Newbie Questions

[TakaCoyote]

Hi, I'd like to play Race for the Galaxy and Roll for the Galaxy. (Played a few matches of Can't Stop, fun)

Question: are Race and Roll more tactical and strategic rather than "luck based?"

By luck based I mean in many ccg games you will get "mana drought and mana flood" and be unable to play any cards. (Eternal, Magic the Gathering Arena, Hearthstone are very luck based, get crappy cards and you are sunk and skunked.)
I'm looking for games that are not so luck based and wondering if these two are more tactical and strategic.
Thanks, Taka

[nccc]

mtg and hs more luck based?
lol I dont think so. U CAN build ur deck!

In roll ftg and race ftg, u need to find GOOD tiles, and yes thats a bit luck based.

[TakaCoyote]

Thanks for your reply, much appreciated.

[MoiMagnus]

Race games are ~10min. A single game can go wrong with bad luck, but if you sequence games, it averages out.

The point of games like race is "to do the best you can with the card dealt, and adapt". IMO there is far less frustration from bad luck than in CCGs as contrary to magic/HS you don't have a deck build, so you have far less expectation of "how the game should go" that can get broken down by bad luck.

Race is a very tactical game. However, the strategy part does suffers from the lack of predicability of the game.

[paramesis]

Welcome to BGA! As a general note, if you click "see more" on the game's info page, you can see a breakdown of complexity, strategy, luck, and interaction. These are subjective values input by the games' developers, but they are still useful for assessing these aspects of particular games relative to each other.

In Can't Stop, you are asking yourself whether the expected utility of climbing one more step is worth the increasing risk. In Race and Roll for the Galaxy, you are making much more complex and nuanced decisions, and you ultimately have more control over the end result. An experienced player with bad luck will usually still outplay a novice with good luck.

Every card can be "good" in certain contexts, and whether a card is good for a given strategy is not always obvious. Is it better to try to keep settling mining planets, or is it better to pivot to a development strategy because of the actions others are choosing?

Both games offer ways to mitigate bad luck ("bad" cards can be used to pay for "good" cards in Race, "bad" tiles can be abandoned to draw more tiles in Roll). I'd recommend trying both, maybe in Turn based mode since the Real time game can feel fast and stressful if you're not familiar with the icons and cards yet.