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)! Weiterlesen
