Alpha Quadrant

A fast-paced, strategic tile-laying game of interstellar discovery and settlement.

As a newly commissioned interstellar merchant captain you are competing to scout out new worlds and markets, navigate the best travel lines, wisely gather resources, shrewdly hire crew members with unique abilities, and strategically establish bases. Race your small spacefaring trade vessel across the galaxy cleverly plan your course of the choices routes to reach the most valuable worlds while earning travel fees along vital navigation routes. Once a player has built all their bases the game ends and winner will be the one outmaneuver their rivals with more bases on sets of planets and in the longest interconnected route.

Overview of Play: Moving through or ending a turn on a planet provides one resource cube of the matching color. Each base built on a planet is worth victory points totaled at the end of the game. Different planet colors have different values and some permit special actions. Bonus points are earned for having bases on matching planet colors as well as on sets of all three colors. Additionally, special crew members granting players unique actions can be purchased by spending resource cubes at the starting home-world tile.

When the final planet tile has been placed and that player has taken their final turn actions, the game immediately ends and scoring takes place. The winner will be the player who accumulated the most points from building sets of planetary bases. The longest connected route along interstellar navigation lines also scores a bonus and bases on rarer planet colors are worth more than common ones. The player who triggers the end of the game by placing their final base also earns 1 additional bonus point for doing so. When a player is down to just a single base, as a courtesy they should announce it to the other players.

Players move their trade vessels between stars and planets along navigation routes carefully collecting resources along the way to spend on building planetary bases. Both ending a turn with your ship on a planet, or just passing through the planet on your travels, provides one resource cube of the matching color —either grey, red, or blue. Each base built on a planet is worth commerce points totaled at the end of the game. But beware, building where other players already have a base costs extra and just passing through a planet with another player’s base provides them travel fees!

Points are earned immediately when a base is built on a planet. Each additional base the player might later build one the planet also scores points. But a player cannot build two of their bases directly on top of one another. They can only build another base at the same planet when it will go on top of another player’s base. Special planets —purple, yellow, orange— offer unique actions such as exchanging resources or earning extra resource cubes. On certain planets crew members can also be hired that offer special actions to improve movement, exploration, trade, or builds.

Components: Space Tiles - 1 start tile, 15 stellar tiles, 3 blue planets, 3 red planets, 3 gray planets, 2 yellow planets, 1 purple planet, 1 orange planet, 1 green planet, 1 nebula, 1 supernova, 1 wormhole. 5 player trade ships in five colors - blue, red, green, purple, yellow. 25 Resources Cubes in three colors - grey, red, blue. Base Markers - 8 base markers in the five player colors. 5 scoring markers - (identical to the player base markers) 1 Score Board 20 Crew Member cards 1 Rulebook