- Skill Card -> replacing Command Card
- Tactic Card -> replacing Gambit Card
- Conquer Markers -> replaces the term 'Quantum Cubes'
- Conquering -> replaces the term 'constructing' and 'placing a quantum cube'
- Fleet Dice -> refer to your ship dice on the board
- Reserve Dice -> refer to your ship dice you can use with 'Expansion'
- Disable Cards -> Cards can now be unusable for a period of time. Flip the card face down to show it's disabled.
- Tokens -> Some cards may refer to generic tokens.
- Missile -> New token and mechanic, see below
- Reset Dominance/Reset Research -> term for when you reset your dice on your player aid at the end of the turn. The original game had no term for this directly.
- Take a card -> player selects either a Skill, Tactic, or Expansion card.
- Combat roll -> replaces 'weapons or defenses combat roll'
- Planet number -> the number printed on the planet.
Explanation for each new mechanic is listed under it.
In addition to the Skill deck and Tactic deck, there is now an Expansion pool. During setup each player places their reserve die into this pool near the Tactic and Skill cards. When a player selects a card, they may instead choose a reserve die.
Potentially reduce the reserve dice by 1, and have a single gold die always in the reserve, there fore there should be only one die per player, plus the gold die.
The fleet expansion ability as a Tactic Card is an odd choice. This ability should scale with the number of players, but it has a fixed number in the deck. In low player counts you can get flooded with Expansion cards you can't use, and vice versa in high player counts. Expansion is just one path to victory, but it is over-represented in the Tactic deck. We feel moving it to it's own pool fixes these issues.
At the start of the game, each player secretly receives two Skill cards. They choose one to keep and the other is shuffled back into the deck.
We found that getting that first Skill quickly was pretty key to stay competitive. So much so, that when new players did not rush for that first planet, or weren't lucky with their fleet roll, they were behind all game. Starting with a Skill helps with this, makes the game play slightly faster, and gives players a potential direction early game to take their faction.
Card order is maintained in the face up cards of the Skill and Tactic deck. When a card is taken, the remaining face up cards slide away to make space of the newly revealed card to be placed closest to the deck.
If a player selects a card in the third position (farthest from the deck), they may also look at the top card of the deck to select it. If they select the top-deck card, they return the face-up card back to the third position. If they select the face-up card, the remaining face-up cards are slid down and the top-deck card is placed in the first position.
Having stale face-up cards in Quantum is a common and frustrating problem. This is our current best approach at solving this. It gives undesired cards a slight bonus by letting the player peek at the top of the deck as well.
You may spend a Missile to change any player's combat roll to a 1. You may spend missiles at any time. Missiles may be traded between players. Each player starts the game with a missile.
This new rule is trying to solve two problems. Many times winning or losing the game comes down to a single die roll. A good player will not hinge their strategy on one risky move, but try to spread out the risk through several potential strategies and backup plans. Still, you can get hit with bad luck and lose the game due to 3 subpar rolls in a row. Missiles attempt to reduce that bad RNG feeling in a very limited way. It provides each player with a small window of control that they get to choose exactly when to use it. We've intetionally made Missiles rare for this reason. Secondly, it provides a resource in the game to trade and make deals with, which will hopefully open up some interesting decision space for players.
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Choose a map layout and create it.
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Shuffle the Skill deck
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Each Player
- Take a Player Aid board, 7 Dice, 1 Missile token, and the number of Conquer Markers required for the map.
- Draw 2 Skill cards, select one and return the other to the bottom of the skill deck.
- Place one of your Conquer Markers onto your home system
- Place a die onto the Research tracker and a die onto the Dominance tracker on your board. Set both to 1.
- Place two of your dice in the Reserve by the Skill and Tactic cards.
- Roll three of your dice and place them into the orbital spaces around your home planet in any configuration. You may re-roll any of these dice once.
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Shuffle the Skill deck and the Tactic deck. Place them near the board and reveal the top three cards for each.
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Create the Expansion deck by taking expansion cards equal to the number of players plus one. Place this near the board.
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The Player that has the lowest total sum of their Fleet Dice goes first. Resolve ties in any preferred way.
Just a concise summary on how to begin the game with the new mechanics and terms.
- 3 Actions
- Ship Abilities (once per ship)
- Card Abilities
- If your Dominance is at 6, reset it then Conquer any planet.
- If your Research is at 6, reset it then take a card.
- Take a card for each planet Conquered this turn.
Flat tokens that fit on a space of the board and a die can sit on top of. Used by the Hypernet Gate Tactic
A small token representing a missile. Arrow Chits from The Game Crafter would work great.
Tokens to represent spent actions on the Ambitious Skill. You can use anything you like.