• Place 12 VP Chips (5's and 1's leave the 10's aside) per player in the pool in the center (rest unused).
• Shuffle the 5 start world cards and allow each player to choose one.
• Give each player a set of seven action cards.
• Initial Hands
  • (First time players): Extract the four game cards matching the start world selected and give those to the player.
  • (Normal Game) Shuffle deck and deal six cards to players face down. They choose 2 to discard.

• Players select their action and all reveal them at the same time.
• Actions processed in order (only the actions which were selected are preformed).
  1. Explore
  2. Develop
  3. Settle
  4. Consume
  5. Produce
• At end of round, discard down to 10 cards.

The bonuses listed apply to the players who choose that action.

1. Explore

   Action

   Each player draws two cards and selects one of them to add to their hand. The other is discarded.

   Bonus

   Two bonuses are available depending on which Explore card was choosen.

   Explore +5 The played draws 5 additional cards (7 total) keeping 1.

   Explore +1/+1 The player draws one additional card (3 total) and keeps one additional cards (2 total).

2. Develop

   Action

   Each player may play one development card (diamond symbol) face down on their board. All players then reveal at the same time and discard the cost of the card from the cards in their hand. Only one of each development card may be active infront of a player

   Bonus

   The cost of the devemopment is reduced by one.
3. Settle

   Action

   Each player places a world card from his hand (circle symbol) face down on their board. All players then reveal at the same time.

   If it has a black cost indicator, they then pay that cost by discarding that number of cards from their hand.

   If it has a red circle and number, it is a Miltary Conquest world and to play the card the players total military power must be equal to or greater than the red defense value. No cards need to be discounted, nor can the cost be paid by discarding (Exception: Contact Specialist allows the cost to be paid for a military world).

   If the world has a colored "halo" around its circle, it is a windfall world. Place a good (card from the deck) on this world.

   Bonus

   The player draws one card after settling.
4. Consume

   Action

   All players must use their consume powers to discards goods. Goods are discards face down (never shown). Each consume power may only be used once. The player decides which goods to discard in which order using whihc consume power.

   Bonus

   There are two bonuses available based on the card selected.

   $: Trade Players who choose this must choose one good to sell prior to consuming goods. Discard the good being sold and draw a number of cards depending on the good being sold. Alien(yellow): 5, Genes(green): 4, Rare elements(brown): 3, Novelty(blue): 2

   2x VPs Players earn double VPs for all goods consumed.

5. Produce

   Action

   Each player places a good (card face down from deck) on each production (non-windwall) world that does not already have a good.

   Bonus

   Player also places goods on windfall worlds.

The game ends at the end of the round when one of the following conditions has been met.

• A player has 12 or more cards in his tableau
• The last victory point chip is given out. (then use the 10 point chips from the box to ensure everyone gets VPs due to them)

After all phases are complete, total up the VPs from cards, chips and 6-cost developments. The winner is the one with the most points