Mandate 2038: Optional tactics

Rules version: 0.8.0-rc.17-test

Baseline status: Deferred; do not use for baseline play or balance evidence

Executable opt-in: set the selected-rules variant field tacticsEnabled: true. It is false by default and is never enabled by either supported play profile.

Rules companion: How to Play and Rules Reference

This document preserves the complete optional Tactic module without interrupting the baseline teaching sequence. Tactics and secret objectives are not used in the baseline game.

Deck and setup

Use 3 copies of each of the twelve Tactics, for a thirty-six-card deck. Deal one Tactic to each player during setup. Draw one at the beginning of every Era, including Era I. Keep at most three and discard excess cards after drawing. Maximum six-player demand is thirty cards before discards, so the discard pile is never reshuffled.

Timing

Players may play at most one Tactic per cycle. Unless its card states another window, play a Tactic during your own resolution. A Tactic occupies the optional modifier slot and never grants an additional Action.

When a card says “another player,” “one Facility,” or names more than one eligible Action, the player of the Tactic chooses the exact target. A card is discarded only after that target is chosen and the effect resolves. API Price Cut may be committed with an otherwise unaffordable Deploy because it changes that Deploy's final cost to zero.

Open Letter is the module’s only off-turn timing window. Play it after a Government vote’s options are announced but before any votes are committed. The module has no off-turn cancellations.

Card contracts

• Cloud Partnership: Pay 1 Runway for 2 Compute; choose another player to gain 1 Runway.
• API Price Cut: Deploy for zero Compute; that Customer produces no Runway this Era.
• Open Letter: After a Civic Permission Authority vote’s options are announced but before any votes are committed, choose one option and add one public vote to it.
• Model Card: Remove 1 Scrutiny after Deploy.
• Talent Raid: Recruit 1 Team from your supply at the acting piece’s destination for 1 Runway.
• Board Reshuffle: Choose and ready one exhausted Organize or Influence card.
• Weights Leak: Choose one rival Facility recorded as powered in the latest Production snapshot. Immediately resolve its printed production as if it were yours.
• Emergency Pause: End a failed Training Run with no Capability and no Scrutiny.
• Custom Silicon: Choose one of your Facilities; it permanently produces +1 Compute.
• Government Contract: If Trust is at least four, gain 2 Runway.
• Benchmark Optimization: Gain +1 Capability after successful Research and add 1 Scrutiny.
• Interconnection Waiver: Gain 1 Runway and 1 Trust.

Discard a Tactic after it resolves. The Tactic discard pile is not reshuffled.