Designing Race for the Galaxy: Making a Strategic Card Game

In this 2018 GDC talk, game designer Tom Lehmann discusses his acclaimed card game Race for the Galaxy, walking through through its use of cards as resources, simultaneous play, luck mitigation via card-sifting, use of icons, and how ideas from economics and optimization theory influenced its design.

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[bbblackwell]

Excellent presentation! A rare nuts-and-bolts look under the hood, instead of the usual, elementary "playtest/iterate/repeat" kind of advice we get on design talks.

[Jescribano]

This has given me a greater appreciation on how many deliberate choices the designer makes in a game! Huge respect and great talk!

[revimfadli]

55:14: Dune: Imperium also has multi-phase powers, but is still accessible

Ark Nova also managed to fit multiple texts for multiple powers

[OneMoreCaptain]

This game is one of the best ever made. It packs an engine building, euro game with lots of depth in a deck of cards. No cubes needed but everything is there...different resources, production, exploration, tough decisions, more interaction than in many euros. Plays quickly but gives in 30 minutes the tactical and strategical depth many euro games take hours to provide.

[JustABrokenToy]

Race for the Galaxy is one of my favorite games, the design feels so clean to me. Phase selection (with minor bonuses) and using cards in-hand as resources are two of my favorite mechanics. The ability to force your opponent into a suboptimal play since tableaus are face-up and you need to telegraph most plays creates great tension. Huge inspiration in my own game design, so I was glad to find this video!

[arenablanca]

25:29 So my understanding of why Consume is phase IV instead of phase V (when in Roll for the Galaxy, Produce is phase IV and Consume is phase V) is:
The bonus for Consume may be considered stronger than the bonus for Produce, because it consistently leads to more cards, or to more of the VP’s that win the game. In contrast, the bonus for Produce is limited by the number of Windfall worlds in the tableau.
What I think I understand is that Lehmann wanted to mitigate the unfairness of the following scenario in Race:
One player chooses Produce, and is therefore excluded from the bonus for Consume. But those who choose Consume with its bonus are disproportionately enabled by the first player’s choice of Produce. In this scenario, they would get to Produce and then immediately Consume what they just produced, with a 2x bonus. The player who chose Produce would also get to participate in the Consume phase, but with half the benefit.
Lehmann’s solution to this question of “who will bell the cat?” is to make everybody chill out and wait until the following turn to consume what they may have produced in this turn.
In Roll for the Galaxy, there are no special bonuses for selecting phases. Your benefit in phases selected by any player is determined only by the number of worker dice that you assign to those phases.

[Holistic-songwriting]

This was very interesting, thank you Tom!

[Nimora]

Tom is such a natural presenter. I wonder why he is so good at it?!

[revimfadli]

MtG actually has an official Japanese "sequel" called Duel Masters which implements opportunity cost, since instead of using dedicated lands, all cards can be played upside-down as "land", but you'd abandon their use as monsters or spells that way

[mmikoff]

I got New Frontiers (the board game version of Race) and I enjoy that a lot too. It misses the tight opportunity cost contention of the single resource (cards in Race), but it makes up for it with the variable phase order and better immersion in the theme. Great video, great games, great design! :)

[lllorez]

Would def want to see more of these from board game designers.

[Pinstar]

I wonder if the "Former Penal Colony" Card is Australia, based on his "Iceland" comment.

[zacdredge]

40:20 Overall I appreciate him giving his thought process but this strikes me as something that should be learned from rather than excused. The idea that it might streamline things a little for experienced players while creating a known barrier for entry to new players is a huge problem and I don't think it's just the added information as he suggested in the QnA. Those who are dedicated will likely remain so but won't complain about a bigger player base instead IMHO. There has to be a way it could be presented clearly and consistently for both old and new players.

[gourgane]

Great talk! got to drink more tea for my balancing :) Thanks for the sharing.

[matijapospis]

Lovely and fascinating talk, thank you!

[stefanopaolini]

Legends of Runeterra has a wonderful mana system with opportunity cost: you can save up to three mana for the next turn that can be spent only on spells, not on champions or allies

[yourpaljd]

Never heard of this game until today. Now I know the next game I'm getting ;)

[SuperKrisco]

Great video, thanks for posting. I'm developing a game and this is super helpful.

Also Magic has a "tower" condition - if you draw a card when your library (your card pile) is empty, you lose. There are also spells in magic that give you victory if you meet certain conditions.

[LarsVogel]

Great presentation, thanks for sharing your design experience

[TerrorVisual]

Really candid talk with some good insights.