I’ve mentioned previously that I don’t share the broader tabletop community’s love for Race for the Galaxy, a very popular deckbuilding game that ranks in the top 50 on BoardGameGeek, for two reasons – you need to know the deck rather well to play the game at even a competent level, and there’s one strategy (produce/consume x2) that is superior to others (military, trade). That strategy isn’t entirely dominant, but you are also somewhat restricted in your choice of strategy by the ‘home world’ card you’re dealt to start the game; if you get New Sparta, you almost have to use the military strategy, for example.

So it might surprise regular readers to hear me offer a strong recommendation for the Race for the Galaxy app ($6.99 on iTunes or Google Play) given what I’ve said before about the game itself. Those problems still hold true in the app, of course – this is a faithful implementation of the physical game. The app, however, is just about perfect in how it implements the game, with strong AI players (on the hard setting), and because it’s so fast to play, you can start to learn what’s in the deck a little faster to get yourself up to speed.

In Race for the Galaxy, players must build out their tableau of cards, representing worlds, ships, or people in their empire, using specific action types each turn – drawing cards, spending them to play cards, producing goods on cards that have that power, trading goods for more cards, or trading goods for victory points. Cards you play also carry victory point values of their own for the end of the game, and some award bonuses based on what else you have already played. You start with a home world card that, as I said above, kind of dictates your strategy for the game – some home worlds are ideal for trading, some for the military, some for the produce/consume strategy.

On a turn, each player chooses one of the available seven actions, and then the choices are all revealed simultaneously. Every player gets to take all of the actions chosen in that round, but you get an extra ability when taking the action you chose, such as building for one card less than the normal cost, or getting to keep two cards of the ones you draw instead of just one. Turns are fast, and players can usually do their turns at the same time. The game ends when one player has built (played) 12 cards to the table, or when the communal pool of victory point chips is exhausted.

The app is nearly perfect, and it helps reduce the time new players might spend learning what’s in the deck and what cards are useful (or even essential) for certain strategies – for example, if you are trying the military strategy, getting the cost-6 development card New Galactic Order, which gives you one victory point per unit of military strength on all your cards, is critical. The AI players move very quickly, and the actions chosen by each player are clearly visible twice, once at selection, then during the round in a bar on the left side of the screen that highlights the actions in use for the round. You can see the details on any card – the app uses the graphics from the physical game – with a double-tap, which is necessary to play it on a small screen, and you can see key details, like cards or VP tokens remaining, easily on the right side. You can also see how many cards your opponents have played and what goods they have available without expanding their tableaus, so you have ample warning if the game is approaching its end. There’s an undo button on the right-side menu for just about every action you can take, and the app requires your confirmation of certain actions, like discarding cards or trading multiple goods. The trading/consuming mechanism isn’t quite obvious – when that phase starts, cards with a trade or consume function will be highlighted, and you must click the card you wish to use, then drag the good(s) you wish to trade/consume off into the blank area next to your tableau.

I did mention above a few times that the produce/consume x2 strategy, where you alternate turns producing goods and selling them for victory points with bonuses, tends to be the optimal strategy, but the first time I beat two AI players in the app came via a military strategy. I started with New Sparta and blitzed my way through to twelve cards before either AI player could really get rolling with production and consumption:

You’re damn right I’m proud of that one. So it can be done, but it requires a bit of luck and leaves you no margin for error – which I think is more evidence that the hard AI players are up to snuff.

The app comes with the New Worlds mini-expansion, and the Rebel vs. Imperium and Gathering Storms are available as in-app purchases.

The new board game app for Lotus (itunes) • android), a 2016 title from designers Mandy & Jordan Goddard, comes from the same studio that brought us the wonderful Lanterns app last year, and the game has a very similar look and feel from the graphics to the animations to the sound. The game itself is quite simple and should lend itself well to the app format, but there are a couple of problems with the implementation that keep me from recommending it yet.

On each turn, a player has two actions, which can include placing one or two petals from his/her hand to a single flower, trading in cards for others from the player’s own deck, or adding a ‘guardian’ with his/her symbol to a flower already underway. Each petal card has a specific color and shows one or two icons of your own symbol; when a flower is finished, there’s a bonus for the player who had the most symbols on the flower, whether from petal cards or guardians. When your turn ends, you can refill your hand from your deck or take ‘wild’ flower cards from the table, which have a specific color but no player symbols, and thus are useful for finishing a flower but not for gaining control of it.

When a flower is finished, there are two bonuses handed out. The player who finishes a flower gets one point per petal on the flower, from three (purple) to seven (pink). The player who had the most tokens on the flower, whether from petals or from guardians, gets a second bonus, which can be five points regardless of flower type, or can give the player one of three special abilities for the remainder of the game: a hand size limit of 5 instead of 4, the ability to play three or more petals to one flower in a single action, or adding a guardian with double the influence. The first two are extremely valuable if you get them early, but I’ve had minimal success with the bigger guardian and prefer to skip it for the five points.

Lotus largely devolves into a game of chicken, where you’re trying to force other players to play petals so that you can finish off one or more flowers on your turn, especially the higher-valued pink or white flowers. There’s always the five-point bonus you get when you have the most petals/guardians on a flower someone else finishes, but even that is subject to change if an opponent plays wisely. If you finish the most flowers, you’ll probably win, even if you weren’t working too hard on maintaining control via your symbols – you’ll get a few along the way regardless. So often players, even the AI players, will trade cards to burn off an action in the hopes that someone else will place cards that make it easier to finish a flower next time. It’s a bit of a drag, and also boosts the luck factor because you need to get the right cards at the optimal time.

The app is gorgeous and runs smoothly, but I have two real issues with it, one of which is that the AI players are not very good, even on the ‘hard’ setting. I had never played this game before I downloaded the app, but can easily beat the hard AI when playing one or two opponents, and usually win or come in second with three. The AI players just don’t utilize the added abilities well enough to compete with a decent human player. The other issue is the lack of an undo function. You have two actions on your turn, and thus should be able to undo the first one before you’ve taken your second one. This is a simple enough function for the programmers to include and I think it’s a necessary one for a board game app that isn’t real-time or involves revealing information with each action. So while the game itself is pretty and pleasant to play, I think both of this issues need to be addressed before I can recommend it.