Magnet’s summary is good. I will say that my gaming group dropped the goal tiles pretty quickly and haven’t played them since soon after they came out; but I can imagine for a certain group they would be a great addition because once you know the game very well, you often find yourself following a pattern of play that is clearly obvious given your early cards. Sometimes you even know you have no chance of winning if your draws are bad. The goals mix things up a bit, for sure.
Likewise, we pretty much never play with military takeovers. Frankly, it’s hard to pay enough attention to others’ tableaus, and it’s just not very fun.
The prestige system is a major new feature to the game and it adds a lot, but I agree that waiting until you’re ready for the added complexity is a good idea.
All that said, for the new cards and strategies–new features aside–the expansions (at least the first two) are worth it. And they come with action cards for additional players, which are always keen to have.
The upcoming expansions are supposed to be incompatible with each other, so they become more modular and exclusive. I can imagine playing RFTG with just the base set and one of the new expansions, and getting some new enthusiasm for the game.
Tom_Mc
6302
Why arn’t you guys playing Core Worlds instead? ;)
Ok, snarkyness aside I love Race but I’ve kept it to the basic set. I hadn’t determined how far to go would be good for gameplay and not make a monster random deck. I’m not sure about the goals and other new mechanics either.
Tom M
Personally, I like the goals a lot. In particular, the “first to…” goals give short term objectives which reward plays that aren’t optimal for overall score, and thus introduce variation to the game. 6 point Developments are usually a late-game play because they tend to empty your hand, thus reducing options, and the rewards are usually either victory points or synergies that require multiple cards of a particular type. The “first to play a 6 point development” goal means there’s a bit of a race to play one, and you still have to weigh whether it’s worth the opportunity cost to do so.
On the other hand, I don’t like the military takeovers. They’re a positive feedback loop, since unless you have something like Rebel Alliance in play, they reward players who are already in a strong position. Further, they discourage synergies that are already hard to execute, like using Alien bonuses.
Ugh… I just won an amazing Arkham Horror lot about 7 months ago in an auction (it wasn’t cheap but still an amazing deal) I don’t want to hear about Eldritch Horror being better.
That said, anyone played Francis Drake yet?
PS Coolstuffinc keeps adding amazing deals on games daily over the holidays. I’m going to be out of closet space before the end of the week.
You know, you’ve just reminded me why I don’t still play Race for the Galaxy. It’s one of those games where everyone’s basically playing concurrent solitaire. There’s are plenty of great games like this, but I ultimately prefer more direct interaction.
Thanks for the summaries of the add-ons. Too bad about the card bloat problem, but that just goes with the territory. Hello, Ascension!
-Tom
Gedd
6306
That’s an interesting observation about RftG. I noticed too that I had a hard time watching what other people were doing. I did notice that one guy was stacking all on one planet, and it probably would have been hard not to notice I was playing a ton of military cards. I just assumed I was having a hard time because I was trying not to be the slow guy (something that often happens in new games of this sort…hello Core Worlds).
I had the same sort of issues with 7 Wonders. I had no idea what other people were doing, but I assumed that was because I was struggling with the mechanics.
PS Coolstuffinc keeps adding amazing deals on games daily over the holidays. I’m going to be out of closet space before the end of the week.
Because of my birthday and Christmas coming up, I’ve been told by the wife that anything I want goes on the Amazon wish list…or else. It’s an amazing way to overlook most of the sales happening right now. I make no promises after the 25th.
The thing is, you really do need to play close attention to what other players are doing if you want to do well. They don’t affect your tableau, but it’s important when choosing actions, since you need to understand how your choices will benefit other players, and hopefully predict how their choices will benefit you. The simplest example being you don’t want to call Produce if another player has a lot more empty production planets than you do.
I have all the expansions and usually play with the just the first (Gathering Storm) without the goals. The deck feels pretty completely at that point (not a lot of lingering hooks). While I can see both sides of goals, my preference is to play without them. I think they benefit players who just happen to play into them through natural play a bit too much for me. That said, I like teaching the game with goals. RtfG can be a bit overwhelming with options on the first playthrough, and goals give a nice nudge in a direction for new players unsure of which card they should play.
My preference is to play the two-player “expert” mode where players choose two actions per turn. When both players are playing two actions, it’s more important to watch them so you can benefit from both actions they’re likely to play. Two actions also brings in some interesting new strategies (for instance, produce / consume is more viable, as are double-settle rush strategies). It’s also a lot easier / more fun to watch one player then multiple. I’m happy to play 3 player as well, because attempting to draft off two players isn’t too bad. But more than three and there’s too much to watch.
