When mathaplo revealed the existence of characters in the forums last week, speculation about their role in the game, as well as the meaning of some of their statistics, began to fly back and forth. Now the time has come to fully unveil one of the last secrets of The Exiled.

Characters are designed to bring a host of new tactical abilities to Second Genesis while remaining nonessential to basic gameplay. Characters can be put to work in a couple different ways: The first is as an agent, docked in a starbase. While docked, the character grants its listed agent bonus. The second is as a pilot, attached to a specific ship. Once a ship has docked at a starbase and attached a character, it gains the benefit of the listed pilot ability. Additionally, if the character grants any command abilities, they can be used as though they were attached to the ship, on the same side as they appear on the character (yes, this allows a ship that already possesses a command on that side to activate both at once). Finally, if a ship piloted by a character is destroyed, its controller can pay the character’s clone cost (found in the blue cross at the top of the card) to prevent it from leaving play, returning it to his/her starbase instead.

This summary of characters is in no way definitive. While it provides a basic overview of their uses, more details about use and cloning can be found in the revised rules included in each new starter deck.