CHENNAI : Thomas Lehmann has received abundant acclaim over the course of his game design career, most notably for his excellent Race for the Galaxy — a game many would consider to be the best card game around. Today, we’re taking a look at the long-awaited board game implementation of Race for the Galaxy, titled New Frontiers.In New Frontiers, 2-5 players compete to expand their galactic empires in various ways. Every round, players will in turn choose various actions to perform. The wrinkle here is that when a player chooses an action, everyone gets to participate in that action; however, there is an extra bonus which only the active player receives. This mechanism is known as role selection, and it’s excellent for keeping everybody at the table engaged — no matter whose turn it is, you’ll have some part to play and usually some decision to make. This keeps the game ticking along nicely, which is crucial for a game of this depth and complexity.
As a game, New Frontiers straddles the border between two different games — the role selection is reminiscent of gaming classic Puerto Rico (which also inspired the original Race for the Galaxy), and the theme is entirely taken from Race. It’s interesting to see how, despite such clear inspirations, New Frontiers manages to go its own way. While it has more variability than Puerto Rico, it manages to have less randomness than Race — as part of setup, all developments are laid out and so you don’t have to hedge your bets on the odds of drawing a particular card that you need.
Enough about its ancestry, how does it play? It’s unlikely to be much of a surprise at this point, but New Frontiers is excellent. There’s a constant push and pull between all players, and the games are always close. Because the player who chooses to activate a particular action gains certain benefits, players often find themselves inadvertently helping each other out just to get that extra edge. Conversely, timing becomes critical because you’re always looking to take advantage of any opponent who might be in a bad position to capitalise on your selection. However, even in such circumstances, you do usually get something for your trouble even if it’s not as good as it might have been.
After years and years of development, New Frontiers has proven to be well worth the wait. I’d rather play this than Puerto Rico, and it might even be a friendlier introduction to the world of Race than the card game. It’s definitely not for everyone, though — it still uses the same iconography that made Race a tough game to wrap your head around, although there’s a lot more text this time around. Still, this is a game that’s likely to take some time and require everyone to be switched on for most of it. If that sounds like it might be in your wheelhouse, or if you’ve enjoyed either of its spiritual ancestors, you should definitely give this a shot.