hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3944.txt

Episode: 3944
Title: HPR3944: Race for the Galaxy
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3944/hpr3944.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 17:44:19

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,944 for Thursday the 14th of September 2023.
Today's show is entitled Race for the Galaxy.
It is hosted by Tukutura Oto and is about 16 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is Tukutura Oto explains very basics of card game called Race for the Galaxy.
Hello and welcome to the Hacker Public Radio.
I'm Dula Turto and today's episode is about card game called Race for the Galaxy.
It is a card game for two four players, up to four players, two to four players.
And it's published by Rio Grande Games.
Your goal is to build a space in the room and the player with the most victory points
in the end means there's also a computer version of the game which I find somewhat easier
to play because it explains what your cards do in more detail.
The turn sequence in the game is following.
There's five phases, explore, develop, settle, consume and produce.
At the beginning of each turn, every player selects in secret, one of those phases and
the selections are revealed simultaneously at the same time.
And only the selected phases will be played.
And the player who made a selection of a phase tend to get a small bonus on that phase.
And these offers are some tactics in the game.
You can follow but other players are playing and based on that select your own phase and
hope that the other players select another phase that you want to also play during that turn.
So the first phase is the explore and that's basically just you draw two cards and keep one.
You have cards in your hand and if you have a bonus on during this round or during this
phase, you can choose to either draw five cards and keep one.
This is good for if you know that there's a card that you would like to have.
This is a one way of searching for that card.
Or you can draw one additional card and keep one additional card.
The next phase is the development phase.
Here you play a development card on the play in front of you, pictureside upwards.
You have to discard cards from your hand that are to cover the cost of the card.
Every card has a cost.
It ranges from zero to usually six.
Some planetary cards can be nine, I think.
So this development cards they give boosts into your in very young them might make it easier
to trade or they might modify the cost of the planets or other development cards.
Your bonus here in this phase is minus one to the cost.
So if you select this phase, you can place your development card with a one point cheaper.
So worth noting is that you don't have to play an expo or develop phase if you don't
want to.
If you don't have a card that you want to play, you can just skip it.
Same with the next phase, settle.
You can skip this if you have nothing to do or don't want to do anything.
So in the settle place, this is where you draw your empire.
You place a planet card in play and again discard the cards from your hand to cover the
cost of the card.
The exception is that there's a military planet that you have to conquer every Imperium
has a military score that starts from the zero.
And you can raise it by placing development cards or another planetary cards and to conquer
the military planet, you have to have a military score equal or higher than the cost of the
military planet.
You don't have to discard any cards in this case.
I have found that this is one good way of winning the game.
You just focus solely on the military, try to build up as good military as possible and
try to conquer as expensive planets as possible because they're worth more in the game.
There's also cards that give you points for extra points for every military planet you
have or extra points placed on the military score you have.
The bonus here is that if you place the windfall planet, you produce on that one, you take
a card and place it on top of the windfall planet as a marker.
This represents that some planets have three resources that you can use as soon as you
conquer them or settle them.
The next phase is consume.
This is one that you have to play.
If you can consume, then you have to consume, you don't have an option.
And here, the idea is that some of your planets have resources on them and some other cards
allow you to trade those resources into the victory points.
And the bonus here is that you can trade one good card, one good card for two to five
cards that you can pick and place in your hand or you can gain twice the victory points.
And another way to victory, you build a empire that has a decent amount of planets that
can produce and decent amount of cards that can consume and you keep cycling the consumer
and produce cycle.
The next phase is the produce that I mentioned.
Here you produce on regular planets.
Most of the planets have a resource on them that you can produce and you just take a card
from the take place it on that planet as a marker that there's a goods ready there.
The bonus here is that if you have a windfall planet, you can take one.
You can produce on one windfall planet.
You cannot produce.
You cannot normally produce on multiple windfall planets.
Again, there's a cards that can modify this rule.
And that's the turn sequence.
You repeat this until one of the empires is 12 cards big and all if the victory points
tokens run out either one.
