This game is under development, and the rules and components are not final.
Its development is chronicled in the Spatial Delivery Blog on the Board Game Designers Forum.
It is the future. The Earth spins at the center of a growing sphere of Settled Worlds. Year by year, almost month by month, more of these new colonies are being established at ever-greater distances from central Earth. The Settled Worlds will all be self-sufficient someday, but for now, each of them still needs help from Earth’s industrial vigor and rich resources.
You are an interstellar entrepreneur, purchasing goods at auction on Earth for delivery to the Settled Worlds. Your goal is to gain as much market share among the Settled Worlds as you can before the new markets are saturated, but you will have to outperform all of your competitors to become the new galaxy’s top trader!
Components
37 Hexagonal Tiles (1 Earth, 16 Space, 20 planets evenly divided into four kinds)
40 Goods Cards
30 Exploration Cards
5 Spaceships (1 per player)
50 Trade Stations (10 per player)
75 Trade Route Segments (15 per player)
40 Sale Markers (8 per player)
10 Challenge Tokens (2 per player)
20 First Delivery Tokens (5 per Goods type)
5 Player Screens (1 per player)
Market Share Points (about 300 total)
Overview
The galaxy is formed of three kinds of Hex Tiles: a single tile for Earth, 20 assorted Settled Worlds, and 16 Space tiles. When the layout is complete, Earth stands at the center of three concentric rings:
Earth produces Goods of four different kinds. The Settled Worlds will all buy goods from Earth, at prices that depend on their distance from Earth: that is, which ring they are in. However each world will purchase only one of the four kinds of Good, and its hex is marked with the kind it will purchase.
A Goods card and a planet that will purchase it.
In each round, players compete for Goods on Earth, then send their spaceships on meandering journeys, following their Trade Routes to deliver those Goods to the Settled Worlds. They are rewarded with increased Market Share in the growing Galactic Market.
Setup
Place the Earth hex in the center of the table. Shuffle the rest face down, and lay 18 of them out at random to form the innermost two rings around Earth. Set the remaining 18 tiles aside, face-down, for later use. Place one First Delivery token of the appropriate color (Red for Droids, etc.) on each Settled World hex.
Separate the Exploration Cards from the Goods Cards. Place the deck of Exploration Cards face-up beside the board to form a supply. Shuffle the deck of Goods Cards and place it face-down to form the Draw Deck.
Give each player the Spaceship, Route Segments, Trade Stations, Sales Markers, and Challenge Tokens in his color. Each player places his spaceship on Earth and keeps everything else on the table in front of his player screen.
Choose a starting player. Turn order is clockwise.
Rounds
Each round has three phases, which are played in this order:
1. Card Draft
2. Explore and Deliver
3. End of Round
1. Card Draft:
Each player takes two Exploration Cards into his hand from the supply.
In the first round, turn up four Goods Cards from the Draw Deck and place them face-up to form the card pool. (In subsequent rounds, four cards will already be face-up from the previous round.)
In turn order and starting with the Starting Player, each player attempts to take one card, continuing until all players have successfully taken four cards. Players who have already taken four cards skip their turns.
There are two ways to attempt to take a card:
(1) Take any card from the card pool. This is always successful. A new card is immediately drawn from the deck and added to the card pool to replace the card that was taken.
(2) Challenge an opponent for a card he has already taken, by giving the opponent one of your Challenge tokens. The opponent can either give you the card, or refuse your challenge by giving you all of his remaining Challenge tokens. The following rules apply:
* You may not challenge a player if you hold any of his Challenge tokens. (No take-backs!)
* You may not challenge a player who already holds any of your Challenge tokens. (Spread the misery.)
* You may not issue or refuse a Challenge if you have none of your own Challenge tokens left.
* If your Challenge is refused, you take no card this turn.
All cards taken are kept face-up in front of the players until the card draft is complete. All other cards in the players’ possession (that is, all Exploration Cards and any Goods Cards left over from previous rounds) are kept in the players’ hands and do not have to be displayed, and are not eligible to be taken by Challenge.
Note: A player who has already taken four cards skips his turn. If one or more of his cards are later taken in challenges, that player may again take cards on his turn. At the end of the card draft, all players will have taken exactly four cards.
2. Explore and Deliver
In turn order and starting with the Starting player, players each take up to three actions. Play continues until all players have announced that they are done.
The actions available are:
1. Explore by building a new Trade Station.
2. Move your spaceship.
3. Deliver one Good.
A player’s turn consists of taking those three actions, in the order shown. Each action may be performed at most once per turn. (Note that players may take more than one turn per round.)
