Technology

Rules Reference

Technology cards allow players to upgrade units and acquire powerful abilities.

• 90.1Each player places any technology they have gained faceup near their faction sheet. For the duration of the game, they own any technology cards they gain and can use the abilities on those cards.

• 90.2A player does not own any technology card that is in their technology deck.

• 90.3A player can gain a technology card from their technology deck by researching technology.

  • aBoth the primary and secondary abilities of the Technology strategy card allow a player to research a technology.

• 90.4Any technology card that a player has not gained remains in their technology deck. A player can look through their technology deck at any time.

• 90.5If an ability instructs a player to gain a technology, they do not research it; they take it from their technology deck and place it in their play area, ignoring prerequisites.

• 90.6Some technologies are unit upgrades. Unit upgrades share a name with a unit on a player’s faction sheet.

  • aPlayers place any unit upgrades they gain faceup on their faction sheets, covering the unit that shares a name with that upgrade card.

• 90.7Each technology that is not a unit upgrade has a colored symbol displayed in the lower-right corner of the card and on its card back that indicates that technology’s color.

  • aA technology’s color has no inherent game effect; however, each technology a player owns can satisfy a prerequisite of a matching color when researching other technology.

  • bUnit upgrades do not have a color and do not satisfy prerequisites.

  • cThere are four colors of technologies.

• 90.8Most technology cards have a column of colored symbols displayed in the lower-left corner of the card. Each symbol in this column is a prerequisite.

  • aA technology card’s prerequisites indicate the number and color of technologies a player must own to research that technology card.

90.9Researching Technology

A player can research technology by resolving either the primary or secondary ability of the Technology strategy card during the action phase. Other game effects may also instruct a player to research technology.

• 90.10To research technology, a player gains that technology card from their technology deck and places it in their play area near their faction sheet.

  • aPlayers place any unit upgrades they gain faceup on their faction sheets, covering the unit that shares a name with that upgrade card.

• 90.11A player cannot research a faction technology that does not match their faction.

• 90.12When researching technology, a player must satisfy each of a technology’s prerequisites to research it. To satisfy a technology’s prerequisites, that player must own one technology of the matching color for each prerequisite symbol on the technology card they wish to research.

  • aPrerequisites symbols are displayed as symbols on the lower-left corner of the card.

  • bUnit upgrade technologies do not have a color and do not satisfy prerequisites.

  • cPlayers may use certain abilities or technology specialties to ignore some prerequisites.

90.13Technology Specialties

A technology specialty is a technology symbol found on some planets.

• 90.14When researching technology, a player can exhaust a planet they control that has a technology specialty to ignore one prerequisite symbol of the matching type on the technology card they are researching.

• 90.15If the planet card is already exhausted, it cannot be used to ignore a prerequisite.

90.16Valefar Assimilator

The Nekro Virus faction can use its faction abilities in combination with its two Valefar Assimilator faction technologies to gain faction technologies that have been researched by other players, including unit upgrades.

• 90.17Basic units printed on faction sheets are not technologies and are not eligible targets for Valefar Assimilator.

• 90.18If a player becomes eliminated while one of their technologies has a Valefar Assimilator token on it, the Nekro Virus player places that technology in their play area; it is not removed from the game.

• 90.19If a Valefar Assimilator token is removed from the Saar Floating Factory unit upgrade, each of the Nekro Virus’ space docks must be placed on an eligible planet they control in that space dock’s system, or the space dock is returned to their reinforcements.

• 90.20If a Valefar Assimilator token is removed from a war sun unit upgrade and the Nekro Virus player does not have the standard war sun unit upgrade, each of the Nekro Virus player’s war suns are returned to their reinforcements.

• 90.21The Nekro Virus player may upgrade their units with units of the same type (e.g., “dreadnought” or “infantry”) even if those unit’s names do not match. If the Nekro Virus gains a unit upgrade technology of the same unit type as a unit upgrade technology they already have, the previous upgrade is removed, and they must use the same Valefar Assimilator token that was used to copy the previous upgrade.

• 90.22When a Valefar Assimilator token is on a technology, that technology’s color and type count toward objectives.