"Play only if you have two trade agreements. Choose and refresh up to two of your exhausted planets.
Play: At any time. "

Okay, I have put a lot of thought into this and read a ton of forum topics on here looking for this specifically asked (also the search feature here is really terrible...is there a way to only search responses for one subforum)

Page 21 of rules:
"A face down Planet Card cannot be exhausted again until it is refreshed during the Status Phase ( or by another effect) ."

Page 22 of rules:
"Whenever a player wishes to spend resources or influence, he simply announces the total amount of resource/influence that he wishes to spend, and then exhausts the number of Planet Cards with that (or greater) combined amount of resources/influence."

Say you have 2 planets which total to 8 resources...

The way I am seeing this working is that you announce the total amount you plan to spend, then exhaust all those planets... then you could play the card, but you can't say:

"I'm paying 16 resources to build...exhaust, exhaust, play card, exhaust, exhaust."

If someone were to sabotage that in the middle of that happening it would completely mess with how you declare how much you are spending.

Am I correct in assuming that you cannot use this card in the middle of a build or paying for a tech?

Hmm, that's a good question.

One thing to consider, though, is that in a similar situation, you CAN "split" stuff. In Space Combat, you can assign damage to ships that have Sustain Damage, then play Emergency Repairs to repair them all, then finish assigning damage (even to the same ships).

However, in that case, you assign damage one-at-a-time. But at the same time, it could be argued that you exhaust planets one-at-a-time, and thus could exhaust, exhaust, refresh, exhaust, exhaust. If it's sabotaged, it would cause your declaration to be invalid. But by the rules you quote, in a strict interpretation, you could declare any arbitrary number, even 100,000 resources; but if you cannot exhaust that much, you would just have an invalid declaration. I think, thus, the declaration of how much you are spending is just a "intent" - but the actual amount spent depends on which planets you actually exhaust.

In my opinion, based on the rules you quote, I think I would allow the exhaust, exhaust, refresh, exhaust, exhaust simply due to the precedent of Emergency Repairs. However, perhaps someone should ask Corey this question?

It would depend on how your gaming group wants to handle it. For example, in my gaming group, if someone were assigning damage to their ships with sustain damage and then wanted to play Emergency Repair and continue assigning damage, we would allow another player to sabotage that ER, forcing the player to assign remaining damage without the repairs.

Likewise, if a player were to exhaust, exhaust, and try to refresh, we would allow a sabotage. His original intent to spend 16 resources would be invalid, and he would be forced to redecide whether he wants to just spend the 8 exhausted resources or not spend anything at all, essentially, we would treat it as no orders/turn being completed at all.

It really just depends on your group, but that's how my group handles such things. Makes for a much better "screw you" type play when we know what a player WANTS to do and then don't allow him to do it. My group's matches get very... intense? Aggressive? Not sure what word I'd use there

I think the crux of this question boils down to how production works. Without going to find my rulebook, I believe the way it works is you declare how much you're spending, then you exhaust planets, then you take the plastic from reinforcements and put it where it was being built. When considering this exhaust - card - exhaust trick, the sabotage would interrupt you during the exhausting planets part and force you to accept fewer resources than you declared. You could still build as much as possible with the smaller amount of resources though. I don't think this situation would break the game and it seems, at least on the surface, to be legal. Unless someone can show a reason not to allow the combo I'd say this is fine.

I got an answer from Coery a few weeks ago, but forgot what thread it was from. Here's my question and his response:

Rule Question:
When exhausting planets to make a purchase (either with Resources or Influence), do all planets have to be exhausted "simultaneously", or is it done "sequentially".

Specifically, using the Master of Trade AC ("Choose and refresh up to two of your exhausted planets."), can you exhaust two planets, play the card, and then re-exhaust them as part of the same build?

ARGUMENT FOR:
It has been ruled that Emergency Repairs ("Immediately repair all of your Dreadnoughts and War Suns in the chosen system.") can be used between hits (IE, you could do damage to some Dreadnoughts and War Suns, play this card, and then inflict damage on them again to avoid destroying them). This may potentially be a similar situation.

ARGUMENT AGAINST:
On Page 22, under "Paying Costs" it reads "Whenever a player wishes t o spend resources or influence, he simply announces the total amount of resources/influence that he wishes to spend, and then exhausts the number of Planet Cards with that (or greater) combined amount of resources/influence.

In other words, when a player is producing units at a Space Dock during the Production step of the Activation Sequence, he may simply announce how many resources he is going to spend in total. Then he exhausts the appropriate number of planets.... This means you are not producing (and spending resources on) a single unit at a time, but rather purchasing the production with one lump sum."

The key for the AGAINST is the "one lump sum" - it could be interpreted that it means "simultaneously".

My personal leaning is towards the FOR side, as I don't think "one lump sum" necessarily implies "simultaneous", but merely it emphasizes that you don't build, spend, build, spend, but instead build, build, build, spend the total. However, I wanted to get an official clarification.

RESPONSE:

I do not think that this is permissible. The reason for this is that the rules are written as:
"I wish to spend 10 resource, I therefore exhaust these 5 planets (which provide a total of 10 resources)."

If you were to refresh and then re-exhaust two of those planets, then the net result would still be 5 exhausted planets with a total of 10 resources.