Since Tom didn‘t… not really, I will try to give a rules overview. My secondary goal is to commit the rules to memory better by writing them down in my own words.
I have managed to go over the base game rules for the most part as my kickstarted copy arrived. Apparently, I am a Cole Wehrle fangirl and couldn‘t help it. I love his games even when I cannot get them played enough—love doesn‘t prevent criticism or understanding how people may not have the same view, I feel that needs mention over and over.
So the game is a card game played in „tricks“ with a map and a majority scoring system. It goes more or less like this:
- Put the map on the table. It consists of sectors with planets some of which are adjacent. It‘s a map though no matter the weird cake layout. Each planet is associated with one of 5 resources.
- There are setup cards that show each player where to put their starting city, shipyard and ships which are all the types of pieces you get to have on the map
- The game is a race for points over 5 Chapters (each chapter consisting of a number of „tricks“—6 at most). You get points from scoring „Ambitions“ (Terraforming Mars calls them Milestones). A maximum of 3 can be activated for any given chapter.
- At the start of a chapter you get a hand of 6 cards—the deck has 4 suits and depending on players cards from 0 to 7 or 2-6. Each suit is associated with certain actions. I‘ll get to those. Each card has a number and action pips. Higher numbers have fewer pips.
- The player with the „Initiative“ Marker starts the trick with a card they play. They get to execute the number of actions on the card.
- Optionally: put the „declare ambition“ marker over the top of your card, setting the number to 0 and activate an ambition/milestone for the current chapter. No scoring yet, you are just betting that you will do well on that one this round
- Other players have these options:
- Play the same suit lower number: execute 1 action of that suit
- Play the same suit higher number: execute all actions your card has of that suit (also gets you the Initiative Marker unless someone does the „seize“ special below)
- Play another suit (no need to follow suit as far as I can tell, it is entirely optional) and get 1 action
- Play any card facedown to execute 1 action of the leading suit
- Additionally: play a second card facedown (sacrificing an action) to „seize the Initiative“ which can only be done once per trick. No matter what anyone else played you get the Initiative marker and start the next trick.
- Once everyone has played their cards, they go to the discard and the next trick is started by the player with the Initiative marker. edit: If the player with the Initiative marker is out of cards the marker passes to the next player. When all players run out of cards, the chapter ends, the milestones are scored and then milestones reset and players get new cards for the next chapter. Repeat 5 times.
So that is the basic card play. Here are the actions you can do (the player aid is better than the rulebook, much more concise):
- Build (suits: Construction): ships, cities or starports get built
- Repair (suits: Construction, Administration): everything on the map can be damaged and therefore be repaired
- Tax (suits: Administration): get resources from planets in systems you have the most ships in
- Move (suits: Aggression, Mobilization): move ships, edit: possibly with special catapult moves if starting at a starport
- Influence (suits: Administration, Mobilization): put agents on court cards
- Secure (suits: Aggression): take court cards where you have a majority of agents
- Battle: (suits: Agression): edit: this is an action not a consequence of moving. In any system where your freshly moved ships encounter other players presence, you get to battle. You have a choice of 3 types of dice with different faces. You get to combine your roll with any types up to the number of ships you sent into combat. You can hit or intercept your own ships, damage opponent ships or cities or starports and steal their stuff depending on your roll.
edit: Resources: obtained from taxing cities in systems you control. Resources can be used to obtain majorities for scoring. But they can also be discarded during your prelude (after playing a card but before executing your actions from your cards).
- Fuel: gives you 1 move action
- Goods: gives you 1 build action
- Weapons: adds „Battle“ to your card as an action option no matter what suit
- Relics: gives you 1 influence action
- Psionics: gives you 1 action of the lead card (even if you played it yourself)
The Court: a small market row of cards with the funky stuff that seems a typical Cole Wehrle element. These seem to let you chain and combo and generally do crazy things that the base rules won‘t let you. I haven‘t looked much at the cards. What I know is that they also contribute „resource“ icons for scoring ambitions.
edit: they can give you „prelude“ actions to play during your turn, entirely new action options, passive abilities, some can be discarded to quickly create a bunch of fresh ships
Overall I find the actions mostly intuitive in what they can do. How to apply them is a different matter. But this is about rules complexity vs decision complexity and the former is less than the latter which I think is good.
How do you score an ambition (Milestone)? Having a majority of the associated resource.
- Tycoon, Keeper and Empath are directly associated with 4 of the 5 resources.
- Tyrant and Warlord depend on how many captives (agents seized from the court or rival cities) or trophies (killed ships/agents from battle) you have.
edit: additionally all the ambition markers can be flipped to give more points. this happens automatically as the chapters move on, escalating the race towards the end
But that‘s it as far as I can tell.
In subsequent games you can add some asymmetric powers.
And I have no idea how the campaign works…
The rules seem like a cohesive whole thing and the player aids are pretty good. The ship meeples are adorable. I can‘t wait to dig into the court deck and the asymmetric powers to find the crazy stuff…
But this has to be the simplest ruleset (so far) I have encountered on any of his games. I hope I get to find out how it actually plays soon.