Voidfall Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Object
• Overview
• Key Concepts
• The Cycle of Play
  • A — Preparation Phase
  • B — Focus Phase
  • C — Evaluation Phase
• Combat (deterministic)
• The Void
• End of the Game
• Game Modes

Object

Score the most Influence by the end of the game. In competitive play, the player with the highest Influence wins; in cooperative and solo play, the group aims to collectively reach an Influence threshold set by the scenario and difficulty.

Overview

A game runs over 3 Cycles, each with three phases: Preparation, Focus, and Evaluation. During the Focus Phase, players take turns spending Focus cards to grow their economy, build fleets, research technologies, and fight the Voidborn (and, competitively, each other). Combat is fully deterministic—resolved by comparing Fleet Power and applying damage, never by rolling dice. Between the action-heavy Focus phases, the Evaluation Phase settles the void's counterattack, upkeep, and scoring.

Key Concepts

• Resources: Food, Materials, Energy, Credits, and Science, tracked as stockpiles on your resource board.
• Sectors make up the galaxy; you control sectors, build Guilds and Installations in them, and settle Population. Sectors can become Corrupted (which usually blocks scoring there) and must be restored.
• Fleets come in escalating types—Corvettes, Sentries, Destroyers, Carriers, Dreadnoughts—each with a Fleet Power. Fleets move to regroup and invade, and fight the Voidborn, the neutral enemy that spreads across the board.
• Focus cards are your action engine. Each shows three actions; you normally take up to two, or all three if you flip a Trade token.
• Technologies grant permanent abilities and extra Focus-linked actions. Agendas are cards you play for scoring objectives and upkeep. Glory tokens, Civilization tracks, and Influence track your progress.

The Cycle of Play

A — Preparation Phase

(Skipped in part during Cycle 1.) Refresh offers and decks, update the Improved Technology offer (making more technologies available in Cycles 2 and 3), return the bottommost Trade token, and set the Turn Order for the Cycle. Competitively, players pick Turn Order slots in ascending order of Influence (the trailing player usually chooses first). In cooperative/solo modes, this phase also builds the Alert deck (Situation and War cards) and places Harbinger tokens according to the difficulty aid.

B — Focus Phase

Players take turns in Turn Order until the required number of rounds is complete. In competitive play each turn has three steps; in cooperative/solo play, two more steps wrap around them (a Reveal Crisis step at the start and a "The Void Advances" step at the end).

1. Selection step — choose one Focus card from your hand as your selected Focus. You may optionally flip a Trade token (to unlock the third action) and/or play one Agenda card whose icon matches your Focus.

2. Actions step — resolve your Focus: take up to two of its three actions in any order (up to three if you flipped a Trade token); each action can be taken once. You may also resolve your played Agenda's action, and any Technology actions whose named Focus matches your selection. Pay each action's cost in full or forfeit it; where effects are joined by a green "+/" you may take all, and where joined by a red "/" you take only one. Effects can trigger further immediate effects, resolved in any order. Cooperatively, you may also resolve Crises whose conditions you meet.

3. Clean-up step — recall fleets so no sector holds more than two Fleet tokens, discard down to four Glory tokens, place any played Agenda into a House-mat slot (no two Agendas of the same type), and store or return remaining Trade tokens.

Cooperative/solo extra steps: a Reveal Crisis step (draw the current Crisis when a Situation is showing) and a The Void Advances step (resolve a War by evaluating the Crisis board—a Skirmish plus resource costs—or place a Catastrophe token; the fourth Catastrophe loses the game).

An advanced Pre-selected Focus variant has all players secretly commit a Focus before turns begin.

C — Evaluation Phase

Each player, in Turn Order:

1. The Voidborn Strikes Back — resolve a Skirmish: total the participating Voidborn Fleet Power and determine which of your sectors is invaded. (A Skirmish of 0 Voidborn Power is auto-defended.)
2. Upkeep — total your upkeep (from Agendas and occupied Guild/Installation spaces) and pay it with Food, or a combination of Materials and Energy. Each unpaid upkeep costs 3 Influence.
3. Galactic Objectives — evaluate the objectives on the current Galactic Event card (achievements score once; multipliers score per matching thing).
4. Agenda Objectives — score Influence from each Pure (non-Corrupted) Agenda in your House-mat slots; Corrupted sectors and Agendas generally score nothing.
5. Draw your discarded Focus cards back to hand (and gain your Innovation Focus at the end of Cycle 1).

Combat (deterministic)

Invasions and Skirmishes are resolved without dice through an Approach and Salvo sequence: each side deals damage equal to relevant Fleet Power, mitigated by absorption, until one side is destroyed. The defender wins ties in the Evaluation Phase. Winning an invasion lets you take the sector (a Player Invasion competitively, or a Voidborn Skirmish against the void), gaining Bounty, Reclaim, and Glory tokens as appropriate.

The Void

The Voidborn occupy sectors marked with Voidborn Fleet Power cubes and spread as the void advances. Sectors you abandon can be taken over. Managing Corruption, restoring Pure sectors, and pushing back Skirmishes are central to survival—especially in the cooperative and solo modes, where the escalating Alert deck, Crises, Harbingers, and Catastrophes drive the tension.

End of the Game

The game ends after the third Cycle's Evaluation Phase. Players total their Influence from Agendas, Galactic Objectives, Civilization tracks, and other sources accumulated during the game.

• Competitive: the player with the most Influence wins.
• Cooperative / Solo: the group wins if their combined (or individual) Influence meets the scenario's target for the chosen difficulty.

Game Modes

Voidfall shares one core rule set across all modes. Competitive play pits Houses against each other (purple rules sections). Cooperative and solo play (blue rules sections) add the Alert deck, Crisis board, Joint and Heroic Focus cards, Harbingers, and Catastrophes as shared challenges. A guided tutorial scenario (in the separate Compendium) teaches the systems one at a time and is strongly recommended for a first game.