Rio Grande Games New Frontiers: Race for The Galaxy Board Game, Strategy for 2-5 Players

New Frontiers is the latest game from Tom Lehman, creator of "Race for the Galaxy-the Card Game," that takes place in said gaming world. Ironically, Race for the Galaxy was originally designed as a card version of the classic euro-game, Puerto Rico, but was rejected. Lehman took his game, added some tweeks, re-themed it and created the famous-and highly successful)-Race for the Galaxy line of games (RFG card game, with many, many, MANY expansions; Roll For The Galaxy, etc..) With New Frontiers, Lehman has come full circle. For New Frontiers IS Puerto Rico with a sci-fi skin! If you've played Puerto Rico, or ANY of the Race for the Galaxy games, you can learn this game in about 5 minutes! Yep, it's that simple and easy for any RFG fan! And it plays fast! A 5 player game can be done in under 90 minutes by a group of experienced players! If you're a fan of either of those games, read no more, go out and GET THIS GAME!! For non Puerto Rico/RFG, New Frontiers is a fast action selection/engine-building game set in the far future! Each player Is trying to build a space empire that will ultimately garner him/her the most VPs! Each turn, the acting player will choose one of six (seven in the advanced game) action tiles. These action tiles will allow all players to preform the chosen action (settle, produce, trade/consume, explore, develop), with the active player (the one who chose the tile) to get a bonus action and the privilege of doing the action first. Then play moves to the next player who repeats the process, but cannot choose an action already taken by a previous player! Players will use these actions to build up their space empire: DEVELOP: Allows players to build development tiles. For Puerto Rico players, these are like the buildings in that game. Each one can give you VPs and/or a special ability that you can use to break the rules to help build your game engine. EXPLORE: This is how you get planets. For Puerto Rico players, planets are like your plantations. Planets can produce one of four goods (Ancient Alien Tech, Genes/Biological Tech, Rare Earth Metals and Novelty) that can latter by sold for money (credits) or consumed for VPs. SETTLE: Settle is how colonize your worlds that you've discovered (via the Explore action). PRODUCE: Allows your planets to each produce one of the four goods. Each planet is unique in what it produces and some even have special abilities! TRADE/CONSUME: This action is where players will TRADE a single good for money or VPs and them use and CONSUME powers on their planets/development tiles to turn goods into VPs and even more credits. The idea being to try and synergize your development tiles with your planet tiles to create a lean and mean VP points generator! The game really is that simple, but it has A LOT of deep strategy and requires some far planning just like the original game, Puerto Rico. But I think New Frontiers is superior to that game because of the theme and because NF has MUCH more variety in terms of strategy! Puerto Rico is HOPELESSLY scripted because of the limited number of building types. New Frontiers, on the other hand, has limitless possibilities from expansions that are sure to follow! The only knock against New Frontiers (and all Race for the Galaxy games in general) is the steep learning curve caused by the HIGH AMOUNT OF ICONS! Yeah, this game is one of those that has a TON of iconography that some players will find intimidating. Strangely, New Frontiers is actually the easiest of the RFG games to learn (IMO) when it comes to it's iconography! Since nearly everything is also written on the action cards, development and planet tiles in both icon and word for word what it all means (just like Terraforming Mars)!

* This is my first "Race/Roll" for the Galaxy Game. * I loved Puerto Rico back in the day... and have long been bummed that it fell out of rotation. Perfect game for my pre-nerd "mid-tier" game group. Right now I'd say New Frontiers is the number 1 request out of a rotation of... Architects of Western Kingdoms, Catan and Terraforming Mars. Very easy to learn. Only complaint - The instruction manual could be a bit more thorough - have had to lookup a few mechanics online. Fun - 5/5 - Always a sign of a good game is when it ends, we continue to talk about how it played out and say things like... "Man, I should have done xyz..." Variability - 4/5 - There is pretty good variability with all the planets and tech - but - most of their mechanics are highly similar. Strategy - 4/5 - Pretty rich and easy to grasp a solid strategy in the first few games. One issue is that if someone gets out to a great start, there isn't a straightforward way for the group to slow them down. This is probably really only a problem for the first few games when folks are getting the feel. My brother in law and I have played three times together and our scores have been within 2 points or less in each game where we have used highly divergent strategies - great to see the balance. Pace - Good. When considering Setup/Teardown it is right there with a Settlers of Catan. 45 - 90m depending on 3 - 5 players. *Assuming everyone knows the game. Double that time for the first game. Conclusion: Awesome game. Won't replace Scythe or Gloomhaven in the nerdy group. But the favorite option in the post casual nerd curious crew (for now)!

I love this game, but it is a bit more complex than Race for the Galaxy. We consider it "medium" in complexity and degree of difficulty, but we are hard core board gamers. A good long-term strategy game with a bit of luck mixed in, which I appreciate. There are several end-game triggers so it never lasts too long, like some games. Good for when you don't have all day to play.

New Frontiers is a lot of fun. For me it was easier to understand than the dice game version, Roll for the Galaxy.

Fun game -- explore and settle planets, buy new technology, produce, trade and consume goods, all for victory points. This is NOT a game in which you can do mean things to other players. Probably the worst thing you could do to another player would be to buy the last copy of a particular technology that you knew your opponent really wanted. Avoids long wait times for your next turn by allowing all players to take an action on every player's turn -- for example: player A decides to settle a planet on his turn, then all other players can ALSO settle a planet (if they choose to and have the required colonists and money or military strength). Good quality parts. I got this game for myself. I'm 61. My wife, friends and kids all enjoy it. The worst thing I can say is that the rules could've been more clearly written.

It's the Puerto Rico to my San Juan. We often still play Jump Drive for brevity instead, but this is a great game.

Super fun game!

Great new version of the original.