates that I've been reasonably successful at keeping the power level of the new cards in check.

I've been very sparing with Consume powers in this expansion, to make sure that base set cards such as Expanding Colony, Outlaw World, etc. remain useful. A few base set cards have also gained specific VP scoring boosts from new 6-cost developments.

The only thing we use from the first expansion arc is the deal two and choose a start world after seeing your starting six cards mechanic introduced in Rebel versus Imperium. Nothing else.

I'm currently working on the Orb Scenario. Then the production slog occurs, so publication is more than 6 months away. A few weeks before it apears, I'll post a more detailed preview.

Kilde:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/6266415#6266415

[Jens_Hoppe]

Det lyder cool. Personligt har jeg været ved at gå lidt død i alle RftG udvidelserne (personligt sweet spot er grundspillet + første udvidelse), så det lyder som en glimrende idé med en udvidelse der kun comboer med grundsættet.

[Foppwin]

Det lyder cool. Personligt har jeg været ved at gå lidt død i alle RftG udvidelserne (personligt sweet spot er grundspillet + første udvidelse), så det lyder som en glimrende idé med en udvidelse der kun comboer med grundsættet.

Jeg har længe godt kunne tænke mig at købe udvidelserne til spillet, da det lyder som om at der er mere spiller interaction. Hvorfor kan du kun lide den første udvidelse, og ikke de efterfølgende?

[Jens_Hoppe]

Det lyder cool. Personligt har jeg været ved at gå lidt død i alle RftG udvidelserne (personligt sweet spot er grundspillet + første udvidelse), så det lyder som en glimrende idé med en udvidelse der kun comboer med grundsættet.

Jeg har længe godt kunne tænke mig at købe udvidelserne til spillet, da det lyder som om at der er mere spiller interaction. Hvorfor kan du kun lide den første udvidelse, og ikke de efterfølgende?

Den øgede kompleksitet, tror jeg. Både i form af at der er mange flere kort, så det er sværere at blive bekendt med dem alle sammen, men i særdeleshed fordi udvidelserne introducerer flere nye koncepter i spillet og dermed mere og mere regelkompleksitet.

[Helle]

Det lyder cool. Personligt har jeg været ved at gå lidt død i alle RftG udvidelserne (personligt sweet spot er grundspillet + første udvidelse), så det lyder som en glimrende idé med en udvidelse der kun comboer med grundsættet.

Jeg har længe godt kunne tænke mig at købe udvidelserne til spillet, da det lyder som om at der er mere spiller interaction. Hvorfor kan du kun lide den første udvidelse, og ikke de efterfølgende?

Den øgede kompleksitet, tror jeg. Både i form af at der er mange flere kort, så det er sværere at blive bekendt med dem alle sammen, men i særdeleshed fordi udvidelserne introducerer flere nye koncepter i spillet og dermed mere og mere regelkompleksitet.

Jeg har det lidt lige sådan. Jeg foretrækker også grundspillet og den første udvidelse. Det betyder ikke, at vi ikke sagtens kan have alle de ekstra kort med, men alt det der med krig og overtagelse det virker lidt som om det forstyrrer spillet.

[glorn]

well, så kan man tage de kort der har noget med overtagelse ud af spillet.

mit problem med grundspillet som langsomt bliver rettet igennem udvidelserne er at production strategien simpelthen er for stærk. Ikke at du kan lave flere point per tur, men fordi den action du vælger sjældent vil gavne de andre og at du stort set altid kan bruge de andres.