Two rival capital ships have locked onto each other in deep space. To win, you must deploy a modular fleet, build dynamic 3D defenses, and be the first to breach and board the enemy's Command Core.
Each player commands a fleet of exactly 24 physical Hex Tiles. You are strictly limited to the tiles in your inventory.
Dual-Sided Tiles: The tiles are dual-sided. The top face shows a specific unit class, while the underside features a universal Shield symbol. Players keep their unplayed tiles in front of them to form their available reserve.
You win the game if you start your turn with one of your ships sitting directly on top of the enemy's Command Core.
Physical elevation matters. If tiles are stacked, the player whose color is on the top of the stack controls the stack. You can never move or affect an entire stack. Only the active top tile can be moved, take actions, or be targeted by enemy actions. All tiles beneath the top tile are completely locked and suppressed; their abilities cannot be used, and they cannot be targeted by actions until they are uncovered.
Connection is an inert ability. Suppression silences a tile; it does not unplug it. A buried tile still conducts, and remains part of the Command Network for every purpose of tracing a path home. It simply cannot act or be acted upon while something sits on it.
(This applies to the Command Core as well: a suppressed Core cannot take actions, but it always continues to passively function as the structural network hub for its fleet).
For any action requiring a tile to be "adjacent" to a target (such as pushing, destroying, or spawning), the target must be physically touching the active piece AND must be no more than 1 elevation level higher or lower.
Every unit you control (including mobile ships, Shipyards, and Shields) must be able to trace a physical power/communication path of adjacent tiles (friendly or enemy) back to your Command Core. Your fleet relies on contiguous, edge-to-edge hex formations.
However, if a combat action results in a cluster of units being disconnected from their Command Core, those units "lose power." Either attacker can cause this: a Destroyer breaking a load-bearing structure, or a Repulsor shoving or crushing a load-bearing ship out of position. All of your units trapped in the enemy's disconnected group are immediately returned to your reserve, and all enemy units trapped in your disconnected group are returned to theirs.
The rule is absolute, and it cascades. No connection to your Command Core means destroyed, full stop. Resolve it by asking, once the dust settles, which of your tiles can still trace a path home — every tile that cannot is returned to the reserve, including tiles that only lost their connection because an earlier link in the chain was removed a moment ago. Keep asking until nothing else falls off.
If a tile is ever pulled out from under a stack, everything above it drops down to close the gap. This is deep space and there is no fall damage, so the tiles land unharmed at their new, lower elevation.
(In practice a Repulsor severs a fleet less often than it looks like it should. Because the Repulsor immediately advances into the space its target vacated, it usually plugs the very hole it just made. Cutting a fleet with a Repulsor takes deliberate setup.)
If you begin your turn with no legal action available to you at all, your fleet is disabled and you lose. If instead you take your first action and then find nothing legal remaining for your second, your turn simply ends — you acted, so you are not disabled.
Combat will sometimes split the two fleets apart — a Destroyer takes out the tile that was holding them together, and suddenly there is open table between the masses. When that happens, the clock is there to make you close it again. A battle where the two sides have drifted out of contact is not a battle, and the game will not wait politely while you rebuild.
If Player 1's network and Player 2's network become completely physically separated — no chain of tiles of any colour connects the two masses — a countdown begins at the start of the very next turn. Each player then takes two full turns. If the networks have still not touched by the end of that fourth turn, the game immediately ends in a Draw. Reconnecting is cheap and the clock is short: extend a chain outward, and play carries on.
Contact clears the clock. If the two networks touch again at any point during the countdown, it is cancelled outright. Should the fleets separate again later, a fresh four-turn countdown begins from scratch.
You cannot flee on foot. Because movement may never open a gap, no amount of walking will break contact — a retreating fleet only drags the enemy along behind it. Breaking away is a combat act: you point a Destroyer at your own tile, the one holding the two fleets together, and cut yourself loose, paying a tile for the gap.
