Bernard Captures First Race Title!

The Race for the Galaxy tournament was held in back-to-back Heats as a “getaway” event the final weekend. Over the course of those 4 heats, 23 players won at least one game.

11 people won two Heats, while Rodney Bacigalupo and 2022 4th place finisher Sam Wolff were the only players to win 3 heats.

For the first two Heats, use of the library copies were required to have enough games to play. In the second two Heats, with the library closed at that time, we needed to play one game of each heat online on BGA, so that no players were turned away.

Notable preliminary games included Ryan Feathers with the biggest win of the tournament winning one of his Heat games by 27 points. You can find Ryan’s account of this game plus his other Heat at his geeklist.

David Platnik had a 19pt win fueled by 35 VP chips and 24 pts from 6 developments. Defending champion Derek Glenn got 26 pts from 6 developments in a Heat win.

The closest game from top to bottom was Dylan Quintana (27) prevailing over Cary Morris (26) with Bradford McCandless (25) and James Freeman (24) right behind.

More than 16 winners showed up for the Semifinal, which allowed Sam Packwood with 4 second place finishes to also advance.

Ryan Feathers had a fairly comfortable win in his Semifinal (52) over Eric Freeman (34), Rodney Bacigalupo (27) and Eric Raymond (19). You can find Ryan’s account of the semifinal on BoardgameGeek.

Brandon Bernard used New Sparta and military strategy with 25 VPs from his tableau and one most and one first goal (no 6 developments or shipping points) to get to 33 points in a relatively low scoring game over Cary Morris (21), Derek Glenn (20), and Bill Carrigan (17).

Dylan Quintana (48) used Epsilon Eridani and 36 VPs in his tableau (no 6 developments) to defeat David Platnik (44), Sam Wolff (42), and Eric Guttag (19). David secured 5th overall with his finish.

Luke Koleszar used a starting world of Damaged Alien Factory and 3 first goals for 9 points (41) to prevail over Andrew Freeman (35), 2022 second place finisher Keith Dent (29), and Ray Wolff (19). Andrew secured 6th overall with his finish.

Final

The Most Goals for the Final were Most Exploration worlds and most Novelty and Rare Worlds.

The First Goals were 3 Uplift cards, 3 Alien cards, discard a card at round end, and one power in each phase.

The participants chose between their two choices and revealed, Brandon - Star Nomad Raiders, Luke - Alpha Centuri, Dylan - Ancient Race, and Ryan - Damaged Alien Factory

Final Highlights

Early in the game Ryan grabs the discard cards goal.

Turn 4 - Brandon drops Improved Logistics.

Turn 5 - Brandon already is dropping two military worlds down with Improved Logistics settling both New Sparta and New Survivalists. Luke settles Rebel Fuel Cache and claims the most Novelty and Rare Worlds

Turn 6 - Ryan plays R&D Crash Program and claims the one power in each phase goal. Brandon plays Imperium Lords.

Turn 8 - Both Development and Settle are chosen which enables Brandon to finish the game that turn. Final Scoring:

• VPs from tableau - Ryan (9), Brandon (18), Luke (8), Dylan (9)
• VP chips - Ryan (0), Brandon (2), Luke (1), Dylan (3)
• Bonus VPs for 6 developments - Ryan (0), Brandon (11), Luke (8), Dylan (6)
• Most Goal points - Ryan (8), Luke (5)
• First goal points - Ryan (6)

Brandon’s race to fill his tableau was enough to prevail despite the lack of any goal points. He was still able to win fairly comfortably (31) over Ryan (23), Luke (22), and Dylan (18).

You can see Ryan’s account of the final plus Bernard’s commentary on BoardGameGeek.