Voidfall rules refresher

Read the refresher

The goal is to have the most Influence at the end of the third Cycle. You get there by playing a Focus card each turn. Focus cards let you grow your sectors, produce resources, build fleets, gain Technologies and Agendas, advance your Civilization tracks, and invade. You then score Influence at the end of each Cycle from Galactic Event objectives and your Agendas.

For setup, the scenario decides the map, your Home sector, and where Glory tokens start. Bounty and Reclaim tokens sit face down on sectors no player controls. Each House mat starts with one Agenda in the leftmost slot, which is your starting Agenda, and a starting Technology at the top. Your Home sector's Population is shown by your player colored die. Your Fleet Power cubes sit in the Inactive and Active areas of your House mat, and you have fourteen in total. Trade tokens start stacked on the Galactic board. There is a separate Galactic Event deck for each Cycle. The Agenda board shows one face up offer for each of the four Agenda types. On the Galactic board, the Improvement Block tile covers the Improved Technology offer in Cycle 1. That means the only Improved Technology you can reach in Cycle 1 is the one matching your starting Technology, next to your House mat. Your Innovation Focus card is not available in Cycle 1. It comes into your hand at the end of that Cycle.

The game is three Cycles. Each Cycle has a Preparation Phase, a Focus Phase, and an Evaluation Phase.

In Preparation, from Cycle 2 onward, you do three things first. Return the bottommost Trade token on the Galactic board to the box. Update the Improved Technology offer: in Cycle 2 remove the Improvement Block tile, and in Cycle 3 remove any Improved Technologies still on offer and lay out the next four from the deck. Then choose Turn Order. Players pick slots on the Turn Order track in order of lowest Influence first. A tie in Influence goes to whoever was later in the previous Cycle's order. With two or three players, use only the leftmost two or three slots. In Cycle 1, skip all of that and start here instead: reveal the top Galactic Event for this Cycle and box the rest of that Cycle's deck. Then resolve the text boxes on its left half from top to bottom. A solid border means you must resolve it completely, and if you can't, you ignore the whole box. A dashed gray border means it's optional. Icons tell you whether each player resolves the box in turn order or the group resolves it once. An ongoing box lasts the whole Cycle. A delayed box kicks in only after each player's first turn.

The Focus Phase runs as many rounds as the number in the top right corner of the Galactic Event. Each round, everyone takes one full turn in Turn Order. A turn has three steps: Selection, Actions, and Cleanup. After the last round comes Evaluation. There, each player in Turn Order resolves a Voidborn Skirmish, pays Upkeep, scores the Galactic Event objectives, scores their Agendas, and takes their discarded Focus cards back into hand.

Now the details, starting with your turn. In Selection you must play exactly one Focus card from your hand. You may also flip one of your Trade tokens and set it by the Focus. You may also play one Agenda card from your hand next to it, as long as one of the Focus icons on the Agenda matches your chosen Focus. If nothing new has been revealed yet, you can take this step back and choose again.

In the Actions step, you take up to two of the Focus card's three actions, in any order. You can take all three if you flipped a Trade token. Each action happens at most once. To take an action, pay its whole cost first, or you can't take it at all. Then resolve or skip its effects as you like. A plus sign on a green line means you may take any or all of the options. A slash on a red line means you pick just one. If you played an Agenda, you may take its action, which has no cost, before or after your other actions. Some Technologies name a Focus in blue. When that's your selected Focus, you may take that Technology's action too, paying any cost shown. If an effect triggers other effects, resolve them in any order, all optional, before you start your next action.

In Cleanup, do four things in order. First, any sector with three or more of your Fleet tokens must recall Fleet Power to your Active area until the rest fits on two tokens. Second, if you have more than four Glory tokens, discard down to four. Third, if you played an Agenda, you have three choices. You can put it in an empty slot other than your starting slot. You can swap it for one of your non starting Agendas, sending the old one face down to the bottom of its deck and keeping any Trade token that was on it. Or you can discard the new one to the bottom of its deck. You can never have two Agendas of the same type in your slots. Fourth, return any flipped Trade token to the Galactic board. Each other Trade token must either sit on the corner of one of your Agendas that doesn't already have one, or go back to the Galactic board. Finally, your Focus card goes face up into your discard pile.

