Aurora Quantum Edition

Sentience is a peculiar anomaly of causality. uncountable of random events spanning an unfathomable timeline have led to a singular planet, among a star with 8 planets, among a galaxy with 100 billion stars, among a universe with 100 billion galaxies, to develop life complex enough to question the mysteries of their own existence. The story of our origin surrounds us, but it is up to us to uncover who we are, where we are from, and where we are going.

In Aurora, attempt in real-time to develop stellar systems teeming with planets, moons, comets and asteroids that are capable of supporting life through the attainment of Carbon, Oxygen and Water. You can win by either accumulating enough vital resources or evolving intelligence. Random events occur during this process, and can either benefit or hinder your journey. Do you have what it takes to develop a stellar system capable of supporting life?

Setup

Separate Stellar System Cards into one deck and Event cards into another deck. Shuffle both decks. Deal yourself 7 cards from the Stellar System deck and place the deck within reach. Deal 8 cards from the Events deck face down and discard the remainder. Each of the 8 Event cards represents 1 round of play.

How to Win

• Evolve Intelligence.
• Collect 14 each of Carbon, Oxygen, Water and DNA Resources.

How to Play

-Resources-

In Aurora, you gather four resources: Carbon, Water, Oxygen and DNA, as a potential win condition. Accumulate resources when you play Stellar System cards. Use the resource tracker to track resource counts.

-Stellar System Cards-

Each Stellar System may only contain one Stellar-type.

Stellar-types may support multiple Planetary-types (∞ = unlimited Planetary-types, a number restricts Planetary-types). Planetary, Life and Sentience-types many only support one Stellar System card.

The Evolution tech tree flows from the lowest order Stellar System cards (Stellar-type) to the highest order Stellar System cards (Sentience-type).

-Event Cards-

• Blue Events aid your evolution.
• Red Events hinder your evolution.

Starting a Round

Aurora is played over 8 rounds, and each round has five phases. Rounds continue until you win or you have exhausted all 8 Event cards.

1-Develop Phase Play any number of Stellar System cards in your hand to evolve Stellar Systems, starting or further developing ONLY ONE Stellar System per turn. You may have multiple Stellar Systems.

2-Event Phase Flip and activate one Event card. Event effects are immediate.

3-Pass Phase Keep up to three cards in hand and discard the remainder.

4-Draw Phase Draw up to six cards to a max hand size of eight cards.

5-End Phase A new round begins.

Other Rules

Stellar System cards cannot be moved between different Stellar Systems. They are immovable once placed in play within a Stellar System.

Stellar System card requirements linked with a red bar mean that both are required to play the Stellar System card.

When you remove a Stellar System card from a developed Stellar System, all cards supported by that card are discarded. This is called “Collapsing the Evolutionary Tree”.

A Stellar System can support multiple Planetary Systems. A Planetary System refers to all Stellar System cards supported by a Planetary-type card.

You can adjust difficulty by decreasing or increasing the number of rounds played in a game.