SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence rules refresher

Read the refresher

You are trying to score the most points over five rounds, mostly by finding traces of alien life and helping discover the two hidden species. You do that by launching probes into the solar system, orbiting and landing on planets, scanning sectors of sky with telescopes, analyzing the data you collect, and researching technology.

For setup, remember the three central discs and the four sector boards start in a random configuration, lined up so there are eight clean sectors, each with one nearby star. Each nearby star gets enough data tokens to fill its data slot, and some slots are longer than others. Two of the five alien boards go face down in the slots on the planetary board, and the other three go back in the box unseen. Shuffle each of the twelve tech stacks separately, technology side down, and put a two point tile on top of each stack. The four gold scoring tiles go beside the board, random side up. Deal three cards face up as the card row. Build four end of round stacks, each holding one more card than there are players. One rotation token goes on its marked space on the tech board, the other on the first end of round stack as a reminder. In a three player game put one neutral marker above the twenty point space and one above the thirty point space; in a two player game put two above each; in a four player game ignore them entirely. Everyone starts with four publicity, four credits, three energy, and five cards, then tucks one card under their income card. Your score starts at one for the first player, two for the second, and so on.

Each round, players take turns clockwise starting from the starting player, skipping anyone who has passed. On your turn you take exactly one main action, plus any number of free actions before, during, or after it. Your main action is launch a probe, orbit a planet, land on a planet or moon, scan nearby stars, analyze data, play a card for its effect, research a tech, or pass. When your turn is finished, resolve any milestones anyone has crossed, then resolve any alien species that has just been discovered. Passing is itself a main action, and once everyone has passed the round is over, everyone takes income, and the starting player marker moves one space to the left. After five rounds the game ends.

Launching costs two credits and puts a probe on Earth. By default you may only have one probe in space at a time, and if you are at that limit you cannot launch. Figures already on the planetary board are not probes in space. Movement is a free action, not a main action: spend one energy to move one probe one orthogonally adjacent space, and some cards can be discarded for movement. Leaving a space with asteroids costs one extra movement. The sun is not a space. Whenever you move onto a space with a publicity icon, gain one publicity, though Earth gives none.

To orbit, pay one credit and one energy with a probe on a planet other than Earth. Move the figure to that planet's orbit on the planetary board and gain the bonuses printed above the planet. The first player to orbit a planet also scores three points and covers that space. To land, pay three energy, or only two if there is already an orbiter at that planet, no matter whose. Gain the bonuses in the middle of the planet, which always include a life trace and some points. The first player to land also gets data and covers that space; Mars has two such spaces. You cannot land on moons unless a tech or effect allows it, and each moon holds only one lander.

Scanning costs one credit and two energy. You mark one signal in Earth's sector, and you discard one card from the card row and mark one signal in one of the two sectors matching that card's upper right corner, then refill the row. Telescope techs may add more, in any order you like, up to four signals. To mark a signal, take the leftmost data token from that sector's data slot into your data pool and replace it with your marker. Marking a signal is never optional. If your marker goes in the second position of a slot, score two points immediately. Your data pool holds at most six data; discard any excess.

When you replace the last data token in a slot you complete that sector, and you resolve it after finishing your main action. The player with the most markers in the slot wins the sector, ties going to whoever placed later, and takes the reward beside the nearby star, leaving a marker there. Every player with at least one marker in the slot gains one publicity. Then work out second place by the same tiebreaker; that player leaves one marker on the first space of the slot, all other markers go back, and the slot refills with data. Excess markers beyond the slot's capacity are allowed and still count for winning, they just earn no data.

Analyzing costs one energy and requires the top row of your computer to be full. Placing data from your pool into your computer is a free action, left to right, resolving any space you cover. Computer techs add lower spaces, which can only be filled once the space above them is covered and do not need to be full to analyze. Analyzing discards every data token in your computer, keeps what is in your pool, and lets you mark an analysis life trace for one of the two alien species.

Researching a tech costs six publicity, and you must have at least six. First rotate the solar system, then take the top tile from any stack you don't already have. If you are the first to take from that stack, discard the two point tile and score two points. Gain the bonus printed on the tile, then flip it onto the matching slot on your board. Cards that grant a specific type of tech work the same way but cost no publicity, and you still rotate. Rotating means turning disc one the first time, disc two the second time, disc three the third time, then back to disc one, always one sector counter-clockwise. Probes turn with the discs, but because of cutouts a figure may stay put, or may be bumped into the next space for free, collecting any publicity there.

