Hi,

Sorry for the newbie question, my wife and I just started playing the game this week (we have no friends that are players, so we're basically getting the whole group started). We had a disagreement over the public objective card "I can now spend 10 resources". Her interpretation was you actually spend 10 resources during the status phase to "earn" the objective. I felt like all the objective cards are written in present tense as they are earned during the action phase and you simply announce that you "spent 10 resources" in order to claim the objective during the status phase. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to the game. It's one of my favorites.

You spend them during the status phase.

It takes some planning to pay for the pay objectives. Also remember Trade Goods can be used for the "spend resource" objectives but only influence from planets may be used for the "spend influence" objects and trade goods may only be used for the "spend trade goods".

Enjoy your adventures in this great and epic game.

And I would suggest getting the expansion if you do not have it.

From the rulebook (p. 26 in the revised PDF on the FFG website):

• Some Objective Cards state “Now I…”. This requires a player to actually fulfill the requirement during the first step of the Status Phase . For example, one Objective Card reads “I now spend 20 Resources (2 victory points).” In order for a player to receive these two victory points, he must have enough Trade Goods and unexhausted planets to spend 20 resources during the first step of the Status Phase.

Your wife is correct. You must have the required number of resources and/or Trade goods to spend during the status phase. You are spending resources right now towards that objective -- hence the use of the word "Now".

The tense in Objective descriptions is very important. Other objectives use phrases like "I have" instead of "I had" to disqualify players who both capture the objective and lost it within the same turn. If you capture all planets in another player's home system and lose it to a neighbour within the same game round, you have not satisfied the requirements for the "I control all the planets in another player's Home System" objective. You may have briefly "controlled" those planets in the past, but you no longer "control" those planets right now during the Status Phase.

There are Objectives that depend on previous events, such as "I have controlled Mecatol Rex the entire Strategy Phase and Action Phase of this round". But those are rare. (And if you lose Mecatol Rex before the Status Phase, you haven't satisified that objective anyway.)

Thanks for the clarification and suggestions -- my wife will be happy she was right and the risk of me sleeping on the couch has dramatically decreased. Thanks again.

Ghotimonger said:

In the expansion, they aren't quite as rare. Not all of them are past-tense, but there's a few more like "This round I won a space battle against 3 ships" (wording not exact) or "This round I took control of 3 planets", etc;