“200 years of Earth rule. 200 years of being told what to do by people on some distant blue orb in the sky. A pampered planet populated by soft people. Earth politicians playing golf on a sunny day while sipping French champagne and eating grapes dare to tell us how to live? They don’t know us because they are not us! We are the sons and daughters of Mars! The children of the red planet! We were born in the red dust, and we say no more to Earther rule!”  -Aroha Thompson, Red Dust spokesperson and Mining Union organizer.  

It is 2250, and the bicentennial celebrations of the first human colony on Mars are about to begin. 200 years of human achievement, but also 200 years of hardship. Mars is an unforgiving world, a barren wasteland on the surface; therefore the people live in vast underground cities known as labyrinths.  

Over the years, the people of Mars have formed their own culture and identity and want more say in their own rule. To many, Earth is a remote world with too much control over Martian affairs. Furthermore, Earth’s corporations have too much power over life and death. Some long for a green Mars, covered in oceans and life, while others recoil at the idea that humanity will destroy the climate of another planet.  

Red Dust Rebellion tells the story of the Martian revolts of the 2250’s and the rise of Martian nationalism. Up to 4 players will take part in this game and control the following factions:

The Martian Provisional Government (MG) believes it has the best interests of Mars at heart. Made up of bureaucrats appointed from Earth and locally-elected officials, they are walking a political tightrope of representing Earth interests while keeping the local population happy. They need the support of Martian locals to effectively administer the planet. The MG has the backing of Earth and access to their resources, but Earth is far away, and shipping is a time-consuming process, so they will need to manage their flow of resources carefully. They will rely on their sometimes-allies the Corporations to help stabilize Mars and protect against raids from the Church of the Reclaimer.  

Mars is the future for humanity, and with rampant climate change events on Earth, the push to further colonize and terraform Mars is growing. The Corporations (CORP) are Earth-controlled companies with vested interests in Mars. And while they have a bottomless amount of resources to commit to the conflict, they ultimately have to answer to their shareholders. This means that profits are their primary motivation. Replacing units costs money, so they want the Mars Government to fight their battles for them. The Corporations also wish to extend their infrastructure to ready the planet for eventual terraforming.  

Native-born Martian workers form the backbone of the Red Dust (RD) movement. The so-called "Dusters" demand a government for Martians, by Martians, without Earth interference, and they are willing to take it by force. Nominally a worker's movement, the Dusters are an organized and determined force within the labyrinths of Mars and must rally the unions, guilds, and various popular assemblies to their cause to force the Earthers out and secure a free Mars for Martians.  

And finally, many look at the mistakes of old Earth and do not wish to repeat them. We have poisoned our home world and are planning on poisoning another. Human history is a process of making the same mistakes over and over again. These ideas have created The Church of the Reclaimer (CR). A post-humanist faith, they seek to adapt humanity to Mars, not the other way around.  And they are opposed to all terraforming and further colonization on Mars. While the moderates of the faith seek to block this progress using peaceful protest and political action, the more extreme elements are not above using violence to achieve their goals—a Mars returned to its natural state with human impact kept to an absolute minimum.  

Unique features of Red Dust Rebellion

A hostile world – Dust storms will appear and block access to different regions for extended periods of time. Fighting in the densely-populated labyrinths can end up damaging life-giving infrastructure. And the vast surface of the planet means forces can just disappear in the dust.  

The unpredictable raiders – The CR does not use Resources or appear on the standard order of activation. Instead, they use a new system to the COIN series that allows them to interject and decide when they wish to act, allowing for less frequent but sudden moves.  

The Aldrin Cycler – Earth is a long way from Mars. Many COIN supplies and replacements will take a long time to get from Earth to Mars, forcing those factions to plan for the long term.  

Multiple battlefields – Red Dust Rebellion takes place across 3 major theaters on Mars: The Noctis Labyrinthus, The Hellas Basin, and Arabia Terra. Between these areas is the vast wilderness of Mars, largely unpopulated with barren wastes as vast as the total landmass of Earth.  

Satellite warfare – The COIN forces control a network of surveillance satellites, but there are rumors that some are equipped with mass drivers and orbital assault pods as well.    

Everything is connected – All of the major cities on Mars are connected by spaceports. If you control both locations, you can freely move forces back and forth, allowing for sudden changes in the complexion of each theatre.  

The Earth Governments (EG) form a 5th faction that maintains elite forces and an extensive satellite network. Control of the EG forces changes between the MG and CORP based on how much Earth trusts the Martian government to manage the rebellion.  

Components

• A 22" x 34" mounted game board
• 93 playing cards
• 24 tarot-sized non-player cards
• 162 wooden pieces
• 12 pawns
• Two full-color countersheets
• Five 8.5" x 5.5" double-sided, full-color cardstock player mats
• Two 8.5" x 11" double-sided, full-color player aids
• Four 11" x 17" full-color player aid foldouts
• Two 8.5" x 11" double-sided, full-color non-player aids
• One 11" x 17" full-color non-player aid foldout
• Four 6-sided dice
• A rulebook
• A non-player rulebook
• A background playbook
• A 3" box

4th Printing

Space Empires 4X is a game in the finest tradition of 4X space games - eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate. This game is Rich in Theme. Carriers, fighters, mines, cloaking, dreadnoughts, merchant shipping, colonization, mining, terraforming, shipyards, black holes, warp points, non-player aliens, Doomsday Machines - everything an Epic Space Opera needs. Despite that, the rules are Incredibly Simple. Almost 20 years in the making, many elegant solutions have been developed to remove complexity and make the game intuitive.

