Gathering Storm (The) : Race for the Galaxy Expansion

So you bought Race for the Galaxy and love it – and now you've spotted the expansion set. The question is: should you buy it?

This set includes a mixed bag of stuff, rather than extending the game in one particular direction, so there will probably be some stuff you want and stuff you don't care about.

The major change is a single player option, if you're interested in that, you can stop reading now as it's an essential purchase for you!

There is also a new set of 9 phase choice cards so you can play with up to 5 players – although unless you're fussy about deck size (109 vs 127) you could easily make your own phase cards and play 5 (or possibly more) even with just the basic set.

I found he 18 new game cards slightly disappointing as the new powers are pretty much along the same lines as the cards included in basic set; they were okay, but I didn't feel that a swathe of exciting new possibilities were suddenly available to me. There are a couple of nice ones, such as the ability to play 2 worlds rather than one during a settle phase, but it's not really worth the purchase price if it's just new card powers you are after.

Also included are a set of goal tiles; there is a set of 10 of which you use 6 in each game (so you don't get much novelty after the first few plays!). They give 3 (or 5) extra victory points to the player that achieves a certain objective (e.g. first to lay a cost 6 development card, the player with the highest (and at least 6) Military strength etc.). Like the extra cards, they do surprisingly little to change the feel of the game.

The final part is a set of blank cards for you to make your own cards. This could be handy if you feel like making your own cards, maybe even making a swathe of exciting new possibilities available to you.


Summary: a useful set of additions - including the single player option which will be essential for some - but nothing groundbreaking for ordinary play. Unlike, say the Cities and Knights set for Settlers which (for better or worse) feels like a very different game, this just provides a few subtle tweaks round the edges.

Maybe it's worth waiting for the second expansion due soon, which is said to include the ability to invade other players' military worlds.


Notes: I mostly play 2 player, so this review is biased towards that configuration, which appears to be much faster and shorter than 3-4 player (as you can be sucking up 25% or more of the VP chips per turn with even a 5-6 card tableau).

Hint: we use coloured wooden cubes from other games to represent the goods, rather than face down cards. This makes it much easier to deal with the consume phase, although purists may wish to set aside the correct number of cards at the same time to ensure that the deck is shuffled with the correct frequency (we don't bother!)

This is a very useful expansion if you can't get your fix of R4TG with 'real players' as it contains the rules and components for solitaire play. The mechanics for this version are very clever indeed.

The new cards for the main game provide more variation and consequently a bigger deck if playing with 5 players. Importatntly there are new start worlds as well. The victory cards provide a new twist which can affect how you play your hand although they don't unbalance play like similar expansions for other games.

My only gripe is the price. How Rio Grande can charge this price for such a small box is beyond me. However if you are a R4TG player you will pay it...