Race for the Galaxy: Alien Artifacts from Rio Grande

Jan 25, 2012

Coming this spring from Rio Grande Games is Race for the Galaxy: Alien Artifacts. This new expansion to RFTG is not compatible with any of the other expansions previously released, and is intended instead to take the game in an entirely different direction.

According to designer Tom Lehmann Alien Artifacts will have:

45 new cards and start worlds to add to (only) the base set, plus a set of action cards and start hand for a fifth player.

45 cards and Alien tokens used to represent the Alien Orb which players jointly map and explore, gaining tokens of various types that provide powers and VPs. There are also five new Explore action cards used to map the Orb (instead of gaining an additional card or greater card selection).

The Alien Orb scenario is designed to provide a new RFTG experience, as players have to balance how much effort, resources, and actions they wish to put into exploring the Orb versus developing their empires.

The main tasks the designer wanted to accomplish with this expansion were to keep things simple for new players to Race for the Galaxy, to keep the “power creep” in the new cards under control; and to ensure that all the base set cards remained useful. And he believes that he has accomplished this task.

You can look for this reboot of Race for the galaxy coming this spring from Rio Grande with an MSRP of $29.95.