Which means a losing player can, if they are determined, use the clock as an escape hatch: sever yourself free and stay away for four turns. A drawn battle costs you the win, but it denies your opponent theirs. It is rarely worth attempting — you spend a tile to open the gap, while your pursuer need only extend a chain outward to close it and spends nothing. Closing is far cheaper than running, so this is realistically only available against an opponent whose own fleet has already scattered.
On your turn, you have 2 Actions. You may perform any combination of the following, including taking the same action twice or activating the same ship twice:
| Unit | Move | Action / Special Rule |
|---|---|---|
|
Command Core
|
1 | Mobile. Unpushable. Cannot climb. Action: Spawn Shipyard. Your headquarters walks: the Core moves 1 space laterally like any other ship, and in the opening it usually should. It can never gain elevation — it may only step onto empty ground. Since nothing can ever be placed beneath a tile and the Core cannot be pushed, this keeps your Core on the table for the entire game; it is never part of a stack and can never sit on top of anything. It is the only unit that can spawn a Shipyard, so its position dictates where your fleet can be built. Can never be played face-down as a Shield. Cannot have friendly ships stacked on it. The win condition: opponent must start a turn with a ship directly on top of it. |
|
Shipyard
|
0 | Structure (Immovable). Unpushable. Must be spawned on Level 0 adjacent to the Command Core, touching only friendly tiles. (Max 3 per player). Disabling: A Shipyard is locked and disabled if a ship is parked on top of it, OR if it is completely surrounded on all sides so no empty spaces remain to spawn new ships. |
|
The Shield
(Face-Down) |
0 | Structure (Immovable). Unpushable. A Dedicated Shield tile, or any standard ship played face-down. Cannot be pushed. Crushes enemy ships pushed horizontally into it. Shields can be spawned on top of friendly Shields. |
|
Frigate
|
2 | The Flanker. Speed is its entire ability. 2 Move makes the Frigate the only unit in the fleet that can cross two spaces in a single action, letting it reposition, race for a Core, or climb two levels while everything else manages one. It carries no special movement rule of its own — it climbs and drops exactly like every other ship, just twice as much per action. |
|
Destroyer
|
1 | The Breacher. Action: Destroy an adjacent tile that is not a ship — which is to say a Shield or a Shipyard, friend or foe. The destroyed tile is returned directly to its owner's reserve. You cannot destroy a target if it has another tile stacked on top of it. |
|
Repulsor
|
1 | The Displacer. Action: Push an adjacent enemy ship exactly 1 space. (Repulsors cannot target Unpushable units: Shields, Shipyards, or Cores). A push only targets the active top tile of a stack. |
Combat relies on physical forced movement and the Z-axis. When a Repulsor uses its action to shove an enemy ship, the Repulsor immediately moves into the target's exact vacated XYZ space. The fate of the pushed enemy depends on what is behind them:
Direction: A push is always directly away from the Repulsor—along the straight line running from the Repulsor, through the target, into the space beyond. You never choose the direction; the geometry of where you attack from decides it.
If pushed off a stack into an empty vertical space, the pushed ship falls straight down as many levels as needed until it lands safely on the ground (Level 0) or on top of a lower tile. Because the Repulsor takes the vacated space before the fall, the Repulsor maintains the high ground.
There is no fall damage. This is deep space, not a gravity well. A ship dropped one level and a ship dropped five levels both land intact and fully functional, and may act normally on their owner's next turn. Height is a positional advantage, never a weapon by itself.
You cannot force an enemy ship to move upwards. A Crush happens whenever a pushed ship hits a physical backboard.
If the pushed ship is shoved horizontally backwards into an occupied space at its exact same elevation, OR into a stack that is higher than its current elevation, it cannot be pushed up. It slams into the side of the blocking tile and is crushed. The crushed ship is destroyed and returned directly to its owner's reserve.
The Repulsor still advances. A Crush does not cancel the shove. The Repulsor moves into the space its target occupied exactly as it would on any other push—destroying the target and taking its ground are one motion, not two. This is what makes a Crush the strongest play in the game: you remove an enemy ship and gain its position for a single action.
