Hey, just a quick thought I had: if Muaat uses their racial tech to Supernova the Wormhole Nexus, do the lose the ships there? Or do they get to use the wormhole on last time to leave?

Good candidate for FAQ-age if ever I seen one.

My personal thematic view would be that the Embers would naturally have such good control over their own technology that they should be able to pop through the wormhole before the bang if they wanted to.

My rule-view, however, tells me a different story. I don't recall that the tech lets you move units away from the Nova'd system when it actually blows up. A quote from the FAQ v 2.4 does seem pertinent at this time:

"Q: When Muaat activates Nova Seed, what happens to ships belonging to Muaat that were in the system?
A: Any ships in that system are unaffected and may freely move out of that system during a later turn. However, once these ships move out of the system, they may not move back in."

The wording of this answer would suggest that the Ember units may not move away from the Nexus at the time it blows up. This raises another tricky situation for the Embers; In later turns, when a normal move would be possible, there would no longer be any wormholes to move through since the system should be treated exactly like being a "regular" Supernova. And since the Nexus is not an actual part of the galaxy I for one cannot, rulewise, see any way for the Nova-ing Ember units to get away from there. Guess it would be scuttling time for the poor sods.

I can, however, see a this tactic as a sweet way to keep the Ghosts of Creuss away from the Nexus since they would be untouchable once they get inside it.

It could, I suppose, also be used as a last ditch effort to stay in the game if someone (or a bunch of someones) in some way manages to hunt down and kill all your other units and planets. Since you are still in the game as long as you have at least one unit on the board if i recall correctly...

Fnoffen said:

Thats exactly what I was thinking. The rules state that they can move out in a later round, the question is, do the A and B wormholes still exist in the system? And if they do, can it become a Supernova system with wormholes on it? Making it essentially a wormhole system in which only the Muaat ships can use?

melkor977 said:

Rules wise I think a wiser man than I should answer it but personally I think thematically its cool and thats a good enough reason to allow it.

I suppose from a rules point of view you could argue that if the wormholes still exist after the Supernova is created in the Wormhole Nexus, that ANY wormhole system would have the wormhole(s) in after it had been Supernova'd. Making it in effect, a wormhole that only Muaat could use.

From a thematic perspective would the wormholes cease to exist simply because one end of them leads to a Supernova? I wouldn't think so, but any ships using that end up the Supernova would obviously be destroyed except for Muaat's.

For me... I think the rules and the FAQ intent is that the Muaat are to be able to escape in a following round. Hence, in a game I'm playing I would let them use the wormhole to escape, but I probably wouldn't let them use it as a wormhole from then on.

If they blew it up to keep it from the Ghosts, I sure would like to see the Ghosts occupy every wormhole on the board so the Muaat can't come back anyway. lol

The tile gets replaced by a supernova tile, so I don't think the wormholes exist anymore. The Muaat would have to scuttle the units to get them back. Considering what a dramatic effect this would have on the game (the Nexus is usually a pretty important tile in most games we play,) I don't think the loss of these units is a particularly steep price to pay.

As far as thematic concerns go, we don't know what causes wormholes to form or what might make them disperse in the TI universe. It's entirely plausible that the star going supernova would eradicate the wormhole exits in the vicinity. Perhaps being bombarded with too much of a particular type of radiation released by the star could do it. Perhaps the dramatic shift in gravitational or electro-magnetic fields would cause the wormhole exits to evaporate. There are lots of thematic answers that could be invented to suit the idea of the wormholes no longer existing.

Given the general "no memory state" of the game's rules, I think it's more likely correct to say the wormholes are not there than to say they are, since the tile which now occupies that space does not have any wormholes on it.

I was just wondering, has this question been submitted to FFG and if so, what was the answer?

No I haven't submitted it, I don't really know how lol. Not that I really looked either

Future reference, then: Top menu item "More..." has Customer Support under it. That's the place to submit rules questions.