Beyond the Sun

Beyond the Sun is set in a future where Earth has been destroyed, and corporate factions race to colonize the stars. In a two-player game, each player selects an asymmetric corporation board (such as the Zen-Gi Brotherhood or Nishida-Østergaard Corporation), initializes their resource tracks, and receives starting population cubes and ore. The central main board features the gigantic technology tree, an exploration board for deep space systems, event cards, guild tiles, and four mandatory and variable achievement cards. Players place their initial level one ships in the Sol system and take their player tokens.

The goal is to guide your corporate faction to supremacy in space exploration and technological advancement. Victory is achieved by researching new tech branches, building and upgrading spacecraft, exploring uncharted star systems, and colonizing planetary outposts. Players constantly compete for control over lucrative space systems and key technological breakthroughs to maximize their score.

A player's turn consists of three main phases: Action, Production, and Achievement check. First, you move your action pawn to an available space on your tech board to perform actions like researching new technologies, building or upgrading ships, moving ships via jump actions, colonizing systems, or trading resources. Second, you enter the production phase, choosing one of three options: population growth, ore production, or resource trade. Finally, you check if you have met the requirements of any achievement cards to place an achievement disc.

At the end of the game, points are tallied from multiple sources. You earn points for every technology you have researched, based on its level and tree position. Additional points come from colonized planetary systems, completed achievement cards, advancement on the automation track, remaining outposts on the board, and specific end-game scoring conditions from private technology cards.

The game's end condition is triggered as soon as a player places their third and final achievement disc onto the available achievement cards. Once this occurs, the current round is completed so that all players take an equal number of turns. After this final round, final scoring is calculated, and the player with the most victory points wins.