Point Galaxy

• Designers: Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich 
• Publisher: AEG
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 15-30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4ofH7qY
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Point Galaxy takes the same simple concept of drafting cards and building the best combinations, and adds new layers of sequence building, set collection, and racing towards objectives to the mix – making the game easy to learn, but challenging for everyone!

Rules are simple: Take any two cards from the dynamic market and add them to your expanding galaxy. As you place cards, create solar systems by arranging planets in numeric order and earn bonuses by collecting suns, asteroids, moons, rockets, and research projects to score the most points!

There are over 140 unique double-sided planet/space cards, so you can create a completely different galaxy each and every time you play!

Take the deck and shuffle it – making sure to keep the planet side down and the space side up.  Remove some cards from the deck based on player count, and then create three roughly equal stacks from the cards you are going to use.  Flip 2 cards over from each draw pile to create a market.  There will be 9 cards in the market, six planet cards (the ones flipped over) and three space cards (the top cards of each of the draw piles).

On a turn, draft 2 cards from the market, one at a time.  Once you have chosen your two cards, play them in any order into your Solar Systems (card columns).  The rules for placing cards depends on the type:

• Planet cards – placed in numeric sequences, being placed at either end (not in between cards).  Planet X cards can be any value.  The direction of the number sequence is set once you have played two cards to a column
• Sun cards – played above the card sequence, though each solar system can only have one Sun in it. These cards provide scoring rules for that column
• Moon cards – can be played to either end of a sequence, but they must be adjacent to planet(s) of the denoted color(s)  in order to score
• Asteroids cards – one Asteroid card can be tucked behind each of your Sun cards – they score points based on how many you have
• Wormhole cards – They can be placed on either end of a sequence and it reverses the order of cards past the wormhole

As you place cards, keep track of the number of rocket icons found on your cards. Each time you reach or exceed a multiple of 5 rockets, select one of the available rocket tokens and place it next to your area.  Each token gives some bonus scoring options.

After the turn is over, flip over cards from the decks to fill in the holes in the tableau. If a deck runs out, split the largest remaining deck to make new draw piles.  The game ends after 13 turns, you’ll know when this happens because you won’t be able to refill the market any more.  The game moves on to scoring.

• Sun cards – each one scores based on the criteria on the card
• In each solar system, score points based on the number of unique number values in the column
• Moon cards – score for each one which is appropriately placed
• Research Symbols – score for the number of unique symbols in your play area on cards
• Rocket Tokens – score each token based on the rules printed on them
• Asteroids – 10/6/2 for most/2nd/3rd most number of asteroid cards.

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most rocket icons in their play area.

My thoughts on the game

Going all the way back to Point Salad, I’ve been a big fan of this line of easy-going drafting games (including this and Point City).  I loved the easy going card combos of Point Salad – and in this new version, you’ll find a bit more complexity on that system.

There are a lot of different ways to score points, so many cards on offer will help you out – the key here is figuring out which card will help you the most.  The main thrust is developing sequences of numbered planets in a system.   Getting Sun cards can also help as they give you bonus scoring for their particular scoring system – but you have to be able to get a hold of them.  In our games, there seems to be a relative shortage of these, and at least one player just never seems to have them available when its their turn to draft.  There is no way to generate them otherwise, so if you don’t get to draft suitable Sun cards, you’ll just have to make up the points somewhere else.  Luckily, as there are so many ways to score points, you’re not out of the game if you don’t get Sun cards.

You can also get Moon cards for a nice one-off VP payout (of course you need to be able to place them adjacent to the right colored planets).  The payout for winning the Asteroid race is also quite nice, but if you don’t win the battle, it can end up being a lot of turns expended for not a lot of payout.  And finally, there are the bonus rockets which you get with the collection of every 5 rocket icons on your cards.  These are nice small bonuses, but I don’t know if there is enough in them to make this my sole strategy.

Remembering that you only get thirteen turns in the game is key – you really want every card choice to be something that helps you score points.  You simply don’t get enough turns to waste one.   It’s great when you get a card that matches all your wants, but there will definitely be times when you’re wishing the card had a different number or a different color of planet on it so that it could be useful in multiple ways.

Point Galaxy was appropriately sold to me as Point Salad but with a bit more complex scoring.  It certainly meets that description, though for me, it might be a bit more that what I want in this kind of game.  I actually prefer the simplicity of Point Salad over this, but of course YMMV.   If you’ve enjoyed previous games from Flatout, this is definitely worth trying to see if you like it or not.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4ofH7qY