Shards of the Throne: Mercenaries!

Shards introduces a new option, mercenaries. They are recruited through the use of the trade III strategy card. They have separate values for Space Battle, Invasion Combat, and Movement. They also each have special rules associated with them. These rules are sometimes, really fucking awesome. There are sixteen mercenaries, I have outlined them below.

Blake Stryker
Space: 5
Ground: 7
Movement: 2
Evasion(6), When you win a space battle in which this mercenary participated, gain 1 trade good.

Barudin
Space: 6
Ground: 8
Movement: 3
Evasion(6), Your cost to purchase Technology is reduced by 1.

Saygra
Space: 7
Ground: 7
Movement: 2
Evasion(5), At the start of a battle, you may spend 1 trade good to build a ground force or fighter in this system. It will participate in this battle.

52N6
Space: 7
Ground: 7
Movement: 2
Sustain Damage, At the start of a battle you may choose 1 Technology. The enemy cannot use that Technology during this battle.

Rhelat
Space: 8
Ground: 7
Movement: 3
Evasion(6), This Mercenary can be used as a PDS unit when on a planet.

Urrsik
Space: 5
Ground: 7
Movement: 3
Evasion(6), This mercenary may move through systems containing enemy ships.

Krevvil
Space: 6
Ground: 6
Movement: 2
Evasion(6), At the start of a battle, you may deal 1 hit to a participating enemy mercenary or ship of your choice.

Felrey
Space: 5
Ground: 6
Movement: 3
Evasion(7), At the start of a battle, draw 1 action card.

Murrag
Space: 6
Ground: 5
Movement: 2
Evasion(6), When this mercenary is destroyed, you may assign 1 hit to any 1 unit participating in this battle.

Nolad
Space: 6x2
ground: 6
Movement: 2
Evasion(7), Capacity(1)

Hep'kuk
Space: 6
Ground: 7
Movement: 3
Evasion(7), When this mercenary would be destroyed, you may instead destroy a friendly fighter in this system.

T'ugar
Space: 6
Ground: 7
Movement: 2
Evasion(6), At the start of a battle, you may look at your opponent's hand of action cards and choose 1 to discard.

Daffren
Space: 9x2
Ground: 8
Movement: 2
Evasion(7), At the end of the Strategy Phase, you may give this Mercenary to another player to trade Strategy cards with that player. Limit once per round.

Kav'lik
Space: 5
Ground: 5
Movement: 2
Evasion(8), At the start of a battle, destroy 1 enemy fighter or ground force.

Sara Crane
Space: 6
Ground: 6
Movement: 3
Evasion(7), Your cost to purchase Command Counters from Strategy Cards is reduced by 1.

R'una
Space: 5
Ground: 9
Movement: 2
Evasion(4), During each round of a Space Battle, reduce the number of hits scored by your opponent by 1 (to a minimum of 1).

-Mike

Shards of the Throne: New units and Racial Techs

Shards of the Throne brings us two new units:
Mechanized Unit: A super uncreative name for a tank. This is like a ground force, it costs 2 resources to produce, has a combat value of 6 and has sustain damage. You can have up to four of these. It is transported just like a ground force.

Flagship: I think this is a super-awesome idea that FF had. There is one flagship model per color (you can only have one on the table at a time, and they may only be built in your home system). Each race has its own specific flagship. They cost between 8 and 11 resources, all of them have sustain damage, and carrying capacity, most have multiple attacks at various combat values. They all have different abilities. The ships for the L1z1x, Winnu, and Jol-nar are pretty strong.

