Anatomy of a Tableau

Look at the fancy Frenchman and his "tableau." Why doesn't he call it what everyone else calls it, an "in-play zone."

-- random invisible heckler

The construction of a typical Race for the Galaxy tableau feels very organic. The mind doesn't know exactly what it wants, but it has a half-formed idea and tailors the hand to fit this idea.

End of game score: 43 points

In the above tableau, the opening rounds were spent establishing a jack-of-all-trades mish-mash that could react to whatever cards I drew or actions the opponent played.

The first round I played Destroyed World and immediately traded the good to establish a decent hand size. The next round I dropped the space marines and drew some explore cards.

I then had both Terraforming Robots and New Survivalists in my hand, so I built the Terraforming Robots and was rewarded by my opponent also calling the settle action where I was able to play the New Survivalists for free and draw an additional card in the process.

When choosing to build the Terraforming Robots, I also had Consumer Markets in my hand. But I couldn't afford to build it and didn't want to wait around a turn exploring to get enough cards to make it work. That would have set me back quite a bit.

Luckily, the next turn I settled the Runaway Robots and traded the good immediately for a fresh stack of cards. And what should pop up but Free Trade Association. The next round I built Free Trade Association, then produced.

For the rest of the game, I consumed with the 2X bonus and produced until the victory point pile was exhausted. The last turn I settled Galactic Trendsetters.

If I hadn't drawn Free Trade Association, who knows how the game would have gone. I could have very well run into a bunch of gene/rebel/military worlds and gone that direction. If I had drawn one more consume development or settlement, I would have started a consume/produce cycle anyway.

All in all, a pretty good game.