Race for the Galaxy: Brink of War

This made my game crash frequently and it would not boot afterward until a reinstall.

With each expansion the quality becomes slightly diminished with the complexity that is added. The fact that BoW is added on top of Gathering Storm, and Rebel vs Imperium, makes it all the more bloated. It's main mechanic addition is the prestige system which is mostly just another form of victory points. The main difference is that these points can be sacrificed for various added benefits (e.g. an extra boost to the benefit of your selected action). The amount you get to use it for special actions is very limited (only once per match). So it's a disproportionate addition of rules for something you can use so little. To its credit, it doesn't break the game in any way. It still flows nicely, and I actually do enjoy playing it digitally, but I wouldn't want to play it tabletop with the management overhead this expansion adds.

Cards

Continuing the direction set in Rebel vs Imperium expansion, BoW adds more powerful cards than what can be found in the base game: the first ever nine-cost development card (Planet Buster, which allows you to destroy opponent worlds on their tableau), as well as a couple more 9 cost/strength worlds. The planet buster is a fun card, but it's rightfully hard to execute. A couple other favorites of mine are Federation Capitol (which doubles your prestige score) and Terraforming Engineers (which allows you to replace a world already played for a better world). Most other cards are variations on the base game cards or add abilities for "prestige" usage.

Verdict

It's good enough, but not essential. It's tailored towards those that have played RftG and all previous expansions to death, and desperately need variety.

See my reviews on the base game and other expansions here:

Race for the Galaxy
https://steamcommunity.com/id/odog502/recommended/579940/

Gathering Storm
https://steamcommunity.com/id/odog502/recommended/647070/

Rebel vs Imperium
https://steamcommunity.com/id/odog502/recommended/647071/

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Love this game, but this DLC is a mess.

Technically I'm getting crashed all the time when it's active, none of the others or base game, did I have a problem.

Design-wise, it really messes up the balance of the game. Several new cards provide ridiculously high score and playing them amounts to an automatic win, not just for the AI either, I've won several matches by outrageous margins, and it robs the game of competitiveness.

The base game and other DLC's are awesome, but only get this for completion's sake, or to try out the (really cool) new mechanics. Get it on sale, though.

This is an interesting expansion, both positively as well as negatively.
Brink of War adds cool new cards, new starting worlds, new goals and a brand new Prestige mechanic. Some of the new cards have a brand new Prestige icon that gives the player 1 Prestige. Prestige cards also have advanced combo ways to gain even more Prestige. So what is Prestige for? For starters each point scores 1 VP at the end of the game but that is the least of it. Each turn, the player(s) with the most Prestige points will gain 1 free VP and if the leading player is not contested at all, he also gets to draw 1 free card. This bonus starts at 1 Prestige, so it's very interesting to see players contest the leading first place(s). It's even possible to have 4 players tie and each will be gaining 1 VP at the end of the turn until someone gathers more than the rest! Once per game, there is a new phase that can be used that preceeds all other phases and allows for a targeted search of a card through the whole card deck and discard pile! You don't get to choose a specific card, but it offers many choices from which you will only ever pick 1. The game will find you the first card that meets the criteria and you can take it or leave it! Also once per game, each player may discard 1 Prestige point to enhance one of the existing phases! Those bonuses are already on top of the phase choice bonus, so you could -for example- take a juicy -3 development cost or an equaly juicy -3 cost to settle a world! Those are really cool and will give you the moment of triumpth, but don't forget that the enemies get to use them too! All in all, the expansion is a good buy that ends the digital expansion cycle and remedies the mediocre Rebell VS Imperium bitterness.

Verdict: Not a nescessary adition but if you decide to buy the previous one, I highlly recommend buying this aswell.

In this case, more is less aside from additional bugs. The most important thing to know is that it crashes a lot once this DLC has been activated. Some cards will give you prestige. Every action phase has an aditional prestige bonus. Settling planets will reduce the cost by -2 for example for 1 prestige, exploration will let you draw 6 cards and keep 2 for 1 prestige etc. It's not a new mechanic, it just adds more bloat. Another feature here is the new search action phase which can be selected once per game and let you search for a specific card.

Bottom line is, there are too many bonuses and cards. It's much harder to chase strategies. Cards are also cluttered with symbols now due to the additional prestige bonus. It feels like it's designed for more than 4 players in mind while the game's player limit is 4. This expansion doesn't make sense, the elegance is lost. Rebel vs Imperium is the way to play the first arc in my opinion. A big thumb down, avoid.

Note: This expansion requires Gathering Storm and Rebel vs Imperium.