In the year 4010, humanity has starshi ps out in space but no colonies. Calamity strikes and Earth explodes, sending an SOS out into space in its final moments. Players each control a ship and captain that received the message to rally at the nearest inhabitable planet, set aside their differences and divert all their a ttentions to landing a sustainable population in order to save humanity : 60 min.
: 13+
: 2-4 included, plays 2-6 with expansions
Together, you'll choose a planet and orbit deck to serve as your adversary. Each turn, someone will play and resolve cards from the planet deck - most of which damage your ships or the colonies you've landed on the planet. Land a set number of people on the planet’s surface in order to establish a sustainable population and save humanity!
- Players each pick a ship, take the corresponding deck of cards and place the starting number of people tokens specified on their ship mat. These people are your crew that you will land on the surface to win. Players take their turns, either playing a card from their hand or adding 1 people token to their ship, then drawing a card to end their turn. If you lose all the people tokens on your shi p, you go ghost ship and the artificial intelligence on your starship takes over, allowing you to continue to contribute each turn using your ghost ship ability. If everyone on your team goes ghost, humanity is lost.
- Most of the cards in your hand are played and discarded during your turn or as reactions during other turns, but docked cards stay in play. They change what each ship can do or what the team's primary directive should be each turn. Ships have different strengths and those strengths can change as different cards are docked. You must communicate your changing strengths to your team, recognize opportunities as they arise and know when to allow or circumvent a hazard rather than “going in guns blazing."
At the onset of the game, the team should agree on a difficulty level, which is determined by the number of people your team will ne ed to land in order to win the game. This is the sum of all the people tokens on all the planet’s surface spaces. There are three levels of difficulty;
The ships and planet you select will also greatly affect difficulty. Make sure someone plays the planet’s nemesis, defined on the planet description card, and be sure to have a good landing ship in order to play a shorter and easier game. If players communicate effectively, any two ships can beat any planet on commander difficulty.
– The planet board is placed in the middle of the table. The corners of the board are numbered atmosphere dock slots. The planet on the board is divided into numbered surface spaces. The planet your team chooses determines whether you use the side of the board with 8 or 5 surface spaces. During play, you will place people tokens on individual surface spaces and keep track of the total number of people on the surface. There are spaces for the planet deck and planet deck discards on the perimeter of the planet board. – People tokens represent your crew and are moved from your ship to a surface space when you LAND people. Some cards allow you to ADD people tokens and these should be taken from the game box. When an atmosphere card has hit points, people tokens are placed on atmosphere cards as counters. They come in denominations of 1, 5 and 10.
– The planet deck represents the world that Pangaea selected to be our new home world. Shuffle the planet and orbit deck together and place it near the planet board. The planet description card introduces the planet and defines which side of the planet board to use. It also identifies the nemesis, or the most powerful ship to use against it.
– Orbit deck cards are shuffled into the planet card deck at the beginning of the game. Some of the player’s cards ca n block planet cards or specifically orbit cards. Orbit deck cards are considered “planet cards” and also “orbit cards.”
– Each player will select a ship deck at the beginning of the game to serve as their character. Find the ship mat cards and set them up in front of you. Draw 3 cards into your hand at the beginning of the game. Keep in mind, there is no hand minimum or maximum. Each ship has a ghost ship ability defined on the back of their ship mat cards.
1.
– Read the planet description card and place it back in the box
2.
– Planet description card determines which si de of the planet board you’ll use
3.
– Shuffle the planet deck and orbit deck together and place near the board
4.
– 5. Set up your ship mat cards 6. Take the specified number of people tokens out of the game box 7. Draw three cards
8. 9.
– They will go first eac h turn and play will proceed clockwise each turn
10.
– Continue until you reach your population goal or all ships
have gone ghost
Each time the following three turns are completed constitutes a cycle. Every cycle proceeds the same way until the game is concluded.
1.
– Draw and resolve cards on behalf of the planet, one at a time, in the order you draw them. The number of cards the planet plays each turn is determined by the number of players: 2 players – 2 cards, 3/4 players – 3 cards, 5/6 players – 4 cards.
2.
– Read through the effects of the cards docked to atmosphere. Some take an action, like dealing damage to all ships, these actions happen now. Others have a constant effect, like blocking players from landing or damaging them when they try to land. Just remind everyone what constant effects are in play.
3.
– In clockwise order starting with the first player, each player either plays a card from their hand or adds 1 people token to their ship, then draws a card from their deck to end their turn.
Everything that happens in LSF is determined by the text in the effect box of the cards. Each card also contains flavor text that tells the story unfolding throughout the game. Cards also contain small boxes that define the deck name and type. In the corners of the cards you’ll find icons that reiterate when and where cards are played.
In the upper right hand corner of all cards, you’ll find one of three icons; discard (lightning bolt), dock to atmosphere (cloud) or dock to ship (Rocket ship). In the upper left hand corner of ship cards you will find one of two icons; play (play symbol) or reaction (Exclamation). You can ignore reaction cards during your turn and in a similar fashion, ignore the play cards when it is not your turn. Finally, armor and damage card types are called out as structural (red hammer) or organic (green leaf), in the effect box.
– Immediately after your ship has no more people tokens, you go ghost ship. Pick up and shuffle all the cards that belong in your deck. Cease playing or drawing cards. On your turn, use your ghost ship ability. This represents what your onboard artificial intelligence can do without any crew. These abilities are defined on the back of your ship mat cards. Remember, you can come back.
– Landing cards allow you to move people from your ship to a surface space of your choosing, within the parameters defined on the card.
– Cards that add people allow you to take new people out of the game box. When people are added to landing cards, they are placed on the same surface space as the people that are landed.
– Refers to people that are landed using landing cards. People that are added to the surface do not count as landing people.
– This is an abbreviation for the numbered surface spaces of the planet.
– This is an abbreviation for number of players. This number stays constant through the game, even after some ships have ghosted. – Cards will sometimes reference other cards in their deck, by name.
– Both ships and planets can be docked to the atmosphere. When a card is docked to an atmosphere slot that is already occupied, the previous card is discarded along with any hit points it may have had.
– Place a corresponding number of people tokens from the game box on atmosphere cards that indicate they have hit points. These cards can be damaged by player abilities. Once an atmosphere card that has hit points no longer has any, it is discarded. Those atmosphere docked cards that do not have hit points must be displaced by another card. – Anything with people tokens on it can be damaged. This includes atmosphere cards, surface spaces and player ships. All damage has a type of organic or structural. When something takes damage, people tokens are removed, regardless of the type of damage that was done. Armor can be granted to reduce the damage that is sustained, but it doesn’t always work. Armor only works when the damage and a rmor type match.
– Damage bonus effects will always apply to the subject that is dealing damage; Never the thing being damaged. So, if I give you a +2 damage, that’s a good thing. When you do damage to something, your attacks will do two more damage. Damage bonuses assume the damage type of the attack (structural/organic).
– If a surface space has any people tokens on it, it is occupied.
The surface spaces next to a particular surface space. S4 and S6 are adjacent to S5.
– This is used in many reaction cards. This happens after an effect is read, but before it takes effect. It makes the effect simply not happen. It is often followed by the discarding of the offending planet card.