1 to 4 players eXplore the random map. Each space can reveal any of 12 different terrain effects like asteroids, nebulae, and planets. Terrain is important as it impacts both combat and movement, as well as how you will build your empire. Players then eXpand their empire by forming colonies (long term, steady growth), harvesting resources (quick income), and building a merchant fleet (trade income). This infrastructure must quickly be eXploited to build a fleet from up to 10 different classes of warships and researching critical technology from among 50 levels of advances at your disposal. The competing empires quickly come in contact and vie to eXterminate each other. This is where your technology and fleet decisions will be proven. Combat is simple (there are no complicated charts), but rewards good, balanced fleet construction. Building only the largest capital ship is not a good idea. Your fleets will actually feel like fleets!

There are Multiple Scenarios for both solitaire and 2-players. Multi-player scenarios have the option for team play, including 2 players against 1 in a 3-player game. Scenarios can be customized in length and some can be completed in as little as an hour. Many aspects of the game can be completed simultaneously by the players so that there is very little downtime. This is a game that can be completed in one sitting!

SpaceCorp: 2025-2300 AD is a fast-playing board game in which one to four players explore and develop outer space over three eras. Each player controls an Earth-based enterprise seeking profit by driving the expansion of humanity into the Solar System and beyond. In SpaceCorp you can …

• Assemble a spaceport at a Lagrange Point.
• Launch an exploration mission to Mars.
• Mine the asteroids.
• Earn profit from exotic resources discovered on the Jovian moons.
• Discover microbial life in the subsurface oceans of Charon.
• Decode exo-DNA to develop radiation resistant human pioneers.
• Undertake a mission to Alpha Centauri in a generation ship.
• Break through technological barriers to achieve faster than light travel.
• Establish a colony in the Tau Ceti star system.

Each of the three eras is played on a different board.  The first era, Mariners, covers exploration and development out to Mars.  In Planeteers, players settle the outer solar system.  In Starfarers, players send missions to nearby star systems and establish interstellar colonies.

Course of Play

Players can choose to play a short game, covering just one era, or can play the full game covering all three eras and representing three hundred years of human expansion into the cosmos. Rules and systems for a complete solitaire game covering all three eras are included.

Players take turns playing cards to conduct actions with their teams and bases. Your turn consists of playing one or more cards of a single action type, with the option to augment the play with infrastructure, a time card or the attributes of a base.

How to Win

SpaceCorp: Ventures is the first module for SpaceCorp, the game of exploring and developing the Solar System and beyond. SpaceCorp: Ventures introduces unique enterprises via fourteen HQ mats, each putting a player in control of a different corporation, agency, or institution with its own capabilities and missions. Each HQ assigns specific start cards, Infra, advantages, and limitations for all three eras. These advantages and limitations evolve in Planeteers and Starfarers, and each HQ has a special, alternate final profit option at game end.

Sample HQ Board

In SpaceCorp: Ventures, each player selects an HQ from:

• Allied Transit: leaders in deep space transportation networks
• InfraMaxx: more infrastructure to use and share
• Nova Capital: speculating on the success of others
• GravTech: driven by alternate anti-gravity technologies
• Next Generation: adapting and evolving into a new star-born species
• D.P.Roberts Ltd: operating outside the law to intercept and seize 
• New Nomads: always moving on to the next paradise
• Stellar Security: protecting the galaxy for a price
• ... and six more!

In addition, at the start of each era, one player selects an eighth contract to be fulfilled, adding an additional way to gain profit and complete the era. SpaceCorp: Ventures offers players new ways to win by supporting alternate styles of play and multiple routes to success. A variety of unique abilities, new contracts, and alternate scoring options means that no two games of SpaceCorp: Ventures will play the same!

Solitaire SpaceCorp: Ventures. Ten of the fourteen HQ mats can be flipped over to play the SpaceCorp solitaire game with an enhanced HQ against the competition AI. But beware...the competition will have advanced attributes, tuned to each player HQ. Updates to the AI include some general enhancements making the AI more difficult to beat. These general updates can also be applied to solitaire play in the base game.

Talon 1000 is a dependent expansion for the game Talon.  Talon is a tactical game of space fleet combat between the Terran Confederation and the invading Talon Empire.  It is a quick playing game with simple, but not simplistic rules that innovatively allows you to play large space fleet battles quickly.  By keeping all of the information in front of you on the board, it enables you to have lots of choices and interesting decisions without the brain burn.

Why is it named Talon 1000?

The expansion is called Talon 1000 because it adds over 1000 scenarios to the game of Talon.  With 4 sheets of expansion counters, most of which have ships printed on both sides, the game comes with ~130 new ships.  For comparison, the base game came with a total of 54 ships.  Some of the new counters are increased numbers of the current ship types, but many of them are additional ship designs with different weapon load outs and configurations.  This gives a wide array of point values which makes scenario balancing easy. 

The 1000 scenarios come from the tables of fleets that are built from all these new counters.  Both the Talon and the Terran have 10 unique fleets at the 300 point level, the 400 point level, the 500 point level, etc.  All the fleets on each table are within 1 point of the table's total with no special rules or counter changes required.  There are 10 of these table of increasing points.  To play a random scenario, the players can either choose a point level or roll a 10 sided die to arrive at one.  Then they each randomly roll a die on that table to determine their fleet.  With 100 different scenarios possible from each table, the 10 tables give the players 1000 unique scenarios.