Next, resources and production. You have five resources: Food, Energy, Materials, Credits, and Science. Each caps at fifteen, and none can go below zero. When you spend Food, Energy, or Materials, Credits can stand in one for one, but never for Science and never for Upkeep. Your Production Level for a resource is the total Population of every sector holding a Guild of that type. Each Guild counts separately, the Level maxes at thirteen, and your starting Agenda may add one. When you produce, you gain your Production Yield, which is the smaller number tied to that Level, not the Level itself. If producing would push a resource past fifteen, the excess is lost, but you gain three Influence each time that happens. That's called overproducing. Gaining resources some other way and losing the excess doesn't count.

Sectors are adjacent if they share an edge, but a Voidstorm token between them breaks adjacency. You control a sector if your Fleet Power is on it. Your Home sector stays yours even if it's empty, and it can never be invaded. A sector holding Voidborn Fleets is a Voidborn sector. A sector with no Fleet Power, such as a Fallen House, belongs to no one and is defended by its Sector Defenses. Each sector has Guild spaces and Installation spaces. You fill them left to right, and the space showing an Upkeep icon is always filled last. There are five Guilds, one for each resource. The three Installations work like this. Shipyards help you deploy. Sector Defenses deal one Approach Damage when defending. Starbases need their Technology, act as Shipyards, and also deal one Approach Damage. You can build on Corrupted sectors. You can never willingly destroy, move, or overbuild. Population runs from one to six. You can only increase or decrease the Population of a Pure sector. Decreasing is a cost, works only outside your Home sector, and can't go below one.

Fleet Power is either Inactive, Active, or Deployed on a Fleet token in one of your sectors. Activating moves a cube from Inactive to Active. Deactivating moves one from Active to Inactive. If you must deactivate and have nothing Active, you recall a cube first. Deploying moves a cube from Active onto a sector, and you choose its Fleet type as you do. Corvettes are always available. Sentries, Destroyers, Dreadnoughts, and Carriers each need their matching Technology, and some charge a resource cost. Recalling sends a cube from the map back to your Active area. You can't willingly recall just to redeploy. A Fleet token holds one to three Fleet Power. Basic Dreadnoughts and Basic Carriers hold only one each. You can split and merge Fleets of the same type in a sector freely. If you ever recall the last Fleet Power from a sector other than your Home sector, you discard a Glory token and that sector is abandoned. When a sector is abandoned, the Voidborn take it over. Remove its Installations but leave its Guilds. Place a Corruption under its Population die if there isn't one already. Then add a Voidborn Fleet with two Fleet Power and a face down Bounty token.

There are two kinds of movement. Regroup gives you up to five moves, each one moving a Fleet Power to an adjacent sector you control, and you can't use it to empty a sector other than your Home sector. Invade targets one sector you don't control: a Voidborn sector, a sector with no Fleet Power, or another player's sector other than their Home sector. Move in any number of your Fleet Power from sectors adjacent to the target, then fight. You may leave sectors empty this way, but you discard a Glory token for each one you abandon.

Combat is fully deterministic. In Combat, only how much Fleet Power each side has and its types matter, not how many tokens. Each Damage you take means you recall one Fleet Power of your choice from the combat sector. Installations and Guilds never take Damage. Combat starts with the Approach step. In Approach, each of the Defender's Sector Defenses, Starbases, and Sentry Fleet Power deals one Damage, along with any Approach Damage from Technologies, and both sides deal theirs at the same time. Then come repeated Salvo steps. At the start of each Salvo, each side counts Initiative. Each Corvette, Destroyer, Dreadnought, Carrier, and Voidborn Fleet Power gives one. Sentries give one to the Invader and none to the Defender. The higher side deals one Damage. The lower side then recounts, and deals one back if it still has any Initiative. If Initiative is tied, both deal one simultaneously. Keep going until a side runs out of Fleet Power. Absorption cancels one Damage, and Approach Absorption only cancels Approach Damage, while Salvo Absorption only cancels Salvo Damage. A few Fleet type details are easy to forget. Dreadnoughts add one Initiative if present and absorb Approach Damage when invading. Destroyers add one Initiative for the Invader and deal extra Salvo Damage once per Combat. Carriers deploy a Corvette per Carrier Fleet Power when invading. The Corvette upgrade Technologies apply once for your whole Corvette force, not per cube.

