A while ago I posed a couple of questions to FFG. Lukas Litzsinger responded today, I posted his answers below my questions.


1. If the players have managed to capture every enemy in the enemy deck, how are enemy tasks handled when a new mission is revealed?

ANSWER : If there are no more enemies available to place on a new mission or the base, then simply do not place those enemies. Enemy mission tasks with no enemies on them are completed without rolling.



2. At exactly what point can the chief scientist use the Laboratory to discard salvage to add a die to a research task?

ANSWER :The Chief Scientist can use the Laboratory and discard salvage only during the resolution of that task (you cannot add dice to a task until you have at least 1 die to roll).



3. What if the Commander wants to use something like Firestorm? Does the Commander need to wait until the "Global Defense" step of resolution, or can it be used as soon as the Resolution Phase begins?

ANSWER : The Commander can use the Firestorm tech card at any time he wants to during the Resolution Phase, provided there is an Interceptor assigned to that continent. He or she does not have to wait for the resolution of Global Defense.

I thought I would add my official responses from Lukas here as well

1. I was curious what you do if/when decks run out of cards (research, aliens, crisis, missions). I believe that the crisis cards just get placed on the bottom of the deck, but unsure what I do with the other decks. Do I just reshuffle?

ANSWER: Research cards, alien cards, crisis cards, and mission cards that are discarded are all placed on the bottom of their respective decks during step 12 of the Resolution Phase.

2. I f the final mission becomes available, do you also draw two regular mission cards? Or are regular missions no longer available unless there was one already on the board?

ANSWER: When the Final Mission is unlocked, the app will not prompt you to draw regular missions anymore. You can still deploy soldiers to any mission that was left over from the last round, and will resolve it during the Resolution Phase.

Answer to question 1 made by MyNameIsDonovan is wrong for many reasons. If that is an official answer from a designer, well I'm sorry but shame on him...

First of all, game has official terms so let's use them: tech cards. Research card is something people don't know. They might try to guess, but we are here to clarify not to mess everything up more than it already is...

Now second point is that TECH CARDS MUST ABSOLUTELY NOT be placed on the bottom of the deck! Just play the game once and you'll understand why...

The Chief Scientist may play Alien Alloys and "Place 1 discarded tech card on top of the tech deck". Now if we've placed the discarded tech cards on the bottom of the deck the scientist is not able able to select the card among the discarded ones. He/She can only select the card among the entire deck instead. Even worse, in this way the scientist has seen the sequence of the entire deck and thus the deck needs a reshuffle (we are fair players, right? don't cheat please!). So keep a side deck of discarded tech cards, reshuffle the side deck only when the main deck is out of cards. This works fine and allows you to do exactly what Alien Alloys tells you to do.

Otherwise if we want to say Lukas was right, Alien Alloys card must be wrong and needs at least to be rephrased.

Answer to question 1 made by MyNameIsDonovan is wrong for many reasons. If that is an official answer from a designer, well I'm sorry but shame on him...

First of all, game has official terms so let's use them: tech cards. Research card is something people don't know. They might try to guess, but we are here to clarify not to mess everything up more than it already is...

Now second point is that TECH CARDS MUST ABSOLUTELY NOT be placed on the bottom of the deck! Just play the game once and you'll understand why...

The Chief Scientist may play Alien Alloys and "Place 1 discarded tech card on top of the tech deck". Now if we've placed the discarded tech cards on the bottom of the deck the scientist is not able able to select the card among the discarded ones. He/She can only select the card among the entire deck instead. Even worse, in this way the scientist has seen the sequence of the entire deck and thus the deck needs a reshuffle (we are fair players, right? don't cheat please!). So keep a side deck of discarded tech cards, reshuffle the side deck only when the main deck is out of cards. This works fine and allows you to do exactly what Alien Alloys tells you to do.

Otherwise if we want to say Lukas was right, Alien Alloys card must be wrong and needs at least to be rephrased.

Sorry, but you're wrong. You can find that rule in the app, it's explicitly covered at that step of the resolution phase. I think it even reminds you every time in case you forget.

Alien Alloys can still be used any time BEFORE step 12 of resolution (which is like the cleanup phase) but ANYTHING left in discard piles at that point goes back on the bottom of its deck.

This makes alien alloys almost worthless.

Whilst it can combo with the scientist use once and discard ability, you might as well spend the time just to research the tech you wanted in the first place really, and avoid clogging up the scientists hand of cards.

I'd suggest an alternative - put discarded tech cards on the bottom of the research deck face up.

Solves the problem of burning though the tech deck whilst preserving the order. It also allows you to route though the discards easily.

I suspect Commissar is right in how it should be played but I prefer my method.

This makes alien alloys almost worthless.

Whilst it can combo with the scientist use once and discard ability, you might as well spend the time just to research the tech you wanted in the first place really, and avoid clogging up the scientists hand of cards.

I'd suggest an alternative - put discarded tech cards on the bottom of the research deck face up.

Solves the problem of burning though the tech deck whilst preserving the order. It also allows you to route though the discards easily.

I suspect Commissar is right in how it should be played but I prefer my method.

Alien Alloys is almost worthless, but not because it's limited to the current turn's discarded tech - it's almost worthless because the only thing it does is let you draw tech cards you already chose to get rid of. Outside of its combo with the Workshop, it's only useful to mitigate the effects of certain crises - the one that makes you discard 3 techs from hand (so the three you least wanted to research of the ones you drew this turn) or the ones that make you discard 1 or 2 previously researched techs - which, okay, does hurt.

And it's still worth more than Weapon Fragments.