If you attacked one or more enemy regions by warping your ships to them during your management phase, all attacks must be resolved with a series of battle phases before the end phase can begin. All attacks must be resolved separately, region by region, and one at a time. The attacker chooses which attack is resolved first. When it is done, he continues on to the next attack until they have all been resolved. All attacks on home regions must be resolved before resolving attacks on outer regions. It can take multiple battle phases to solve a single attack!
A battle phase consists of five steps. The attacker must decide first, before the defender, what to do when two actions need to be decided simultaneously (such as whether to withdraw ships or what targets to choose):
Begin Battle Step (I)
Resolve all effects that are played at the beginning of a battle phase.
Withdraw Step (II)
Players may withdraw any number of their ships to their dock or to any regions that do not have enemy ships in them.
Target Step (III)
Players designate targets for each of their ships (the attacker goes first and announces targets for all his ships before the defending player announces targets for his ships). You may choose not to target anything with a ship, in which case the ship deals no damage during the damage dealing step.
Damage Dealing Step (IV)
All ships deal damage simultaneously to their designated targets. If a ship receives damage that is equal to or greater than its shield, the ship is destroyed and placed on its owner’s scrapheap.
Result Step (V)
When attacking a home region, all attacking ships that are still in the region now deal their damage to the starbase, even though they have already dealt damage to defending ships. If the damage is equal to or greater than the total starbase shield, the starbase is destroyed and its owner has lost the game.
The outcome of steps I, II, III and IV decides what happens next:
a) If at least one defending ship has left the battle during this battle phase, start a new battle phase. If this was the last defending ship, the attacker still starts a new battle phase in this region and may use it to withdraw.
b) If all the defending ships survived this battle phase, the attacking ships must immediately withdraw.
Important: All shields are fully recharged at the end of each phase - damage does not carry over from one battle phase to the next.
Example Attack:
Elysha has a Heron (ship) and a Kestral (ship) with an active ambush command defending Stain (outer region). Ian attacks it with an Incursus and a Tristan.
Ambushing ships get to deal their ambush damage during the withdraw step and Elysha decides to deal it to the Tristan. Now she needs to deal 1 more damage to the Tristan during this phase to destroy it.
During the target step, Ian targets Elysha’s ships, each with one of his ships, and Elysha targets the Tristan with her Heron and the Incursus with her Kestrel.
During the damage dealing step, all the ships are dealt damage that is equal to or greater than their shields, and are destroyed. This leaves Stain uncontrolled.
5. End Phase
If you have more than 7 cards in your hand when all other phases have been completed, you must discard card(s) until you are holding 7. This completes your turn, and the player to your left can begin his or her turn.
