I played Stephenson’s Rocket once two years ago. Found it an awkward take on Through the Desert’s camels with an oddly discordant stock/set collection aspect. I was just discovering Chicago Express, 18xx, and Martin Wallace-style trains/cubes at the time, and this is none of those.
It’s still well-regarded (not to the level of Through the Desert) and probably a matter of personal taste.
in fact here you go (Feb '17): Recent Board Gaming - #28 by pence
So I spend a lot of time on /r/tabletopgamedesign, because people put out some clever and creative things.
Today, some guy put out this interesting tool called Flexicat. It’s a deck of 108 cards designed in such a way as to be compatible with a very large number of card-based games. The design involved shitloads of computation to get all the necessary combinations.
Looks interesting. At the very least, I think it’s an interesting exercise in component design, and a study in examining the mechanics of various card games and their relationship to card elements.
It’s not ready for prime time yet, but I think I’ma grab it when it gets out there.
Someone needs to skin this into the Deck of Dragons from the Malazan series…
We should just play Through the Desert.
I could bring it to South.
Wasn’t there some other game that was newer better Tron?
I have a heckadeck which is similar but without the explicit design toward emulating existing decks and games.
I seem to have signed myself up for a sealed deck KeyForge tournament on Sunday. Given that I’ve never played it before and barely know what it is, I think it’s time for a Training Montage!
Hopefully it’s more compelling for you than it was for me. I could see the glaring holes and nondecisions and just couldn’t find much to enjoy about it.
I guess I’ll find out, eh?
I figure the structure of the tournament (sealed deck + adaptive + Swiss pairing) will make for a good time even if I rub up against those flaws, so it ought to be worthwhile.
I’ll play it at South and other PAXes. I bet I’ll get a year or so of casual play at cons out of it before I bail.
I’m bringing my deck, and I think I have a few left unopened. It’s fun when you’re just bustng your pokemon out against the other guys pokemon. It’s novel but not deep. Good enough time.
Until further notice I’m still in for all the Galaxies.
The one coming up next is RftG Arc 3 Expansion 2. More Xeno Invasion.
Been playing a lot of 2-player race lately. A lot different than 3+ players.
I’ll Race for your Galaxy at PAX.
I just played it 2p at work, too. Especially with the 2-cards-per-turn rule, it makes the game fast.
Rym, I’ll bring my cards to PAX. I’m happy with any expansion, but you should try Xeno Invasion or Brink of War if you haven’t, they’re not in the app (yet).
The Alien Artifacts cards are also still good on their own, even if the orb exploration game is not really my favorite.
Can’t we just play with the app? It’s way faster.
I’ve been playing Keldon’s RftG implementation since I started playing Race, and it never functioned as a complete substitute for face to face games so much as training to play well. Ditto isotropic’s old Dominion or Innovation web app.
Also, the app only has Gathering Storm and Rebel vs Imperium, which is fine. But Brink of War and Xeno Invasion are for super players.
I agree. I’m talking about the official iOS app.
Yeah, I was just providing context for the past 7 years I’ve been playing RftG.
The iOS app is the same trained AI from the windows application, with a nicer mobile interface. I did just check and see they added Brink of War, which is nice. I went back to playing on the .exe because it’s faster and I use my PC more than my ipad. 
Neither one has Xeno Invasion, though.