Nucleum FAQ
206 questions players ask · Updated Nov 7, 2026 · Full rulebook
Setup and Components
- Can rubble placed during setup be cleared?
- Where does Mining Rubble go in setup when several mining sites tie?
- Which tied space gets the urban rubble tile during setup?
- Is turbine rubble placed in a 2-player game?
- Can setup make Orange-city Contracts unfulfillable?
- Are the Action tiles and Contracts removed during setup kept hidden?
- What are the 100 and 200 VP tokens for?
- How do the two special Action tiles of Experiment B work?
- Which components are limited?
- Are the round promo Nucleum bonus tiles placed face up?
- What do the icons on the player board mean?
Turn Structure and Action Tiles
- When do I take the bonus Uranium printed on an Action tile, and can I use it for that same action?
- If I cannot or do not perform an Action tile's action, do I still get its bonus?
- Are the actions on a played Action tile mandatory, and must I take at least one?
- Do the two actions on a tile resolve in sequence, and in which order?
- Can I keep playing Action tiles above my board when the slots are full?
- Does the market refill between two separate actions in the same turn?
- How does the Special Directive tile's 1 Thaler discount work, and does it count as an Action tile?
- What does a red 1-Thaler icon on an Action tile mean?
- What does a multicolored edge or action background on a tile mean?
- Does the coloured background on a base Action tile's Urbanize change the action?
Map, Networks and Railways
- What makes a city part of my network?
- Are my buildings in two cities one network if they are linked only by another player's railway?
- What is the difference between being in my network and being connected?
- Can I transport coal, Uranium or electricity over railways other players own?
- Can I build in a city that is linked to my network only by a railway I do not own?
- Can my first building, Mine or Turbine go in any city, and what starts a network?
- Do the long-distance rails to the coal areas connect cities or carry Uranium?
- Does Zittau have a long-distance rail to a coal area?
- Which power plant is coal-only, and can the others use coal?
- Can a power plant hold more than one Nucleum, and who gets the bonus for placing it?
- Does the 1-2 player board have fewer power plants?
- Is a power plant connected to the buildings in its own city?
- Are Mines and Turbines buildings?
- What does the multicolored icon on an Action tile mean?
- Can I place a railway in the middle of an empty three-space link?
- Can I place a railway outside my network, and which tiles can be railways?
- When my railway matches another player's tile, who resolves the actions on that tile?
- In what order do I resolve matched actions after placing a railway tile?
- How many actions can one railway placement resolve?
- Do I need a Worker in hand before placing a railway, and can a railway bonus pay for it?
- How much does completing a rail line pay?
- Can I use a rail line or railway immediately, before the tiles are flipped?
Main Actions
- How much power does Uranium produce when you Energize, and how many Uranium can a plant use?
- Which Turbines count when I transport Uranium, and what do I pay for other players' Turbines?
- Does a Turbine's printed bonus electricity or coal discount apply when it is not at the plant I use?
- Can I Energize using only bonus electricity, with no coal or Uranium?
- Can I take an Energize action without energizing a building, just to trigger a reward?
- Does the building I energize always need a rail connection to a power plant?
- Must the building I energize be in my network, or the plant's network?
- Can one Energize action use more than one power plant or power more than one building?
- How can I energize several buildings in one turn?
- Can I energize at a power plant that has no Nucleum?
- Can I use Uranium from another player's mine when energizing?
- Can I energize a neutral building outside my network, and who may do it?
- Can I import more coal than I need to flip Coal Import Wagon tiles?
- Does a coal discount apply per coal or to the total, and do the coal tiles still flip?
- Does a Develop discount apply to the whole action or to each tile taken?
- Can I energize a building in the same city as the power plant?
- How do I reach 11 or 15 electricity in a two-player game?
- What is the difference between the lightning icon and the light-bulb icon?
- Can the 3 income advances from energizing a level IV building be split across tracks?
- When do I receive a building's rewards and VP: on building it or on energizing?
- Do I have to build Urban Buildings, Mines or Turbines in a fixed order on my board?
- Can I urbanize in a city where I have no network?
- What can I build on a red urban site?
- Where can a level IV Government building go, especially on mixed-icon spaces?
- How many Mines or Turbines can I build with one Industrialize action?
- Do I need a Nucleum to build a Turbine or Mine, or a Mine to get a Turbine's bonus?
- When do I slide and refill the market during a Develop action?
Contracts and Technologies
- What do the starting Contracts C01 to C04 require?
- Can one building count for two Contracts, and can I fulfil two Contracts in one turn?