Racial Technologies:
Now onto the new racial techs!
First, there are two replacement racial techs.
The Winnu "Bioptic Recyclers" just states "once per game round"
The Sardakk N'orr "berserker Genome" is replaced by "Valkyrie Armor", which works only in invasion combat...
Without further ado, the new ones, per race.
Barony of Letnev: Noneuclidean Shielding:When you use sustain damage, it prevents 2 hits instead of one (so barony just got awesome at having Dreadnoughts, Warsuns, and Flagships.)
Xxcha: Instinct Training: Once per turn, you can spend a command counter to cancel an action card (wow, an on-demand sabotage)
Federation of Sol: Spec Ops training: Each time you roll a "1" during invasion combat, you get a re-roll.
L1Z1X: Inheritance Systems: This card reads nonsensically, I expect an errata.
Sardak N'orr: Exotrireme: At the end of a round of space combat, you can sacrifice a dreadnought to destroy 2 enemy ships. Yikes.
Naalu: Hybrid Crystal Drives: Carriers and Excess advanced fighters, count as 1/2 a ship toward fleet supply. Unless the "Fleet Regulations" law in in effect, I don't see much use of this one.
Mentak: Mirror Computing: When you spend trade goods, they count as 2 (either resources or influence) Holy shit, Mentak get something awesome. They needed something awesome.
Yssaril: Mageon Implants: When looking at your opponents hand (when using your racial ability) you can steal a card of your choice. (Did Yssaril need to get stupid strong?)
Jol-Nar: Electro-Resonance Turbines: When an opponent activates a system you control, you get 3 trade goods. Lol. (this is good since Jol-Nar seem to always get attacked)
Hacan: Quantum Datahub Node: At the end of the status phase, you may trade your strategy card with one of your trade partners. They do not need to agree to this trade. (this is an epic-level dick move that will be terrifying in late-game)
Yin: Yin Spinner: Whenever you build at a space dock, you get a free ground force.
Saar: Chaos Mapping: You can active asteroid field systems. Your fleet supply is limited to 3in these systems. Wow, this is an awesome way to hide your space docks from the enemy and produce units using Integrated Economy.
Winnu: Lazax Gate Folding: At the start of each Status Phase, you may put a ground force on Mecatol Rex. (only if under your control or uncontrolled) This is an easy way to get a grip on mecatol early (if not using the custodians rule)
Muaat: Nova Seed: As an action, remove the card from the game. You may then replace a system you control with a Supernova tile. (HOLY SHIT) You can't do it on Mecatol Rex, a Home System, or a System adjacent to a Red bordered system. This is the first ability to actually change the game map. This is really cool. It can be a nice dick-move to do to an opponent. (Or c-block some empty map space)
Nekro Virus: Valefar Assimilator: The race has two of these, it allows you to copy an opponents racial tech in the same way you copy regular technologies.
Creuss: Dimensional Splicer: At the start of a battle in a wormhole system you can assign a hit to an enemy ship of your choice. (aka, a carrier loaded with ground forces). Keep in mind that both Creuss home systems have wormholes.
Slave Wormhole Generator: At the start of each status phase, you may place (or move) your extra "a" and "b" wormhole markers into any empty or friendly non-home system.
Arborec: Spore Acceleration: Increase the build capacity of your Ground Forces by 1.
Bioplasmosis: At the beginning of the Strategy Phase, you may move one ground force from a planet you control to a friendly or empty planet in an adjacent system. (a neat way to expand your empire without spending command counters)

-Mike

Shards of the Throne: New Way to Vote.

Shards introduces a new way to vote on political cards.

First I should define two new card types.

Representatives: Each race gets 3 representative characters, they are like "leaders" but are only used in voting. Each one augments the amount of influence you get to add to your vote (ranging from +0, to +4 I believe) They also have other abilities that affect things outside of voting.

Promissory notes: There are 5 of these per color, and they are exactly the same. They are used for bribing, like trade goods, but the difference is, promissory notes are binding. You can use them to force the player you got them from to take certain actions against their will. Some examples include giving you all of their trade goods, voting a certain way, retreating from combat, etc...

So now that we have that out of the way, lets look at how the new voting system works.

Step 1: Decide on a political card
Step 2: Choose which representative you want to send, face down.
Step 3: resolve Spies (A type of representative that kills other representatives)
Step 4: Resolve bargaining (the usual bribe and threaten phase, but with promissory notes involved)
Step 5: Vote

I think this overhaul of the voting system will add some more political intrigue to the game. The political part is a strong and oft-overlooked facet of TI3.

-Mike

Shards of the Throne: New Strategy Cards!

There are 5 new strategy cards included in Shards of the Throne. Two are only used when doing the special Lazax mission, so I will skip them for now.

One strategy card is for the original game, Political II.
It is used for the new "Representatives" option, which I will go over later.

The last two are used in conjunction with the "Shattered Empires" expansion.

Assembly II: Like Assembly, but you draw 2 political cards, then resolve the "representatives", which I will discuss shortly.

Trade III: Like a combination of Trade and Trade II. Except...You first open trade agreements. The you receive trade goods (even for trades you just made). Whoo!
You then have to pay your mercenaries. (I will discuss later)
Finally, the player may then recruit (draw) one of the top two cards of the mercenary deck.

There is a secondary ability. Any player can spend one command counter to break any one trade agreement between two other players. For your villainy, you get a trade good. Lol.

MERCENARIES:
I will cover these fuckers first. There are 16 different mercenary cards and tokens. They can fight in both space and ground combat (and often have different values for each) some have other special abilities (multiple attacks, other crazy things)

I will cover the new political steps in another post. Trust me, worth the wait, shit is going to get crazy.

-Mike