When you begin the game, do you start with Commodities on your race sheet? The "First Game Setup" doesn't explicitly say that you do, and I couldn't find it anywhere in the reference book either. When you do the Trade primary secondary, you "replenish" commodities, which implies that you are, well, replenishing ones that were spent, with then implies that you had some to begin with. That's a pretty weak argument for starting with them, though, when the rulebook doesn't say that you do.

Based on that, with the precedent that you don't start with any Action Cards, I'm guessing you do not start with any commodities, but I'm curious to see what others think.

I don't think that you do, otherwise the first person that takes the trade card doesn't really have the power to give people commodities for free or not. Just like you don't start with any action cards...

Well, the person who takes Trade can wait to use it until he (or other players) meet and exchange commodities, then use Trade and refresh them. But yes, since it doesn't say in the rulebook that you start the game with any commodities, I'm guessing you don't.

You don't start with commodities. That's one of the things that makes the Trade strategy a useful pick right out of the gate.

I do think giving away the free refresh to your neighbor you are planning to trade with is a good tactic. And giving it to someone who CAN trade with you, in return for 1TG sounds also fair.

But I wouldn't simply go for "everyone refreshes for free", because the inherent value of the trade SC is quite low (3TG+1CC) as it is for the primary. You need to get some more value out of it.

I just realized how good this makes trade for the Hacan player on turn 1.

"I will refresh the commodities of any player who agrees to give me one of those commodities. It is a trifle to pay for this service in light of the otherwise burdensome cost of a CC."

This would net you at least 5 goods I would think. So much better than Trade was for the Hacan in TI3.

1 hour ago, Horiuchi Nobata said:

I just realized how good this makes trade for the Hacan player on turn 1.

"I will refresh the commodities of any player who agrees to give me one of those commodities. It is a trifle to pay for this service in light of the otherwise burdensome cost of a CC."

This would net you at least 5 goods I would think. So much better than Trade was for the Hacan in TI3.

Wow, you are so right.

Great thought, and we'll done FFG for getting the race right!

After playing with Hacan this weekend I've come to the conclusion that they are the House Lannisters of this game world. I was able to do a 2 for 1 (I received 2, and gave up 1) from everyone in exchange for refreshing their commodities, and then a 1 for 1 trade with space turtles. I ended up 14 trade goods and a huge early game advantage. The ability to trade with everyone without being neighbors is awesome. The power to trade that ability to the embers faction to get warsun technology was priceless.

38 minutes ago, IndyBart said:

After playing with Hacan this weekend I've come to the conclusion that they are the House Lannisters of this game world. I was able to do a 2 for 1 (I received 2, and gave up 1) from everyone in exchange for refreshing their commodities, and then a 1 for 1 trade with space turtles. I ended up 14 trade goods and a huge early game advantage. The ability to trade with everyone without being neighbors is awesome. The power to trade that ability to the embers faction to get warsun technology was priceless.

House Lannisters, as in, "you can either play Lannister or you can lose"?

As in, money wins wars. I was able to take MR on turn two and hold it with a pretty good sized fleet for a couple of turns, and had two smaller fleets to the flanks of my home world that made my neighbors at least think twice before attacking me.

It was awesome, and if you liked playing them in 3rd edition - they are even more awesome in 4th IMO.