500,000,000 BCE: Ancient alien civilization constructs network of instantaneous wormhole conduits throughout this region of the Milky Way galaxy, then disappears forever.

2,000,000 BCE: First hominid tool use on planet Earth.

1969: Neil Armstrong walks on the moon.

2034: Space elevator completed on Earth, colonization of solar system begins.

2352: Development of ansible and hyperdrive allow faster than light communication and travel. Inception of first galactic empire.

2676: Corruption and administrative incompetence lead to the development of a number of factions, which seize control of various planets throughout the empire.

2694: With collapse of central authority on Sol, factions vie for control of mankinds tiny corner of the galaxy.

Your goal is to unite each planetary system and eliminate all opposition to your faction's arbitrarily chosen but undeniably correct way of life.

Solar Systems

- Each solar system is profiled along the sides of the board, and labelled with its name and sector designation (location in the central hex grid). Solar systems are outlined in a green frame.

- You must capture all planets (green circles) and near space (blue square) in each solar system to gain the continent bonus written in green. Each planet can attack its two nearest companions on each side.

- Differently in this scenario, the near space territory is an autocapture factory for the solar system bonus and cannot be attacked from the systems planets. Thus, the only way to capture a near space territory is to capture all of the planets of the solar system in question OR to attack it from outside. The near space territory can still attack downward to the planets.

- Thus, it would be UNWISE to leave large numbers of troops in the near space territory of a system that you might lose control of, as they will be captured if another faction seizes control of the solar system. In this scenario, the near space territory represents orbital infrastructure - shipyards, habitats, etc that are dependent on the planets for support.

- From near space, one can attack any planet in-system or the local space of other star systems in the same sector, or jump into hyperspace (central hex grid) to move to other sectors.

- Profiles for solar systems in the same sector are placed next to each other around the board edge, and can be identified by the sector designation prefix in their name (written in blue).

- Capturing all solar systems in a sector as well as the 6 hyperspace territories surrounding it (blue circles in central hex grid) gives a sector bonus. This bonus accrues to the near space territory (blue square) of the solar system with the largest shipyard - this system will have the sector bonus written in blue next to its solar system bonus label.

- One can also bombard a system at significant disadvantage (-2 penalty artillery border) from interstellar space.

- Number of attacks is limited to 20.

Central Hex Grid: The Sirius Supercluster

- The central hex grid depicts the Sirius Supercluster, the group of stellar companions surrounding Sol, mapped to a two-dimensional hyperspace grid. Hyperdrive fails catastrophically upon encountering a certain threshold of equipotential thermonuclear flux, so it is impossible to travel between the blue and red giant stars labelled in white.

- Main-sequence dwarf stars with habitable planets and moons are labelled in blue, and the sectors are labelled on a grid system in green along the edges of the board, from I to IX top to bottom and alpha to lambda left to right. Thus, Sol can be found in sector V-Zeta, along with Fomalhaut and Alpha Centauri.

- You can't build capital ships in open space, so unit placement on hex grid territories is disabled.

- The sectors with habitable solar systems are outlined as blue hexagons. The 6 vertex territories (blue circles) surrounding each habitable sector as well as all contained solar systems must be captured for the sector bonus.

- Hyperspace territories adjacent to solar systems may attack the planets in the solar systems contained in the adjacent hexagonal region via artillery only borders, with a -2 attack penalty. This represents long-range hypervelocity bombardment. Colonization requires a closer approach via system near space.

Wormholes

- Once you've conquered near space, you may choose to activate the ancient wormhole gate system found throughout this region of the galaxy. Reactivating the ancient technology and overcoming the automated defenses will be no small task, but once activated these wormholes allow instantaneous transfer of ships to any other friendly, activated wormhole.

- That is, any wormhole (orange diamond) can fortify any number of units to any other wormhole on the board. The wormhole can only be reached or viewed from the system near space territory.