If only the Defender has Fleet Power left, nothing happens. If you win as the Invader, the sector is yours and any Corruption on it stays. Then, in any order, remove its Installations but not its Guilds, flip and resolve each Bounty and Reclaim token, and take its Glory tokens. If it wasn't a player sector, you gain Influence equal to the total value of all your Glory tokens, even if you took none. If it was a player sector, you instead gain Influence equal to the total of their Glory, and they discard one Glory token of their choice. Special sectors may give a one time effect. Taking a Fallen House sector does several things. It raises your Technology limit to six. You choose one of the two Technologies on its card and gain the Basic version if it's available and you have a free slot. You resolve the bottom effects in that sector. Finally, you keep your first Fallen House card as a sixth Technology slot, while any later one is discarded. If both sides end with nothing, it's a tie: the Defender discards a Glory token, and the sector is abandoned to the Voidborn. The exception is invading a sector with no Fleet Power. If you have nothing left after Approach there, the Defender simply wins.

The Skirmish opens each Evaluation. The Voidborn invade one of your sectors with Fleet Power equal to the number of Corruption on your Civilization tracks and Agenda slots, plus one in Cycles 2 and 3. A total of zero is an automatic successful defense. The target must be adjacent to a Voidborn sector and can't be your Home sector. A Harbinger on or next to a sector also makes it count as adjacent to a Voidborn sector. The Voidborn prefer a sector they would win or tie in. After that, they choose the one that costs you the most Fleet Power. Then they prefer a Pure sector, then the higher Population, then more Guilds, then a random pick. In Evaluation, everyone picks their target sectors first, in Turn Order. If the Voidborn win, you discard a Glory token, the sector loses its Installations, and it's abandoned with the standard two Voidborn Fleet Power.

Corruption is the price of many actions. When you gain a Corruption, place it on one of your Pure sectors, though Home sectors can't take it. You can also put it above a non starting Agenda slot or on a Civilization track marker. Each of those spots holds only one. If they're all full, you can't pay that cost. A Corrupted Agenda doesn't score. A Corrupted track still advances, but you get no benefit from it. Corrupted sectors and tokens almost never score. Taking a Corrupted Agenda offer means you also gain its Corruption. Invading a Corrupted sector doesn't count as gaining Corruption.

You have three Civilization tracks: Society, Statecraft, and Economy. Advancing moves your marker one space and lets you take the new space's benefit. The first three spaces are Tier 0, the next two are Tier 1, and the last three spaces are Tiers 2, 3, and 4. To enter Tier 3 you must deactivate one Fleet Power, and to enter Tier 4 you must deactivate two. If you can't pay, you can't advance. A skipping space lets you jump straight on to the next space, but you still pay any Tier cost.

Technologies take effect the moment you gain them. A Basic Technology gives its immediate effect, and its Influence bonus if you take the first copy. You're limited to five Technologies, including your starting one, and you can't hold duplicates. Your Improved Technology limit starts at zero. Each track in Tier 1 adds one, and each track in Tier 2 or higher adds one more. You can only upgrade a Basic Technology you already own, using either your starting Technology's Improved card or one on the Galactic board that isn't blocked. When you upgrade, box the Basic card, gain six Influence, and resolve the immediate effect.

Agendas work differently from Technologies. To gain one, choose a type: Dominance, Wealth, Might, or Support. Then either take the face up card and refill the offer, or draw two from that deck, keep one, and put the other on the bottom. Agendas go to your hand, which has no limit, and enter play only during Cleanup on a turn you played them.

