RACE FOR THE GALAXY

Hey there! Let me tell you about Race for the Galaxy, a mind-blowing experience that will take you to another universe! In this game, you get to create your very own galactic worlds. And guess what? You earn Victory Points as you play, and the player with the most points at the end wins!

SETUP

So, let me walk you through the setup. Each player gets twelve Victory Point chips and places them within reach. There are also five chips that all players can get to easily. Oh, and we have ten special Victory Point chips, but we’ll save those for the end of the game. Now, every player gets a set of action cards with seven awesome cards. Ready to conquer the galaxy?

In order to start the game, we will need to shuffle the start world cards. Once shuffled, each player will receive one card face up. The rest of the unused cards should be mixed in with the game cards. After that, each player will be dealt six cards face down in front of them. Once everyone has their cards, we can begin by looking at our own cards and deciding which two to discard into the discard pile.

Right in front of each player, there will be a tableau, which is a collection of face up cards arranged in rows. It all begins with the start world card. And now, we’re ready to start the game!

GAMEPLAY

The game will consist of multiple rounds, usually between seven to eleven rounds. At the beginning of each round, every player will secretly choose an action card. Once decided, all players will place their chosen cards face down in front of them. Then, simultaneously, everyone will reveal their action cards by flipping them over.

Alright, let’s talk about how the game works. First things first, we’ve got different phases that need to be completed in a specific order. Each phase has a task that all players have to do. And here’s the cool part – you get bonuses when you choose a phase!

Once all the phases are done, the round ends. But before the next round starts, there’s a little housekeeping. You need to get rid of some of your cards and bring your total down to 10. When you discard, make sure to do it face down and keep the pile messy. That way, it’s easy to tell the discard pile apart from the other cards. And hey, the game keeps going like this until it’s time to finish up.

Phase 1 – Explore

When it’s time for this phase, we all draw two cards and have to decide which one to keep and which one to throw away. It’s a quick decision we each have to make at the same time. If you want to explore, though, you get to draw seven cards and then pick one to keep. This way, you can start exploring before making up your mind about which card to choose.

Develop – Phase 2

In this phase, we all have to put one of our development cards face down on the table. If you don’t want to place one, that’s okay too. The players who choose to develop, though, only have to discard one card instead of two like everyone else.

Every development card has special powers. They can change the rules and have a cumulative effect on the whole group. These powers come into play after a card has been placed during this phase.

Settle – Phase 3

Okay, here’s what we gotta do: Each of us needs to pick a world card from our hand and put it face down in front of us. If you don’t want to play a world card, you don’t have to. But listen up, because if you want to play a world card, you gotta discard cards equal to the cost of that world.

Phase 4 – Consume

Now, we gotta use our consume powers to discard goods. Those goods should be flipped face down when we discard them. Oh, and one more thing – we can only use our consume powers once in each phase.

Phase 5 – Produce

Alright, time to place a good on each of our production worlds. But here’s the rule – each world can have only one good. Put the goods in the lower right corner of the world, got it?

End of the Game

This is it, folks! The game ends when either all the victory chips are given out or when someone has more than 12 cards in their tableau. At this point, we all tally up our Victory Points. And guess what? The player with the most victories points wins the game. Boom!