Seriously, the move from "Race" to "Roll" was aesthetically pleasing. Who cares if you don't fight the other players directly? You drop space marines on rebels and aliens. That's rumbling. It counts. "New Frontiers" my ass.
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Rumble for the New Frontiers (that's my name for it now) is another game about getting your feet on some planets, developing handy inventions, and turning that sweet, sweet cash into sweet, sweet VPs. Some aspects will seem more familiar to Race fans than others. You have a board representing your galaxy-traveling people, with a home planet on the front and slots for eight more around the board. You fill those by exploring planets (pulling them out of a bag) and then colonizing. The middle of your board has twelve slots for development upgrades, along with small marks for your money, colonists, and VPs.
A round consists of each player taking one of seven possible actions, each of which allows everyone to act but offers a bonus to the player who picked it.
- Explore: Pull seven planets from the bag, pick one, pass them around. (Bonus: pick a second planet after everyone has made a selection.)
- Settle: Use colonists to settle a planet, or take two colonists to use later. (Bonus: take a colonist first, which can be used to settle a planet.)
- Develop: Buy a technology. (Bonus: costs $1 less.)
- Produce: Planets without goods make a good. If it goes unused for a round, $1 is put on it, taken by the next person who chooses this action. (Bonus: Put stuff on a windfall planet without a good. Windfall planets make a good when colonized, but don't normally during production.)
- Trade/Consume: Sell a good. Also, use any Consume keywords you control. (Bonus: 1 VP.)
- Take first spot in line and 1 VP.
- Go into isolation; take $2
The entire game is about combining these actions with the abilities you gain from developed technologies and colonized planets. Making sure that as many actions as possible will have their maximum effect, no matter when they happen (ie. having the money/military and colonists to settle one of your planets when someone takes the Settle action) is the key to winning.
Of course, there's no single way to win. Build a military and take over a bunch of military-required planets? Sure. Military's relatively easy to build up and those planets tend to be worth a lot of points. Get a high-money economy rolling? Hey, those planets tend to have good abilities you can combine for points, and there's even a tech that lets you buy military planets. There aren't a lot of different combos—your only options for points are planets, techs, and things which give you VP chips, so you have to get those things one way or another—but the ability combinations are almost endless.
I'm not a huge Race fan, but I like this. Does that mean Race fans will adore it? Mmm... maybe. It has a Race feel, but it really depends on what you like about Race vs. what you'll enjoy in this. It has complexity without feeling overwhelming; your second game will almost certainly go better than the first, but the first shouldn't feel hopeless unless you're in with a bunch of experts. It's basically good and playable, in that vein of games with the quality to sell like mad in a less crowded market, but not quite on the level that it should be held aloft above all comers in this day and age.
Score: Seven settled planets out of nine.
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