- Can I fulfil a Contract on a railway turn?
- What is the two-achievement-token icon on the bottom Contract space?
- Can an unfulfillable Contract on my board block a Contract space?
- How many Contracts can I fulfil per turn, and on which turns?
- How do Purple Contracts work, and do I keep them?
- Can Silver Contracts fill Gold spaces once the Gold stack is empty?
- What does the x2 icon on a Contract action tile mean, and can I double a fragment tile?
- Do neutral buildings count toward my Contract, Milestone and Technology requirements?
- Do Contracts like C14 (network of 4) and C34 (network of 7) count cities across separate networks?
- Does a building in Praha count for a Contract asking for buildings in a coloured city?
- When I gain a Technology reward, can I take a lower-level Technology or VP instead?
- Does a Technology trigger on the action that unlocked it?
- When do brown Technology bonuses resolve, and can their Thaler pay for the action that triggered them?
- What exactly does Experiment C's Technology 7 allow when energizing?
- Does Experiment D's Technology 7 make tiles wild for other players too, and what about the level 7 Technologies of the others?
- With Technology D7, can I fulfil a Contract on a railway turn, even the turn I unlock it?
- When Technology C5 or D5 gives a free railway turn, where does the Worker come from?
- Do bonuses stack with Technology A6's Energize +4, and what do B4, B7 and D8 do?
- When I gain the discount Action-tile reward, must I use the tile right away?
Recharge, Milestones and Income
- Can I refuse a bonus, or decline VP, to avoid triggering the endgame?
- Can I swap Uranium for Workers and Workers for Thaler as often as I like, and at any time?
- Where does gained Uranium go, and what if my Mines are full?
- What happens when I have no spare Worker to gain, and where do spent Workers go?
- Can I Recharge without having played an Action tile above my board?
- How much income do I get when I Recharge?
- Do unspent Achievement tokens carry over after a Recharge, and is a +8 Achievements Technology wasted?
- How do Milestone markers work across several Recharges?
- Why are there six Milestone markers when the game ends after three Recharges?
- How are King's Day points split when players tie?
- How many King's Day scorings happen in a game?
Endgame and Final Scoring
- Who scores the 3 VP when an endgame condition is met?
- When several players pass 70 VP at once, who gets the points?
- Should experienced players use three endgame conditions instead of two?
- When is the draw-pile endgame condition met?
- Can I Recharge on my final turn after the endgame is triggered?
- Does the final leftover-token marker give bonuses like the 9 VP at 40 tokens?
- What counts for a Government Building's final score?
- Do energized neutral buildings give VP at the end?
- Is there a tiebreaker for first place?
- How are leftover Uranium, Workers and Thaler scored?
- How do Milestone tiles and multipliers score at the end?
Solo: The Baron Bot
- Which rail link does the Baron take when several touch its chosen city?
- With two Barons, can one extend the other's unfinished railway?
- Does the Baron pay Thaler to place a railway on a red space?
- Does adding one railway tile extend the Baron's network under its railway requirements?
- What does the Baron do with a tile that cannot make any color match for a railway?
- Does the Baron place a tile as a railway if it holds the last copy of one of that tile's actions?
- When the Baron places a railway, does it apply every requirement or only the first one that is met?
- How does the Baron choose a city when several tie for its railway placement?
- When the Baron's tile could match its own tile or a city, which does it match?
- Does the Baron prefer finishing a one-space link or starting a longer link under railway requirement IV?
- Which power plant does the Baron use when it energizes and several are connected?
- Which building does the Baron energize first?
- What does the Baron pay when it energizes: coal, uranium, Thaler or Workers?
- Can the Baron energize when the power plant has no Nucleum and no coal but is linked to its mine?
- Which of the Baron's turbines and mines score when it energizes?
- Does the Baron score anything for a contract's VP income advance?
- Does the Baron compete for or take Purple contracts?
- What happens when the Baron recharges a fourth time?
- Which market tile does the Baron take with a Develop action?
- What does the Baron do when it has no Workers, no Thaler or nothing to energize?
- Where does the Baron place Urban Buildings, and what if it cannot?
- Is step 4 of the Baron's Urbanize rule a tiebreaker or another priority?
- What does the Baron do when it has no legal turbine site for Industrialize, and where does it put turbines?
- How many VP does the Baron get when a railway link completes?
- Does the Baron gain 3 VP for triggering an endgame condition?
- What counts as the Baron's queue when resolving effects?
- How does the Baron decide whether a tile can be placed as track based on its actions?
