Race for the Galaxy vs. San Juan and Puerto Rico

Question

I've seen these games compared very often, with steadfast advocates on each side (that thread has a lot of interesting stuff as well). I'm mainly concerned with:

• depth of strategy
• suitability for new players (length of time to explain, etc.)
• overall feel of the game
• what situations you'd recommend playing each of them in.
• anything else you think should be included in regards to comparing and contrasting them

Puerto Rico vs. San Juan is discussed here. I'm more concerned about how RFTG compares to both of them. If it matters, Puerto Rico is the only one I already have.

Answer 1

RftG, in terms of gameplay, falls fairly in the middle of the two other games. Similar mechanics of role selection, cards as money, 'big building' cards, victory points, shipping strategy (consume) vs. building. There's slightly more relevance to role selection in RftG than in San Juan, but not as much as in Puerto Rico. Seating order doesn't matter as much as in Puerto Rico. In terms of learning, San Juan is easier to teach because it has a more accessible theme and RftG has an intimidating iconography.

Still, it's a game where it's hard to make real mistakes, just sub-optimal choices, so winning is usually determined by luck, game experience, and familiarity with the cards.

RftG has more luck than Puerto Rico, since it's based on card draws (even though this is mitigating by multiple reshuffles per game). Still, all these games are 'group solitaire games' at their core.

I'd only suggest RftG to someone with some 'real' board game experience (i.e. not Monopoly or Apples to Apples), AND if they enjoy the space theme. Rules take about 45 minutes to explain fully, but this can be done, in part during a first practice game. Strategy isn't as important in RftG as it is in Puerto Rico, as the extra randomness tends towards good tactics being more important. This is because it's a progressive build game where early decisions affect victory point 'velocity'. Strategy comes in when you know the cards and can selectively optimize for one or more 'big building' cards, and usually is only relevant fairly late game.

Answer 2

I've played both San Juan and RFtG, but only about half a game of Puerto Rico. RFtG is definitely WAY more complicated than San Juan, and you have to keep track of a lot of symbology. One of the things that is definitely unique to RFtG in the group is the simultaneous role selection mechanic. In PR and SJ, players choose their role for the turn in sequence, roles may only be chosen once per round, and the player to choose a role first in the round rotates every round. In RFtG the players each choose the equivalent of a role at the same time, and phase actions are performed by all players simultaneously, with the rare exception of drawing cards when the draw pile is running out. There's not much of a concept of turn rotation.

Answer 3

There isn't a whole lotta depth to SJ. After playing many games digitally and IRL, SJ got bland for me, whereas, I still continue playing RftG. These days, the SJ exp needs to be included for me to play SJ, and this is still vs. base game RftG. On the plus side, SJ with the exp is still easier to teach than base game RftG, so I don't feel bad pushing SJ + exp on non-gamers or those otherwise not able to handle Race. That's the one con of RftG... if you're teaching it to a newbie and he's only going to play it once, it may not be as worth it. Back to back games are nice, but even once every week or even month can cut it, but if it's a game he won't play again for another year or 8 months, then... :(

Speaking of which, you can install a Window's version of RftG here (Keldon's AI. Works on OSX and Linux, bjut with some alternate compiling) http://keldon.net/rftg/

and the highly recommended UI patch here (just copy the files to the same install directory)... http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7379896/rftg/index.html

SJ base game can be found on iOS (AppStore) and the Java version for PC below... http:// www.compoundeye.net/jsanjuan/

Search for Condado on Google Play for SJ with exp for Android

.

Race indeed has more depth in where with RftG...

-almost every decision point and turn is done simultaneously

-you can also get VP by earning VP chips (unlike SJ where everything's strictly pts from buildings) -another end condition is also running the VP chip pool dry

-it's not just one type of building phase... the "buildings" in Race are divided into Developments and worlds, and each have their own phases for when they can be built. -the worlds are divided into military worlds and non-military worlds. As you've seen, non-mili-worlds cost $$, but can always be built if you can wrangle enough wealth. OTOH, you can have all the wealth your hand limit will allow... but if you're one military strength short of a conquering a mili-world's defense, it's useless to you. If you can afford it though... it's free :)

-you have temporary cards that get discarded from Tableau... granted that the Crane in SJ does have a unique mechanic that lets you build over buildings, which RftG won't come to a close equivalent until exp #3's Terraforming Engineers

-the lesser types of goods can be VERY valuable... the blue goods can be sold for more cards due to trade specific powers for blue. Otherwise, lots of blue goods means you overall got those worlds for cheap and have more "power" in producing and consuming (converting goods to VP). In SJ, it's linear... Silver is almost always superior to Indigo

-the 6-cost devs in RftG (that give variable pts) also have powers, whereas the 6-costs in SJ are strictly for points... no engine boost whatsoever.

many people compare RftG and SJ and consider them to be more similar to each other than RftG vs. Puerto Rico (PR). The comparisons are far from black and white...

RftG & SJ: are similar due to them both being card games of that nature (using cards in hand to pay for other cards).

SJ & PR: both have the same theme... Governer, Library, indigo, coffee, markets, and that part of the world during that time period

RftG & PR: both have a mechanic to convert goods to VP, multiple end conditions, reasons to get inferior goods vs. the better ones, etc.