Playing a card as your main action means paying its printed cost and resolving the white effect. If the effect includes another action, you take it without paying that action's normal cost. Mission cards stay in front of you: conditional missions can be completed as a free action any time the condition is met, then flipped face down, and triggerable missions let you cover a circle with a marker when you do the depicted thing after playing the card, one circle per trigger. End of game scoring cards, the ones with gold boxes, also stay in front of you. Other free actions worth remembering: discard a card for the benefit in its corner, exchange two cards, two credits, or two energy for one card, credit, or energy, and buy a card from the card row or deck for three publicity. A card is used for only one of its benefits. Publicity is capped at ten.

Life traces come in three colors, roughly from scanning, from landing, and from analyzing, plus a universal wildcard. Each alien board has three discovery spaces below it; place your marker on an unmarked matching space to gain one publicity and five points. If every matching space is taken, place your marker on an overflow space instead and score three points. When all three discovery spaces under a board are filled, that species is discovered after the current turn: flip the board, read the sheet, follow its setup, and the three contributors get their rewards. After that, the board itself offers many more spaces to mark for matching traces.

Milestones resolve between turns, after free actions, starting with the player whose turn just ended and proceeding clockwise, with neutral milestones always last. When you reach or pass twenty-five, fifty, or seventy points, mark one gold scoring tile, taking the highest value still free on it; you may never mark the same tile twice. When you reach or pass a neutral milestone in a game of fewer than four players, move a nonplayer marker to the leftmost empty discovery space, which can itself trigger a discovery.

When you pass, you may take free actions on that turn first, then discard down to four cards, then, if you are the first to pass this round, rotate the solar system, then choose one card from this round's end of round stack. In round five you still rotate. The round ends once the last player has chosen from the two remaining cards and the leftover is discarded. Between rounds everyone takes income from their income card and all tucked cards, and the starting player marker moves on. Tucking a card for income also gives you its resource immediately.

After the fifth round, score your end of game scoring cards, then your gold scoring tiles, then any extra scoring a discovered species adds. Each gold tile rewards sets: the tech tiles reward either sets of three techs, one of each type, or pairs of techs; the mission tiles reward completed missions, or pairs made from completed missions and end of game scoring cards; the income tiles reward sets of three tucked cards, one of each type, or your most tucked income type, credits or energy, ignoring what is printed on the starting income card; and the other tiles reward sets of three life traces, one of each color with overflow markers counting, or sector wins paired with orbiters and landers, whichever of those two numbers is smaller. Most points wins, and if players are tied, the tie stands.

A turn, played out

It is round 3, your turn. You sit on 23 points with 3 credits, 4 energy, 5 publicity and 5 data in your pool. Your computer's top row has 1 empty space left. You want to scan, and scanning brings in data, so you first take a free action. You place 1 data from your pool into that last top row space. Your pool drops to 4, and your top row is now full, which lets you analyze on a later turn. Now the main action. You pay 1 credit and 2 energy, leaving 2 credits and 2 energy. First, Earth's sector. Its slot has 5 spaces. The first holds a red marker and the other 4 still hold data. You take the leftmost data token into your pool, now 5, and your marker takes its place. That is the second position, so you score 2 points right away and reach 25. Next, the card row. One of the 3 cards has a corner matching two sectors, and one of those is a sector whose slot is 3 spaces long. It holds a white marker, then your marker from an earlier turn, then 1 last data token. You discard that card and mark there. The last data token comes to your pool, now exactly 6, the most it can hold. Your marker replaces it, and the sector is complete. The row refills to 3 cards. With your main action done, the sector resolves. You have 2 markers in the slot and white has 1, so you win. You take the reward printed beside that nearby star and leave a marker there. You and white each gain 1 publicity, putting you at 6. White is second, so 1 white marker stays on the first space of the slot. Your 2 markers come back to you, and the slot refills with data. Your turn ends, so milestones resolve. You reached 25, so you mark a gold scoring tile, the one rewarding sets of 3 life traces, on its highest free value. Next turn you can analyze for 1 energy, or spend your 6 publicity on a tech.