The rules above are precise but abstract. These worked examples show the four situations that decide most games. Diagrams marked plan view look down at the table; diagrams marked elevation look at the table edge-on, so you can read the Z-axis directly.
A hex grid has no diagonals. Every tile touches exactly six others, edge to edge. If two tiles do not share a full edge, no action can pass between them.
This Repulsor can push a ship standing in any of the six ✓ spaces. The two ✗ spaces sit one ring further out: they are visually close and may even look like they are "next to" the Repulsor across a corner, but they share no edge with it, so they are unreachable. The same six-space test governs spawning, destroying, and pushing.
Touching is not enough. The target must also be no more than one level higher or lower than the active piece. In all four panels below, the green Destroyer stands at Level 1; only the purple target's elevation changes.
The Destroyer's column physically touches the target column in all four cases, but in the fourth the purple Shield sits two levels up, so it cannot be destroyed, pushed, or spawned next to. Note that this cuts both ways: the tile at Level 3 also cannot reach down to the Destroyer. Build two levels of separation and you have a wall neither side can act across.
Every unit must trace a path of adjacent tiles back to its own Command Core. When a combat action breaks that path, everything cut off loses power immediately.
The green Shield is load-bearing: it is the only tile joining the Frigate and Repulsor to the Command Core. The purple Destroyer is adjacent to it, so it spends an action and returns that Shield to green's reserve. The Frigate and Repulsor are now touching nothing but each other — they lose power and go back to the reserve too, three tiles removed for one action. Had any enemy units been stranded inside that same cluster, they would have returned to their owner's reserve at the same moment. Note this only applies to combat actions: ordinary movement may never break the chain, not even for a single step.
A Repulsor shoves an adjacent enemy ship exactly one space and then occupies the space its target just left. If nothing is behind the target, it falls.
The purple Frigate is pushed off its perch into open air and drops as far as it needs to — here one level, but it would fall five just the same, landing unharmed. The important detail is the order of events: the Repulsor takes the vacated Level 1 space before the Frigate falls, so the attacker ends the action holding the high ground while the defender is on the floor. Note also that the grey foundation tile under the Frigate stays exactly where it was; only the active top tile of a stack ever moves.
You can never force a ship upwards. If the space behind the target is blocked at the same elevation or higher, the target has nowhere to go and is destroyed.
The Frigate slams into the side of the Shield and is destroyed, returning to its owner's reserve. The Repulsor still advances into the space the Frigate vacated. Compare this with 7.4: the identical push is harmless when the space behind is open and lethal when it is walled. A Shield is therefore worth as much as an anvil as it is as a barricade — a wall one level higher than your enemy's ships crushes anything shoved into it, and since Shields are Unpushable, they cannot be shifted out of the way first.
A push always involves three columns: the Repulsor that swings, the ship being struck, and whatever is waiting behind it. Hold the first two identical, change only the third, and the same attack produces three completely different results.
A Crush is a hammer-and-anvil kill and it needs both halves present: the Repulsor supplies the hammer, and something must supply the anvil. In the first panel there is no anvil at all—the Frigate is shoved off a cliff edge and drops harmlessly to the table. In the second the tile behind is one level down, which makes it a floor rather than a wall: the Frigate steps across onto it, ends the push at the elevation it started, and survives. Only in the third panel does a tile actually fill the space at the target's own level, trapping it between the blow and the backboard. Look at the third column before you commit the action—it, not the target, decides what your push does.
Movement is asymmetric on purpose. Going up is rationed one level at a time; going down is free at any depth. Both examples below use a Frigate, which has 2 Move.
Climbing costs one lateral space per level, so this Frigate spends its entire 2 Move to reach Level 2 and arrives with nothing left. Dropping ignores depth entirely: the same Frigate can leave Level 3, land on the table, and still have a second space of movement in hand. A Repulsor or Destroyer, with 1 Move, can make that same descent but can only ever climb a single level per turn. Towers are therefore cheap to leave and expensive to take — and remember that the whole time, every step must keep the moving ship connected to your Command Core.