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He may only choose this option if the number of orders in his “Special Order Pool” is less than the number allowed by modules and strategic areas he controls.

Why there is the passage "and strategy areas he controls"? I think the strategy areas have the only purpose for using special orders on this planet without having the modules??

And the the special order pool is only for using special order token in the same round you build the modules.

So this "and strategy areas he controls" is useless or wrong??

Dogma79 said:

you are right, strategic areas have nothing to do with this, so it is useless.

Good catch, I have red the rules multiple times and I did not notice.

Dogma79 said:

Yes, this is typo and should not be there. Strategic Areas do not affect this.

You are allowed to use both normal orders and special orders on a planet if you control that planet's strategic area. Both normal and special orders will be resolved as their equivalent special order, and then both will be put directly back to your pile of unused order tokens. So in effect, any order you use on a planet where you control a strategic area will be executed as a special order and will not count against your limit established by the number of Research and Development modules you have.

The thing is that you may lose control of the strategic area before executing all of your orders so you may want to take that into consideration when placing orders on the planet. If you want some to be garenteed to be a special order when you execute it, then put a special order token down and then it will be special either way. Its just if you control the strategic area, it won't count against your limit for the turn.

With regards to the special order pool, it is used every round.

You can place as many special orders as you have during the planning phase, but you can only execute them if you have enough R&D module(s). When you reveal a special order, as long as you haven't previously executed a number of special orders equal to the number of R&D modules you currently have built, then you can execute the special order. Otherwise you need to do the event card option.

A kind of situation relevant to by the original poster's question recently came up in one of our gaming sessions.

A player with no R&D modules (therefor with a special order pool limit of zero) wanted to execute a special order on a planet with a strategic area they controlled. Another player argued that because they're limit was allready fullfilled, they shouldn't be able to execute it and they should be forced to draw an event card. It was only because of the text on P5 of the broodwar rules ".... and strategic areas he controls." that the other could accept that the order should be able to be executed. They understood that regular orders would be executed as special orders and not count towards the special order pool. They also accepted that if there was room in the special order pool that a gold order token could be executed and not count towards it. It was just the specific situation of 'there was not room in the pool' and thus the order should not be able to be even executed. It was that little line of text that made the difference.