How to Play Sidereal Confluence: Bifurcation

Objective of the Game

This expansion, Sidereal Confluence: Bifurcation, introduces variations on the nine original species, representing different aspects or factions within their societies. The core objective remains to create something never seen before in the galaxy by bringing together the divisions of alien societies. Players will find that the new rules and starting cards dramatically change the play style of each species. The ultimate goal is to achieve victory through strategic trading and technology development, though the specific victory condition is not detailed in the provided context.

Preparation (Setup)

1. Species Selection: Starting with the least experienced player, each player selects a species or its variant to play. Once chosen, the other version of the species is unavailable.
2. Variant Starting Cards: Variant starting cards are marked with a moon icon, where the original species were marked with a star. Variants have their own cards indicating what resources, cards, colonies, and research teams they start with.
3. Charity Syndicate (if in play): If the Charity Syndicate is in play, each other player will receive a matching Undesirable card, whether they are playing an original species or variant. These cards are marked with both the star and moon icons.
4. Society of Falling Light (if in play): If the Society of Falling Light is in play, they start with 3 random colonies (1 jungle, 1 ocean, and 1 desert). Prior to giving colonies to other players, shuffle the colony deck and draw until you find 1 of each of those colonies. Give them to the Society. Then, shuffle the remaining cards and proceed with setup, dealing random colonies to other players who start with them.
5. Kjasjavikalimm Independent Nations (if in play): If the Kjasjavikalimm Independent Nations are in play, they start with a specific research team: Linguistic Analysts, which invents Universal Translator. Give them this team before you start assembling the technology deck. Place Linguistic Analysts on their Donation Board; they will have to trade it away during the first Trade Phase.
6. Caylion Collaborative (if in play): If the Caylion Collaborative is in play, they start with a random Era II research team. Give them this before you finish assembling the technology deck.
7. Technology Deck: The original 21 species cards associated with each technology are used with the matching variants.
8. Colony Bid Track: If the Charity Syndicate is in play, decrease the player count for the Colony Bid Track by one. For example, in a 4-player game with the Charity Syndicate, use the 3-player Colony Bid Track. The Charity Syndicate does not affect the length of the Research Team Bid Track. If both the Charity Syndicate and the Kjasjavikalimm Directorate are in the same game, their adjustments to the length of the Colony Bid Track cancel each other.
9. Components: The game includes 18 Grand Fleet Factory Tokens, 3 Charity Syndicate Cross Colonization Tokens, 14 Faderan Society of Falling Light Regret Tokens, 17 Eni Et Service Tokens, 18 Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl Colony Upgrade Tokens, 18 Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl Era I Upgrade Tokens, 9 Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl Era II Upgrade Tokens, 9 Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl Retrocontinuity Tokens, 2 Deep Unity Tiles, 3 Deep Unity Dice, 10 Species Boards, 1 3-player Colony Bid Track Board, 1 Zeth Undesirable Reference, 1 Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl Technology Reference, 1 Kjasjavikalimm Donations Board, 9 Player Screens, 33 SMALL CARDS (19 Caylion Projects, 14 Yengii Jii Constraints), 79 FULL SIZED CARDS (6 Caylion, 6 Eni Et, 6 Faderan, 9 Im’dril, 9 Kjas, 20 Kit, 11 Unity, 6 Yengii, 6 Zeth), 23 "x3" Resource tokens (brown, white, green, black, blue, yellow, Ultratech), and 17 Voting Tokens (1 Caylion, 2 for each other species).

Fluxo do Jogo

Consulte o manual para detalhes sobre esta seção.