- How does Frederik's Challenge #3 affect the Baron's railway placement?
- Does the Baron orient its tile to deny your action?
- Can I play one human against the Baron bot together with other players, and are there special rules?
- How many neutral building cards are drawn in solo setup?
- What do the numbers next to city names and in the gear icons mean?
- If the Baron's logic card shows a mine but no mine spot is available, what does it build?
- How many tiles does the Baron take on a Develop action?
- How do the Logic card icons and the Baron's requirements break ties?
- Does the Baron Industrialize only inside its own network?
- Does the Baron count all its tiles, and in what order does it gain rewards?
- How does the endgame work in solo and with the Baron?
Nucleum: AustraliaExpansion
- How many Coal Mines can I build, and do they produce coal for everyone?
- Can Australia's endgame conditions, Contracts or components be used in the base game?
- How many endgame conditions does Australia use, and can I use the shorter base trigger?
- If a setup card puts rubble in Adelaide, is the Coal Mine tile replaced?
- Where can I build next to a ship I placed?
- Do the Australia Contracts replace the Praha Contracts?
- How many non-dotted Action tiles does the Baron get in Australia solo setup, and how many setup cards are drawn?
- Can the Baron use Adelaide's coal area, and is its Place a Boat tile ever a railway?
- Does the Baron pay a Thaler for Develop in the Australia difficulty variant?
- Does the Place a Boat chaining tile fill an extra action space?
- Do ships extend my network or carry power and fuel?
- What does the Tasmanian devil symbol do?
Nucleum: Court of ProgressExpansion
- How does Experiment E/3 apply to an Energize, including an opponent's Uranium and Turbines?
- When I use an opponent's Turbine with Experiment E3 or F3, who pays the Thaler?
- When does the market refill after the Free Thinkers Party action takes two tiles?
- What happens to the Party Leader when players tie in a Party?
- How does party scoring work on King's Day and at game end?
- Does the Baron pay Workers for a Court action, and are the extra Workers used in the base game?
- When during a chain-tile turn can I complete a Contract?
- Can I take a Court action with the Special Directive tile?
- Does Experiment F8's tile count include F7 chaining tiles?
- If Experiment E has technology 7 and uses a Court action with x2, how many times does it get the profit?
Nucleum: Energy Research InstituteExpansion
- Does Technology I7 apply when Government Buildings are scored at game end?
- How do Technologies M4 and M7 interact when I advance an income track that is already maxed out?
- If Experiment J copies another player's second Turbine and it has no effect for me, do I get anything?
- Do I get Achievement tokens from the L7 technology's building flip, even during Recharge?
- How does Technology L6 move a Recharge marker up, and does it reach the 40-token space?
- How do Constant Potential tiles sit on the player board?
- Can Experiment K's Special Action tiles be placed as railways, and can K take VP instead of a Technology?
- How do chaining tiles work with Contracts and the one-per-turn limit?
- Do the Mistress of Espionage's player-board buildings count for Contracts or her network?
- What does the Mistress of Espionage need to energize neutral buildings?
- Do energized neutral buildings count for Milestones, including those placed at setup, and does an unenergized Special Neutral Building count?
- When is the Action tile offer refilled with the Energy Research Institute?
- Can I go below zero VP to pay a patron power's VP cost, and does the Mistress Inventor give stars?
- What does the Marketeer patron do with a gold Contract?
- Are Patron cards optional in the Energy Research Institute, and how many Experiments are offered with them?
- Does the Energy Research Institute change how many endgame conditions are needed?
- What if the VP tokens for Technology M run out?
Nucleum: GibraltarExpansion
- How does the expert bidding auction for experiments work in Gibraltar?
- Do Gibraltar's Special Urban Buildings count as neutral or energized for scoring, and for Experiment J8?
- How can the Mistress of Espionage build a Special Building, and what does the Laboratory Level 1 Develop cost?
- How do Experiment F2, G7, G8, K13 and K15 and the Madame Engineer patron work with Gibraltar?
- How many steps does a Gibraltar boat-placement technology give?
- Do neutral Factories or other players' links count for Gibraltar's new Contracts?
- Does Gibraltar change the number of endgame conditions?
- How does the T3A technology raise Milestone multipliers?
- Does Madrid count as a colour for Contracts, and does Gibraltar count as a city in my network?
- Can I play Gibraltar and Australia together?
- Can I route rail through England or Turkiye, and how much coal can I import from England?
- Does Technology T1C let Melilla process Uranium without a Nucleum?