Meridian: Empire in Space Board Game - How to Play

hi it's terrence and stella from mipple university today we'll be teaching you how to play meridian empire in space and so hopefully after this video you'll be ready to play the game coming up [Music] let's learn to play meridian empire in space game designed by ryan hitt and published by omniscape games and if you find value from this video later please hit that like button subscribe to us hit the bell and leave your feedback in the comments for others to find for now let's get to the table meridian empire in space is a 2-4 player light 4x game set in the meridian star system players will construct and load their starships colonize new moons and planets and battle each other for supremacy the game end is triggered when the entire star system is colonized when one empire is eliminated or when a player has established a presence in all eight sectors of the board this triggers a final and decisive round in which players will compete for victory tokens and the player with the most victory tokens at the end of that round is the winner we'll take you through the setup and rules first for a three and four player game there are a few variations at two players which we'll cover at the end of the video to set up place the board in the center of the table and nearby place the events in a shuffled face down stack and then the planets moons moon equity and energy equity face up each player takes all the colony pieces in their color one fighter one of the circular energy cells four of the triangular energy charges and a play raid then shuffle up the four planet cards showing the number two in the top right corner and deal one at random to each player this represents your starting location on the board each player now places their starting fighter into one of the four quadrants that is surrounding their starting planet and places two colonies into the fighter all starting planet cards are returned to the planet deck choose a starting player and you're ready to play meridian empire in space is played in turns going clockwise around the table from the starting player until the end of the game on a turn a player may take actions from all of those available on the player aid player may take as many actions as they wish to and can afford because each action costs energy and the energy cost must be paid using the player's cells and charges cells count as permanent energy and players will gain them as they colonize moons and planets on the board to use a cell to pay for an energy cost flip the cell over to its expired side all cells are renewed and flipped over to their available site at the start of each of your turns energy charges on the other hand are single-use energy and when you spend one of these to pay for an energy cost return it to the supply usually players will spend all of their cells on a turn because they renew at the start of the next turn but do keep in mind that if you keep some cells available between turns you may be able to use them to resist an attack on another player's turn this would be a reason to keep one or more energy available between turns so now that we've learned how to take a turn and how to spend and gain energy let's have a look at all of the different actions that are available on your turn the first action is movement which lets you move your ships around the board there are two types of ships the smaller fighters and the larger frigates moving a fighter will cost you one energy and moving a frigate will cost two in either case you may move the ship up to two spaces around the board which can be radially angularly or a mix of the two multiple ships including of different players may occupy the same quadrant of space but each quadrant does have a maximum capacity shown here five ships in the outer ring four for the next ring three in this ring and two for the inner ring you cannot enter or even move through a quadrant if its capacity is full ships may also not move into or through the central space on the board lest they be incinerated by the meridian sun the next action is colonize and this is how you get your first colony onto an empty planet or moon on the board to colonize you must have a ship with at least one colony on it which is in orbit around an empty planet or moon to be in orbit you must be in one of the two or four quadrants which surrounds the planet or moon so based on what you could see on the board right now blue could colonize only concordia gold could colonize this moon or barlow and red could colonize this moon the energy cost to colonize is shown by the white number on this corner of the board so it's two energy for a moon two energy for an orange outer ring planet for energy for a yellow middle ring planet and six energy for an inner white ring planet after painting the cost move one of the colonies from your ship onto the planet's surface take the corresponding planet card or a generic moon card from the deck and add it to your display and then gain face down cells equal to the production value on the planet you just gained these will be renewed ready for you to spend on actions starting from your next turn if the planet was a white ringed three production planet then you'll now draw and resolve an event card and we'll come back to event cards a little bit later and if after colonizing a moon you have more moon cards than any other player then you take the moon equity bonus this gives you a discount on creating new colonies each planet but not each moon that you've colonized will grant you a special bonus ability which is printed in text on the card the extra energy cells that you'll gain as part of colonizing planets is critical to your ability to take actions in the game however there is a catch-up mechanic if you fall behind the player with the single fewest energy cells at any given time takes the energy equity card and this gives a discount on future colonization actions the next set of actions covers the creation of new colonies or ships for one energy you can create a new colony on a planet that you've already each size of planet has a colony limit moons can only hold one colony outer ring planets can hold two middle ring can hold three and in a ring can hold four as such as the board is laid out right now red cannot create any more planet-borne colonies for two energy you can create a ship-worn colony adding a new colony to a ship which already contains at least one of your colonies as a free action you are allowed to transfer colonies between a planet that you've colonized and a ship that is orbiting that planet and vice versa in this way you could spend one energy to create a colony on a planet and then immediately move it to a ship having the same result as if you'd spent two energy to place it straight on the ship you can also move colonies between two of your ships if they occupy the same quadrant if a ship is empty it is considered abandoned and it is fair game for any player on their turn to move a colony to from a nearby planet or ship your other options when creating are to create new ships you can spend 4 energy to create a fighter or 6 energy to create a frigate the new ship must be placed orbiting a planet that you've colonized and you must move at least one colony from that planet into the new starship when you build it next we'll talk about attack and the first option is to attack a planet that another player has colonized using one or more of your ships which is currently orbiting that planet here black could attack hedron with one or both of these ships or could attack concordia with this frigate the cost to launch an attack on a planet is one energy for each colony that is involved in the attack you may choose to pay for and attack with fewer than the full number of colonies on the attacking ships if you wish planets are unable to defend themselves but they can be defended by that player's ships if those ships are in orbit around the planet so as it's laid out here this black