Hidden Alliance

This variant is recommended for games with four or more players and allows all players’ decisions during the Alliance Phase to be revealed simultaneously, creating a more suspenseful situation with opportunities for persuasion, misdirection, and betrayal.

Gameplay
During each encounter, after both main players have invited allies, each player who is eligible to become an ally picks up an alliance dial and rotates it to indicate both the side that he or she is joining and the number of ships he or she is committing, as follows:

• The number of dots in the window on the hyperspace gate end of the dial indicates the number of ships a player is committing to the offense.

• The number of dots in the window on the planet end of the dial indicates the number of ships a player is committing to the defense.

• A dash (–) in both windows indicates that a player is not committing ships to either side.

• The rectangular card icon on the dial is used in the Foreign Aid Option

Each player who is eligible to ally must rotate his or her dial to one of the positions listed above, even if he or she does not intend to join the encounter. This keeps decisions among all players secret. Players are allowed to make claims out loud about the positions of their dials, whether true or not.

After selecting positions on their dials, players place their dials facedown in front of their alien sheets. When the dials of all eligible players are in front of their alien sheets, all of them are revealed simultaneously. Those who have chosen to ally send their ships to the encounter according to the position of their dial.

• A star is used to show special cases, as presented on individual alien sheets or cards (e.g.: using the Plasma Thrusters tech card) or where the alliance dial cannot show enough information to indicate a player’s intentions (e.g., when using the Yin- Yang alien in Cosmic Dominion), the player dials the star into an appropriate window. After all of the dials are facedown in front of alien sheets, but before they are revealed, the player with such a special circumstance announces his or her choice out loud.

Foreign Aid Optional Rule
This optional rule allows non-main players to send cards to main players as foreign aid using their alliance dials.

Non-main players must position their dial even when they have not been invited to ally. Any non-main player, invited or not, may position his or her dial to show the miniature card for either the offense or the defense. When the dials are revealed, each player who chose to send foreign aid secretly offers one card from his or her hand to the chosen main player.

The main players review their foreign aid offers and must accept or reject each one.

If a card is rejected, it is returned to the offering player. If a card is accepted, the offering player immediately gains one reward and the main player may also invite the offering player to send a specified number of ships (subject to all applicable limits) to become his or her ally.