All actions are optional and may be skipped, but a player who cannot or chooses not to take any actions on his turn is done and may take no more turns for the rest of this round.
About Exploration
Trade Routes are shown by placing Trade Route Segments on the board. Each segment is laid along the border of two hexes. Only one Trade Route Segment may be built per border.
Trade Stations are placed where the corners of hexes meet, adjacent to three hexes. A Trade Station must be adjacent to a Settled World’s hex in order to trade with that world. Only one Trade Station may be built at any corner. Trade Stations may not be built at the corners of Earth, or where fewer than three hexes meet, or where no adjacent hexes have Settled Worlds.
The network of routes and stations is made up of branches. A branch is a connected path of one player’s Trade Route Segments that ends at one of the player’s Trade Stations.
To Explore, the active player builds one entire branch. You may start your branch from Earth, from another player’s Trade Station, or from the middle of another player’s Trade Route. The new Trade Station must be reachable in a single step (see Moving Your Spaceship below about steps) from the current location of the active player’s spaceship (so, for example, your spaceship must be at Earth in order to build a branch that starts at Earth).
Exploration costs:
1 Card (of any kind) per Trade Route Segment, plus
1 matching Goods Card for each Settled World adjacent to the new Trade Station
If the Trade Station is adjacent to more than one Settled World, one of the Goods Cards paid does not have to match its Settled World. For example, a station adjacent to three Worlds that want blue, red, and yellow Goods could be built by paying one blue, one red, and one green Goods Card.
If you cannot afford to build an entire branch, you may not explore in this round.
The player immediately receives one Market Share Point for the station, plus one Market Share Point for each adjacent Settled World. (No MSP are awarded for the route segments.)
Moving Your Spaceship
A player who builds a Trade Station on his turn must move his spaceship to the station. This constitutes the move portion of the player’s turn: that is, the spaceship may not move again this turn. This movement is free, and ends the player’s turn.
A player who does not build a Trade Station on his turn may move his spaceship voluntarily. This movement is not free. Spaceships move like this:
1. Spaceships start the Delivery Phase of each round at Earth.
2. Spaceships move only along Trade Routes.
3. The active player chooses which way to go at any junction of Trade Routes.
4. Spaceships stop only at Trade Stations.
5. Spaceships move one step by moving from their current location to the next Trade Station they encounter, no matter who owns that station.
6. Movement costs one card (of any kind) for the first step per turn; two for the second; three for the third, and so on. Usually players will choose to pay one card and move one step, but they have the option of moving farther by paying more.
Deliveries
To Deliver, the active player sells one Good at his current location.
Selling Goods works like this:
1. To sell a Good, your spaceship must be at a Trade Station adjacent to a World of matching kind.
2. You may sell only one Good per turn. (You may sell more than one Good from the same Station by staying there for more than one turn, or by returning there later.)
3. When you sell a Good, place one of your Sales Markers on the Settled World where you sold the Good.
4. You may not sell a Good to any World that already has a Sales Marker (no matter who put it there).
5. When you sell a Good, you receive Market Share Points equal to the planet's distance from Earth (that is, its Ring Number).
6. If you are not at your own Station, the player who built the Station also receives one Market Share Point.
7. If the Settled World has a First Delivery token on it, you take and keep the token.
Note: All Market Share Points and First Delivery tokens are kept behind the player’s screen.
Turns continue, skipping any players who are done, until each player has run out of cards or decided to stop.
3. End of Round
Take all Sales Markers off the planet hexes and return them to their owners. Return all Spaceships to Earth. Return all Challenge tokens to their owners. The player to the left of the Starting Player becomes the Starting Player for the next round.
After the second round, place the remaining hex tiles to form the third Ring around Earth. Place a First Delivery token of the appropriate color on each newly-placed Settled World (but not on any Settled Worlds that were in place at the start of the game).
Ending the Game
The game lasts exactly five rounds, or six rounds if there are only three players. (Optional: players may agree to play more or fewer rounds if they wish.)
Scoring
After the end of the last round, players receive bonus Market Share Points for their collected First Delivery tokens. Each player can receive up to four bonuses, one for each color of token.
| # of First Delivery Tokens per color: |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
| # of Market Share Points: |
1 MSP |
3 MSP |
6 MSP |
10 MSP |
15 MSP |
Thus a player who had four Red tokens and two Blue tokens would receive 10 + 3 = 13 bonus MSP.
After bonus MSP have been calculated and added to those earned during the game, the player with the most Market Share Points is the winner.