Reply: Race for the Galaxy: Alien Artifacts:: News:: Re: Info from Essen Demo

by aliquis

woodnoggin wrote:

I was lucky enough to be at the demo of Alien Artifacts hosted by Tom Lehmann at Essen Spiel today. Four players tried out the new cards while a small group watched from the sidelines and asked questions. The cards were just printed onto standard playing cards, so it hasn't been printed yet but we saw what the final cards will look like on Tom's iPad! The Alien Orb wasn't used in the game - it was just the base game plus the new cards, so some of the new abilities relating to the Orb weren't relevant.

I was most interested in seeing the new start worlds. I hope I can remember them correctly. They are:

Rebel Mutineers - 2 cost military Novelty windfall, 0VPs, Explore: see+1, +1 military.
Frontier Capital - 2 cost military, 1VP, draw a card after developing, +1 military
Artifact Hunters - 3 cost, 1VP, Explore: see+1, keep+1, consume yellow into 2VPs
Uplift Researchers - 2 cost, 1VP, Explore: see+1, -1 to settle, settle an Uplift military as non-military
Sentient Robots - 2 cost military, 1VP, -1 to settle, +1 military, draw a card in production phase

Other fun cards include:
Imperial Supply Colony which lets you use leftover military to settle again.
Tranship Point lets you move all your brown goods onto it and save them for later.
Wormhole Prospectors is a crazy 6-cost Development which lets you flip the top card of the deck in the Settle phase and settle it for free if it's non-military.
Galactic Investors is a 5-cost Devlopment (3VPs) which lets you draw 2 cards for developing and Produces a card for having 5+ developments.
Interstellar Trade Port is a 5-cost Blue World (3VPs) which lets you consume up to four different coloured goods for 1VP and 1 card each.

Doh, without the alien orb I don't see why bother. That's the new stuff. The other is just same old but different cards.

If it can be played separately like this I think it suck that it doesn't blend with the old expansion stuff. I suppose it can but won't be balanced with all the combinations? I could be interested in the cards and having more combinations but then I would like to be able to have it all / play it all together. Is there for instance enough interesting uplift cards in the base game to make uplift specific cards worthwhile in this expansion?

Regardless I think most of us who are interesting in buying more cards are interesting in buying even more cards. And as such want to play with all the cards we've bought and not just a few of them.

If still true it's with base game only I wish he rethought that. But I guess it use no new powers from the later expansions and dilute the deck with things not working with them (though I guess he could had easily had added some icons here and there.)

woodnoggin wrote:

Alien Orb sounded really fun but we didn't see those cards, just heard about how it works. There's a separate deck of cards for the Alien Orb. Players draw cards from this deck and use those to build the Orb as they explore it. It sounds like a collective tableau in the centre of the table - you decide what's in there by playing cards into it. Everyone has an extra role card that they can use to explore the Orb - choosing it lets you move your explorer first, others move in turn order (clockwise from lowest numbered start world). You have one explorer/space man to start with but can gain a second via a certain card(s?). Other cards give bonuses to how far you can move through the Alien Orb. As we didn't see the Alien Orb cards themselves, I don't know what sort of things you'll find in there.

As for release dates, Tom obviously couldn't confirm anything but it's hoped that it should be out early next year, perhaps for the Nurnberg show.

Edit: Updated with more info

Sounds random. Yet another way to score points but not mixing with the other things. Could had been a game on it's own instead or left out.

Totally ok as is but I want to be able with a combination of cards.