Trade tokens come from the bottommost spot on the Galactic board, or the top of a stack of two. When you take one, you get the reward beside that spot or any spot below it. You can't flip a Trade token on the turn you gained it, but you can spend it. When a Trade token is returned in a two player game, it goes on the topmost empty space. With three or four players, if the bottommost stack holds a single token, it goes on top of that stack, otherwise on the topmost empty space. If none are left on the board, you can't gain one. Glory tokens run from one to five. Upgrading one swaps it for exactly one value higher, and a five can't be upgraded.

At Upkeep, count two for each Agenda in your slots that isn't covered by a Trade token, plus one for each occupied Guild or Installation space showing Upkeep, plus any Upkeep printed on sectors you control. Pay each one with one Food, or two Materials or Energy in any mix, but never Credits or Science unless a Technology allows it. You lose three Influence for each one you can't pay. On the Galactic Event's objectives, if a red line separates them, you choose only one, and if a green line separates them, you can score both. An equals sign pays once if you meet the condition. A times sign pays for each time you meet it. Then score every Pure Agenda in your slots, starting Agenda included. Each section is scored separately and always pays Influence.

After the third Cycle's Evaluation the game ends. The player with the most Influence wins. If tied, the tied player with fewer total Corruption tokens on their House mat and controlled sectors wins. If still tied, they share the victory.

A turn, played out

It's Cycle 2, round 3, and you're second in Turn Order. Your Home sector holds one Fleet token with 2 Corvette Fleet Power. To the east is a sector you control, sharing an edge with your Home. It has a Fleet token with 2 Corvettes. Beyond it, sharing an edge with the east sector but not with your Home, is a Voidborn sector. Another player abandoned it last Cycle. So its Installations are gone, but its Food Guild remains. There's a Corruption under its Population die, which shows 3. Sitting on it are a Voidborn Fleet with 2 Fleet Power and a face down Bounty token. You hold two Glory tokens, a 3 and a 2. In Selection you play a Focus card whose actions include Regroup and Invade. You don't flip a Trade token, so you'll take only two of its three actions. Regroup comes first. It gives you up to five moves, each to an adjacent sector you control. You move both Corvettes out of your Home into the east sector. Emptying your Home is fine, since it stays yours and can never be invaded. The east sector now holds 4 Fleet Power. Now you Invade the Voidborn sector. You may only bring Fleet Power from sectors adjacent to it, and only the east sector qualifies. You could send all 4, but that leaves the east sector empty, abandoned to the Voidborn, and costs you a Glory token. So you send 3 and leave 1 behind. Approach comes first. The defender has no Sector Defenses, Starbases or Sentries, and you have no Approach Damage from Technologies. Nobody takes Damage. On to the first Salvo. Your 3 Corvettes give you 3 Initiative against the Voidborn's 2. You're higher, so you deal 1 Damage first, and the Voidborn drop to 1 Fleet Power. They recount, still have 1 Initiative, and deal 1 back. You recall a Corvette to your Active area, leaving 2 in the fight. Second Salvo. You have 2 Initiative, they have 1. You hit first, and their last Fleet Power is gone. They recount to 0 Initiative, so nothing comes back. You win with 2 Corvettes standing. The sector is yours, and its Corruption stays. There are no Installations to remove. You flip the Bounty token and resolve it. There are no Glory tokens to take here. It wasn't a player sector, though, so you gain Influence equal to the Glory you hold: 3 plus 2, so 5 Influence. The Food Guild is now in a sector you control. Its Population of 3 adds 3 to your Food Production Level. But because the sector is Corrupted, you can never raise that Population above 3. In Cleanup, no sector of yours has 3 or more Fleet tokens. You still hold only two Glory tokens, and you played no Agenda or Trade token, so your Focus card goes face up into your discard pile. Think ahead to Evaluation. The east sector, holding just 1 Corvette, may still border another Voidborn sector. If so, it's a soft target when the Skirmish picks a sector it would win or tie.