The other day we surprisingly ended up in a huge 'debate' on a Flank Speed situation.

We're played TI3 a dozen of times, but now there was a game winning situation, so we had to dig into the manual and FAQ to try to resolve the issue.

1) In the manual (Manual p.23) there is following text regarding action cards:

"A player may never play two identical Action Cards for the same situation and/or on the same entity during one round. Example: A player cannot play two "Flank Speed" Action Cards on the same fleet in one round. The player may, however, play a “Flank Speed” on two different fleets in the same round."

First a Flank Speed isn't played on a fleet right? Card says: "After activating a system. Movement to that system is increased by 1". Even so, activating the same system two times in a round isn't possible, so that example doesn't make much sense to us

2) In our game the Flank Speed action card was Sabotaged, but the player had another one and tried to play it again on the same system. We (others) all thought it wasn't allowed but then he got out the FAQ and pointed out (FAQ 2.2.1 p.2):

"Q: Is an Action Card that has been sabotaged considered played?
A: No. For example, a “play as an action” Action Card that is sabotaged does not use up its owner’s action."

Again the example here is very poorly chosen, because it suggests only something about action cards with the "play as an action", but if you just see the question as written, the first sabotaged Flank Speed action card is never played so you can use a second one on the same system.

So I suppose in case the first action card is sabotaged the: "A player may never play two identical Action Cards for the same situation and/or on the same entity during one round" rule does not apply right?

Then something else, now where at it:

3) If a "friendly" planet only has (a) leader(s) on it, does it count towards "empty" planets regarding action or political cards?

2) Ad. FAQ

The simple answer is NO, then is an example of how to deal with a card that is played as an sction and if that card is sabotaged it does not use player action phase. You can change it to whatever you want, the rule is that if some card is sabotaged that card never comes to play, you can forget about it and play second one if you have one.

3)

The leaders are NOT units. So the planet without any ground forces present is quite empty. I can be wrong in that

1) OK, not the best example But this example is there to make clear that it is not possible to activate a system and increase the speed of all ships going there by 2 by playing 2 copies of "Flank speed".

With #1 I asked corey about it once, and he admitted the wording wasn't very clear, since Flank Speed doesn't target fleets, but rather a system (and ALL ships moving in to that system get the bonus, even if coming FROM different systems). However, that would STILL prevent you from playing two in a single Activation, since you cannot target the same system twice with the same card.

#2 - As mentioned, a Sabotaged card is not considered to have been played at all. Thus, you can play a second copy of the card without violating the rule.

#3 - The only place I know of that refers to an "empty planet" (as opposed to an empty system) is the Diplomacy II strategy card, and the rules for it on Page 14 of the SE rulebook say that an empty planet is "one without any Ground Forces, Leaders, PDSs, or Space Docks on it).

However, an Empty System is a bit more unclear, as the definition on page 25 of the base rules doesn't mention Leaders either way.

sigmazero13 said:

Shouldn't have missed that. You're right it was that strategy card not something on a action or political card...

sigmazero13 said:

Well maybe save to say that for a system to be empty, at least all planets have to be empty?
Can't imagine there is a situation that a leader is floating around in empty space

Nephilim said:

In my mind an "empty system" would need to have no ships present and for all planets to be "empty planets." That may have been what you meant, but it isn't what you said, so I wanted to clarify. By this definition, a planet with a leader would prevent the system from being considered empty (since the planet is not empty with a leader on it), but a planet with naught but space mines WOULD be empty (last time I checked space mines weren't units, IIRC.)