Good Ol' GalFed

[obsidian_octagon]

I've said it before in other threads, but I personally prefer playing with all the contentious cards in their current state, including Galactic Federation, Improved Logistics, Pan-Galactic Research, Pan-Galactic Affluence, Uplift Gene Breeders, and all the others. The game for me is not complete without the full set. I personally like that this game has an aspect of randomness and luck, as well as strategy. For those that want a strategy game with very minimal or no luck, this game is probably not for them.

I'm not sure if any card removal or adjustment discussion here on BGA is going to come to anything. As far as I know, only the official game rules are allowed on BGA, which means always playing with the whole deck of the expansion being played and with no unofficial card adjustments. If anyone wants to get cards removed or adjusted for better balancing, posting on the BGG forum for RFTG may be your best bet. The game designer (Tom Lehmann) seems to be very responsive on there. If he doesn't respond to your post there, it may mean that he doesn't agree with your assessment or perhaps he just hasn't read your post.

I'd be completely happy with any official updates to the cards, but I get the impression from reading BGG posts that there aren't any planned official updates in the near future. Note that the base game cards were already updated in 2018 when the second edition came out (BGA reflects these updates), and Galactic Federation was not changed during this update. So I think it is probably unlikely that this card will ever change in the future.

[Adder007USA]

Honestly, I think the issue here isn't galactic federation; The issue is just the fact that Alien artifacts is balanced around having the orb, being able to benefit from the things you find on it. The artifacts expansion features an unusual number of draw and discount powers on its cards compared to other expansions. If you manage to combo these, then you can easily run away with the game, and galactic federation just happens to be the strongest discount there is.



Honestly, I'm not a big fan of this arena season; it feels more like rush for the galaxy rather than race for the galaxy. The dominant strategy right now without orb is just flat out rushing, it doesn't matter if you're playing military or not; I'd say maybe 1 out of every 5 games do I see people attempting to combo with 6-devs or point machines. If you do see these pop up, it's usually just a matter of dumb luck rather than any kind of build attempt. It's honestly kind of boring seeing so many games with winning scores of less than 30 points. Galactic federation just happens to contribute to this in a huge way; if you manage to get it early combined with one of the other "Draw when dev" cards, then it's GG.