And after that, you tell you of the score.
It's basically the cards on the table, cards in the hand and the victory points that you
earned and the player with the most points wins.
And as you notice there is in much you can do two other players in this game.
You're basically focusing only on your empire and trying to grow it in a way that earns
most victory points.
So the special rules are actually the thing that brings the salt to the game.
These are there's lots and lots and lots of cards that have special rules.
And you have to have them in the play to them to have an effect like you, they might allow
you to grow extra cards, trade goods on the planet, add up your new military score, settle
your planets for cheap.
There's one card that you think is colorless if you just discard that card and you can
settle any planet no matter cost with two rules.
It cannot be a military planet and it cannot be an alien planet.
And some cards modify your empire limit.
You might have a limit of 14 in the game or you can produce on a windfall planet after
discarding a card and so on and so on.
So learning what cards are actually in the tech is one important part of the game.
So some examples of the cards.
There's a star number traders.
This is a military tool planet that is worth one victory point.
So relatively easy to conquer, not worth much but it adds one to your military and also
if you are trading goods on any planet, you can get two additional cards.
So the reforming report is another example, this development with cost of three that is
worth two victory points.
But this allows you to draw one card after placing a word or after settling a word.
So it's a nice way of getting the cards back after settling a place.
And it allows you to discard one rare element goods to gain one card and one victory point.
So when you are trading rare elements on this planet, you get one victory point and you
get extra card in your hand.
Next works is another example, this is a development cost of one word or one victory point and
you get to draw one card after placing a development.
And you can also discard one card to gain one victory point during the trading phase.
So the terraforming reports and public works are cards that work well in the beginning
of the game.
There's an expansion to the game of course, the gathering of storm is the first one.
It adds goals into the game.
I mean all expansions add extra cards but in addition to that, this one adds goals into
the game.
So there's things like first player to achieve some situation, condition or the player
who has most of something triggers the goal and gives you an extra victory points.
It also adds additional players, so you can have five players to play.
Retail versus Imperium is the second extension.
It adds a solo play that I haven't actually done.
And it adds the take over mechanics.
So if you have a strong military, you can conquer mechanics from other players Imperium.
This is a conflicted about this rule.
Some players think that it adds nice strategy in the game but I like the aspect of building
your own empire without worrying what other empires are doing.
Third one, Prink of War, even more mechanics, it's a prestige.
So prestige counts as a victory points in the end but also you can use it to perform
actions and this one requires the two previous expansions.
So some actions you can perform, for example, you have to pay a prestige and then you
can during the first phase where the x-4 phase you can actually say that I want to find
a military planet that has a military score of at least six and then you can just go
through the take until you find a planet that satisfies this condition.
Alien artifacts, this is an extension that is not in the computer version of the game.
I don't know why.
I haven't played that also and this is incomparable with the previous expansions.
So you, if you play with this one, you cannot use any other expansions.
These acts are lots of new cards and in addition it adds 49 cards that represent alien
orb that you can explore and it changes the game that now during your play you can either
try to build a bigger empire or you can explore that mystical orb, alien orb.
But I haven't played that I don't know much about this expansion so I cannot comment
much about it.
So in the end, it's a fun and quick game.
The computer version tends to be over in a 10 minutes usually when you're playing with
the people with real cards, it takes a little bit longer and like I said, every player
concentrates on their own imperium, some people find this, they don't like this aspect
but I like that aspect and cards can be really dense with information.
With the computer version it's nice that they added an extra pop-up text that explains
what this card does but in real cards there is no such an explanation, there's just
symbols and you have to understand what those symbols mean and sometimes it can be pity.
It might take a little bit time before you remember all those symbols.
I have recorded a video of myself playing this game, there's a link to that video in
the show notes and it's in a pay-tube and for some reason nobody can follow me outside
of that instance, I don't know what's the reason for that.
So if you have any questions, comments or feedback, you can contact me at Tutur.admaster.ad
or even better you can record your own episode.
Bye bye.
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