Oh, absolutely. It’s just like Puerto Rico that way, which is another concurrent solitaire game. But I find, for my tastes, it’s a poor substitute for direct interaction.
-Tom
SamF7
6310
For those of you playing Keldon’s Implementation of RftG, I highly recommend this small “patch”:
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7379896/rftg/index.html
Cleans up the interface a bit.
SamF7
Start playing Warmachine Tom, it doesn’t get much more direct than that for player interaction. :)
I wouldn’t worry too much about EH being “better” than AH. EH is definitely better in terms of rules, downtime, playtime, clutter, etc., but nothing can beat the sheer scope and depth that AH offers. Also, EH is by no means a replacement or sequel to AH. You’ll want them both, trust me. :)
I can understand the “concurrent solitaire” charge, although (as noted by others) the game does has significant interaction. My distinction would be that it’s a game with interaction but without confrontation, similar to plenty of other Eurogames. Personally, this fits my personality pretty well. I like having at least one area of the game that can’t get disrupted or hijacked by other players, particularly if it’s the area where I’m building something up or constructing an engine, which is exactly what Race is.
The new expansion supposedly fixes that.
Pod
6315
I’ve read about RttG before. It sounded great. Then I read this thread and it made it sound great, except Tom kill-joyed it all by saying that it’s one of those “multilayer solitaire” games that I really hate. (I can’t understand why Puerto Rico is so loved – I traded mine away). I guess Tom’s deflation is for the best. Saves me making yet another gaming-purchase-mistake.
I wish boardgames had demos. It’d stop be buying crap games I hate.
Randy, EH has a long way to go before it can replace AH. Arkham has 10 expansions! It had so many expansions they literally made an expansion to the other expansions. There’s enough content there to last you a long time while Eldritch catches up. I like EH so far but it seems a little on the easy side (we won our first full game with the doom track still around 8 or 9). That’s not a major problem for me, though, since base Arkham was also easy.
I really like the two-sided spell and condition cards in EH, spells will have side effects you don’t know about until the first time you cast them. So for instance, if there are three copies of the Wither spell they all have the same front but the back side (which lists the consequences of casting the spell) will be different for each and you’re not allowed to look at the back until using the spell. It’s the same for conditions, there are several copies of the Debt condition (similar to Arkham’s bank loan) but what exactly happens when it’s time to pay up is different for each.
EH also adds a few new types of encounters, such as research encounters that help you get clue tokens and are specific to the ancient one you are fighting in that game and complex expedition encounters in hard to reach parts of the world.
On the other hand, by being a global game EH is missing out on a lot of the cool atmosphere the AH board has. Instead of the Witch House, the Black Cave and the Unnameable you are instead traveling to London, Tokyo and Sydney. Like really, Sydney? None of us met P Sherman, though. Also, most of the spots on the board aren’t even labeled. There’s a spot in the middle of America where it’s just a generic city icon labeled 5. That’s it, 5. You’re having an encounter at…5. There’s a lot of that kind of thing on the map.
So EH is pretty cool but AH is still definitely worth owning.
Apologies for derailing a discussion on EH to AH but I picked up base AH earlier this year and had always been under the impression (before I played it) that it was pretty hard. I’d definitely agree that base AH is relatively easy (compared to some games), so which expansions are worth buying to make it harder?
Adding the mini-expansion, Black Goat of the Woods and playing with the herald + Shubby is pure torture. If you don’t want it that hard, go with Dunwich or Innsmouth. Base + Dunwich usually makes for a challenging game. Base + Innsmouth can be brutally difficult, but not impossible.
Dunwich is the best expansion to get first, it’s got a lot of fixes for the base game and adds the injury/madness cards, which I think are mandatory for every Arkham game once you’ve got them. Kingsport isn’t great but the one nice thing it does add are the final battle cards that make facing the big bad at the end a lot more exciting (and thematically difficult). And it’s got a bunch of new investigators and ancient ones. Still, I’d probably grab one or two of the small expansions first. They’re all worth getting but my favorite is the King in Yellow with the unfortunate caveat that you also own the Miskatonic University expansion that fixes King in Yellow. Uh, so maybe not that one. Lurker at the Threshold ties in thematically well with Dunwich and also adds the relationship cards that you can use even when you’re not playing with the Lurker.
In my experience Innsmouth adds the most difficulty (not only does it have most of the hardest AOs but the monster tokens it comes with are pretty brutal). It comes with a few neat things (personal stories are awesome!) but I’d probably save it for last.
I would go dunwhich or innsmouth.
Mike,
Thanks for the EH comparison. My auction winning earlier in the year is posted some pages back but it included a lot of good stuff. I haven’t gotten through half of it yet.
