Race for the Galaxy storage

17 Jan 2010. (This joke will be lost in translation unless you are a Malaysian or Singaporean Chinese) When these two first-to-3-Uplift-cards and first-to-3-Alien-cards goals come up in the same game (the bottom centre two), Michelle and I would say, "Oh it's Ah Beng and Ah Lian again". Ah Beng and Ah Lian are common Chinese names in the Hokkien dialect, often used to refer to men and women respectively who are uncultured, unfashionable, and generally uncool and embarrassing to hang around with. "Ah Lian" because, of course, it sounds a little like "Alien"; and "Ah Beng" because Ah Beng always goes together with Ah Lian.

In this particular game I had moderate military strength (5), but was able to use my temporary military strength to settle the 9-defense Rebel Stronghold (highest valued military world). I had to discard the New Military Tactics card for the 3-strength boost, and also had to discard a card from my hand to gain the 1-strength boost from Rebel Convict Mines. I had drawn the 7-defense Rebel Homeworld card too, but I wasn't able to settle it, since I had to use my New Military Tactics for the Rebel Stronghold. Not enough military strength left.

Michelle had this very powerful card combination of Contact Specialist (top right) and Rebel Pact (top centre). Military worlds could be treated as non-military worlds and could be settled at a -3 discount. This meant she could settle 3-defense military worlds for free. To both our surprise, she didn't win this game, because, unfortunately, she didn't draw many military worlds.

This is a step-by-step guide on how I store my Race for the Galaxy:

I own both the expansions Gathering Storm and Rebel vs Imperium, so here are all the components. I use the box of Gathering Storm, because it's small, and because the Rebel vs Imperium box (which I like a lot more) was badly damaged when I received it.

From top to bottom, left to right. (1) Box bottom, with rules to the expansions only. I left the base game rules and ref sheets in the base game box. (2) Box cover. (3) Start worlds cards. (4) The main deck of cards. (5) Military strength track. (6) Orange objective tiles. (7) Red and green player action cards, for Michelle and I respectively. Almost all my games are 2-player games. (8) One bag for all the compenents for solo play, which I don't do nowadays. (9) One bag for spare cards and victory point chips not needed for a 2P game, and other extra cards. (10) One bag for all cubes, markers, victory point chips etc needed for a 2P game. I later realised that I didn't really need the Takeover On/Off marker (because we always play with On anyway), and some of the cubes too, so I moved them to the (9) bag.

First I put the box cover under the box bottom, creating a small tray. I put in the unused-for-2P bag first, and the military strength tracks.

Next the solo components bag go in. I arrange the cards in this order - start worlds, player action cards, the rest of the cards.

Cards on the right, objective tiles in the middle, and the required-for-2P bag on the left, on top of the solo components bag.

A view from an angle. I could have covered this with the box cover, but I didn't even want to bother with opening and closing the box.

Normally I stick in my score recording notepad too. This is a souvenir that a friend brought back from Beijing.

Occasionally I put my camera here too. My camera is an old Canon IXUS 4.0 which I absolutely love, even though it is very very outdated by now. It has broken down once, after about four years of use. I bought another camera then, but I found that I liked my IXUS more than the new one (Panasonic Lumix), so I had it repaired, and continued to use it. Now the Lumix is just lying around waiting for the IXUS to break down beyond repair. The Lumix will itself be very outdated by then, I think.