Ações e Como Jogar

Species-Specific Rules and Interactions

• Deep Unity: Have a constantly changing economy dictated by die rolls. Their bid tiebreak is between 3 and 4. They share the wild inputs and outputs of the original Unity.
• Caylion Collaborative: Reshape the game by introducing a new mechanic—voting for Caylion projects to activate each turn. They always benefit from these projects but have limited control over the outcome.
  • Project Cards: Project cards may be run using resources that the Caylion Collaborative are constrained against, despite having the Caylion background. This is an exception to the normal rules. If the player running the card has constraints, those do apply (even if that player is the Caylion).
  • Voting: During each Trade Phase, each player receives two votes to spend, except the Collaborative who receive one. The Collaborative has four projects available, each requiring a minimum number of votes to activate. Once a project has enough votes, the Caylion may choose to activate it. Activating a project consists of resolving a single multi-way deal to divide the project cards among the players who supplied votes. Players place votes next to cards they are interested in. Players are not obligated to spend votes on a project where they dislike the outcome. The Caylion may return votes to obstinate players to remove them from negotiation.
  • Automation Services: Grants a violet-arrow converter that consumes a world to have it immediately run twice. Consume twice as many resources as the input of the world’s converters, then produce twice as much output. You may choose not to consume all of the needed input resources, but then you won’t get the associated output. Abilities which increase the production of worlds (such as the Grand Fleet’s factory tokens) apply and are doubled.
• Eni Et Engineers: Are resource poor but can make any economy more efficient. They benefit from multi-turn deals.
  • Interest Converters: The Eni Et Ascendency interest converters from the base game are minimally impacted by the special rules of other factions. Interest converters always produce precisely the same number of wild resources as are input – the extra outputs (e.g. the interest) must all be normal resources, must all be the same color, and if non-wild resources were input, then the interest must be that color.
  • Yengii Jii Constraints: If the Eni Et accept a constraint, it does not limit what colors can be run into their interest converters.
  • Retrocontinuity: Retrocontinuity tokens may not be applied to Eni Et Ascendency interest converters.
  • Service Tokens: Service tokens may be assigned to Deep Unity dice converters. If the card is flipped over, the token is assigned to the converter with the same color input. If a service token was assigned to an Ultratech converter, there will be no matching converter on the other side. In this case, the token does nothing but remains attached to the card. If it is flipped back, the token will return to reducing the cost of the Ultratech converter.
• Kjasjavikalimm Independent Nations: Desperately need the other players’ help to do anything at all. They can’t directly use what they produce.
  • Donations: Donations other than resources do not go on the Incoming Donations board. For example, donation ships, victory points, and Zeth Anocracy envoy tokens do not go on Incoming Donations (although the resources that come with the envoy token do). The Independent Nations may remove resources from the Incoming Donations board at any time. If they do so for any purpose other than running a converter that takes donation goods as an input, those resources lose their status as incoming donations. If the Independent Nations removes a resource and later changes their mind, they can put it back on the Incoming Donations board.
• Yengii Jii: Offer other players constraints that limit their abilities but make them rich in return.
  • Constraints: If another player has accepted a constraint, that player may not use the constrained resource as input for an interest converter, nor may it be produced as an output, even if all of the inputs are Unity wild resources. Yengii Jii constraints prevent the use of a color of resource as input to any converter, regardless of the color of arrow. This includes the red-arrowed Zeth stealing converters.
  • Licensing Technologies: The Yengii Society may license technologies to individual players. This ability applies to Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl research teams normally. The Yengii will have to remember (or write down) whom they’ve licensed each Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl technology to, so as to avoid licensing a technology to the same player twice. If the Yengii Society invents Hybrid FTL or Mindsharing, use the other side of the matching card to indicate that only players who have licensed the technology can take cards from the bid track space. This restriction also applies to the Charity Syndicate: they may not place Cross Colonization tokens on the new bid slot until they gain access to the technology.
• Alternate Im’dril — Grand Fleet: Are rich early game but quickly lose steam. They share most of their fleet rules with the Im’dril Nomads.
  • Fleet Support: Both versions of the Im’dril require Fleet Support to run their cards. A card with a Retrocontinuity token still requires Fleet Support to run, and that Fleet Support must be maintained through the Economy Phase (i.e. a single Fleet Support icon can’t be used to support two different cards in the same turn).
• Alternate Zeth — Charity Syndicate: Need to purchase their economy back from the other players each turn.
  • Cross Colonization: You may place a second (or third) Cross Colonization token on a world on the bid track, if one remained from a previous round. If that world is taken, you upgrade one card per Cross Colonization token on it. If the world is discarded, you gain the tokens back and one victory point per token.
• Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl Technophiles: Have many research teams to offer other players, which will grant a variety of abilities.
  • Research Teams: Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl Technophile technologies do not have the Kit background. If the Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl accept a constraint, they may not use that color of resource to invent one of their own technologies, but other players can.
  • Retrocontinuity: Retrocontinuity tokens may not be applied to Caylion Collaborative project cards.
  • Deep Unity Dice Manipulation: Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl Technology Era I upgrade tokens may be spent to put Deep Unity dice manipulation cards into play. Era II upgrade tokens may be spent to upgrade Deep Unity dice manipulation cards.
• Alternate Faderan — Society of Falling Light: Are not really in the Confluence at all. They don’t share their technologies and gain no benefits from other players inventing. The society is rich and powerful, but their main export is Regret – something no one wants.
  • Sharing Technologies: The Society of Falling Light does not share technologies normally. They do not share at all but can sell the research team to be reinvented by someone else.
  • Regret Tokens: If the Society of Falling Light invent Hybrid FTL or Mindsharing, use a matching card to indicate that the new bid track space can only be used by Falling Light. Then, place a Regret token on the original research team. If it is reinvented, replace the Falling Light bid space with the one printed on the back of the research team. Regret tokens are not intended to be piece limited. If you run out, use Acknowledgements as additional tokens.
  • Research Bid Tiebreaks: Research teams with Regret tokens, held by the Society of Falling Light, do not count against their first research team bid tiebreak. This is a consequence of the more general rule that no invented technologies count against a player’s research team bid tiebreak.
  • Regret and Alien Tiebreak Abilities: No alien abilities avoid the consequences of taking Regret. For example, the Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl Adhocracy win tiebreakers for colonies, as if they had fewer than the other players, but they must still go after all players with fewer Regret tokens.

Fim de Jogo e Pontuação

Consulte o manual para detalhes sobre esta seção.

Dicas para Vencer

• Understand Player Impact: The Bifurcation variants are more interactive. "Impact" measures how much other players need to incorporate your rules into their planning. When choosing species, ensure new players don't "see" more than 1 impact (the total impact of every other player). Players who have played once or twice but are not yet confident should see no more than 3 impact.
• Strategic Trading with Constraints: If playing as the Yengii Jii, focus on finding creative ways to help your opponents overcome the limitations imposed by your constraints. This can make you rich in return and is key to your success.
• Leverage Deep Unity's Economy: If playing as Deep Unity, be prepared for a constantly changing economy dictated by die rolls. Focus on clear short-term objectives and trading in the moment to adapt to these shifts.