attack on hadron will be defended by these two fighters defending with these ships is optional so the red player could choose to let hadron fall or defend with a smaller defense party in a basic combat each player will now suffer attrition losses based on the attack strength of the opponent so black is attacking with four colonies and red would lose four colonies red is defending with two colonies because the colonies on the planet do not count and therefore black will lose two colonies players may choose to spend energy to resist and each energy spent will reduce that side's losses by one colony then the players suffer their losses choosing how to split the losses between their ships and colonies as they see fit so here red having suffered four losses minus one for resistance might choose to lose two from the planet and one from one ship leaving it abandoned while black having suffered two losses may choose to split them between the ships a player loses a planet or moon if the last colony is removed from its surface the player loses that planet or moon card back to the deck as well as any energy cells it provided do a check to see whether the moon or energy equity cards now change hands next both the defender and the attacker receive energy charges equal to the production value on the planet that was lost then each time a planet is lost but not a moon you'll draw and resolve one event card and once again i'll talk about how this works a little bit later in the video the winner of the combat does not automatically colonize the newly vacant planet or moon the player will need to take the colonise action as normal and the planet is open to the first player who takes it the other attack option is to attack an enemy ship which is in the same quadrant as your attacking ship as before you'll spend energy equal to the number of colonies on the attacking ship each side may spend energy to resist losses and then you'll lose one colony for each colony that is not resisted on the other side of the combat pairs or groups of ships from the same player in the same quadrant may choose to attack or defend together any ship that loses its last colony in combat becomes abandoned ships are never destroyed in the game of meridian the final action that's available is to store energy for later use at a 2 1 ratio flip over two energy cells and take one energy charge the laws of meridian also allow for negotiation and diplomacy between players players are allowed to make agreements to take or not take certain actions however all agreements are non-binding and the only resources that are allowed to change hands are energy charges events will be triggered in the game when either planets are lost or inner ringed planets are colonized when this happens draw the top event card and give it to the player whose turn it was when the event was triggered beginning from the next player's turn the event contains a global effect which impacts all players each event has a duration in number of rounds and so when the player who triggered this event finishes their next turn you could mark this off with a spare colony and once all of the duration spots are filled then the event is discarded and has no further effect a game of meridian continues until one of the end game triggers is met this will then trigger a final showdown round where the rules change and players will be fighting for a decisive number of victory tokens during that round and that round alone there are two different types of showdown round a domination or a federation a domination end game is triggered when one player has a presence in all eight of the radial sectors of the board a planet or moon which is on one of these radial lines is considered to have a presence in both of the adjacent sectors so as it's laid out here red triggers a domination ending to set up the final round for a domination end game place a victory token on each of the inner ring quadrants then starting with the player who has the most energy cells and proceeding around to the player with the fewest each player who was not the one who triggered the end of the game takes one more turn additionally prior to any of the final round turns being taken all players except the dominating player renew all of their cells meaning that they'll have full energy available to defend as well as take their actions new events are never triggered during the final showdown round your aim on this turn is to claim these victory tokens away from the dominating player and you do this whenever you remove the dominating player's last presence in a given sector here the blue player would claim this victory token which must be assigned to the ship which did the attack a ship carrying a victory token can drop it off to another ship a planet or a moon and if something carrying a victory token is attacked by another player and loses its last colony then it can be stolen if the dominating player is able to keep four or more victory tokens in the center of the board then the dominating player wins if the other players claim five or more victory tokens between them then the player with the most victory tokens wins the game a federation ending can be triggered when all of the planets and moons on the board have been colonized or when one player has no more colonies left on the board in which case that player is eliminated or by the agreement of the players if you'd like to bring the game to a close each player now counts up the number of different sectors where they have presence the player with presence in the fewest sectors gains one victory token the next fewest gains two and so on until all players have a number of tokens if there is a tie for sectors each tied player receives the lower number of tokens players now place each victory token on a planet moon or ship they control as for the domination ending all players now renew all of their cells and the final round will start from the player who has the most energy cells and proceed around to the player with the fewest players then fight for the victory tokens and as in the domination ending when you destroy the last colony on a ship planet or moon which is holding a victory token then the ship that did the destroying claims that token after all players have finished their final round turn the game is over and the player with the most victory tokens wins in the event of a tie for either type of ending then count up which of the tied players has presence in the most sectors give that player one additional victory token and then play another final round among only the tied players and continue doing this until the tie is broken there are a few small changes to the rules to allow meridian to be played at two players you will not use the moon equity or energy equity at this play account each player will begin the game with two fighters instead of one you'll place your first fighters in the normal way and then place your second fighters in the directly opposite quadrants to where you're first sitting finally in addition to the usual triggering of events during the game each player will begin the game with two personal event cards in hand each of these personal events may be played once per game at the start of your turn and will be in effect for one round irrespective of what the duration says you can try to play these at key moments where it's most strategically beneficial for you if you don't want to use the event effect you can also discard the event at any time in order to renew three of your cells and that's how to play meridian empire in space we hope that you enjoy the video we are using a prototype copy of the game and so the rules and components may not be final and do check out the project page for this game we'll put a link to that in the description below and if you find this video useful please help us by hitting that like button subscribe to us you can also hit the bible in the corner to do so and hit the bell 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