51st State: Master Set – Moloch Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• New Components
• Playing With This State Pack
• Setup Changes
• Additional Phases
• Assault Phase
• Deploy Phase
• Action Phase
  • Hacking a Machine
  • Destroying a Machine
  • RAGE
• End of the Game
• New Game Mechanism
  • Gaining Ruins
  • Hacked Cards
• Card Clarifications
  • Draw 1 Hacked
  • Goods Placed on a Location
  • Cards With a Production and a Feature
  • X Is the Number of Deployed Machines
  • Hacked Conflagrator
  • Conflagrator
• Alternative Variant: Collaboration

New Components

50 new cards, comprised of:

• 27 Moloch cards (identified by the Moloch set identifier on the front).
• 23 double-sided Machine cards, to be used with this set.

Machine cards have a Machine side and a Hacked side:

Machine side:

• The Machine's Code, in the upper left-hand corner.
• The Name of the Machine.
• The Defense value, in the upper right-hand corner.
• The RAGE indicator, when the Machine has the RAGE keyword.
• The Assault effect of the Machine.

Hacked side:

• The DISTANCE, which is always 1.
• The SPOILS, which are always 3.
• The HACKED indicator.

Playing With This State Pack

The Moloch State Pack is a new set of cards you can use during your games of 51st State: Complete Master Set.

Setup Changes

Set up the base game as usual with the following changes and additions:

• Shuffle all 27 cards of the Moloch set together with the 88 cards of the Base Set. This creates your Deck for this game.
• Shuffle all Machine cards creating the Machine deck and place it in the middle of the play area. Leave some space for the Machine discard pile.
• Choose Difficulty level:
  • a) Recruit
  • b) Private
  • c) Veteran

Additional Phases

This expansion introduces additional phases to the game. Here is the expanded phase order:

1. Lookout
2. Production
3. Assault
4. Deploy
5. Action
6. Cleanup

Assault Phase

Note: During the first round the Assault phase is skipped.

Each player resolves the Assault effects of the Deployed Machines. Machines are efficient, which means you must resolve them as efficiently as possible: If one Machine's Assault would prevent the resolution of another Machine, you must attempt to resolve them in an order that both Assaults can be resolved. If an effect cannot be resolved, just ignore it.

Example: Kate has a State Brick Provider and Brick Depot in her State. During the Assault phase, Mother and Juggernaut are Razing and Kate must Raze both Locations (she cannot first resolve Juggernaut to Raze Brick Provider, and then assume she doesn't have a Brick to Raze anymore). Kate flips both Brick Provider and Brick Depot to their Ruins side and gains 1 Brick from each Deal field.

Note on the example: the printed example names the Locations "Brick Provider" and "Brick Depot"; the Location cards pictured in the same section are printed as "Brick Supplier" and "Brick Storage".

Note on the Machine cards pictured in this section: the printed Assault text on Mother reads "ASSAULT: One of your [green icon] or [grey icon with a white figure] is Razed.", and on Juggernaut "ASSAULT: One of your [orange icon] or [purple icon] is Razed." The icons are shown here as bracketed placeholders because their identities were read from low-resolution card art; verify them against the printed Machine cards.

Deploy Phase

Deploy a number of Machines according to the difficulty level you chose during Setup and the number of players:

	1 Player	2 Players	3 Players	4 Players
Recruit	1 Machine	2 Machines	3 Machines	4 Machines
Private	2 Machines	3 Machines	4 Machines	5 Machines
Veteran	3 Machines	4 Machines	5 Machines	6 Machines

To Deploy a Machine take a card from the bottom of the Machine deck and place it Machine side up on the table.

If the Machine deck runs out of cards, shuffle the Machine discard pile to form a new Machine deck.

NOTE: Moloch never gave you permission to look at the Hacked side of the Machine cards—don't do it.

Action Phase

The Moloch State Pack introduces two new Actions that you may take:

a) Hacking a Machine b) Destroying a Machine

Hacking a Machine

Each Machine has a Code in the upper left-hand corner that you may Hack. To Hack a Machine, spend all the Resources (and sometimes Workers) indicated in the Code. Then take the Machine card into your hand with the Hacked side facing you.

The Hacked card may be Constructed, Razed, or made into a Deal by spending the Contact tokens as normal (Hacked cards always have a Distance of 1).

NOTE: The first Resource of the Machine's Code is an indication of the Hacked side's type—they always match.

Destroying a Machine

Each Machine has a Defense value in the upper right-hand corner that must be broken to Destroy the Machine.

To Destroy a Machine, spend a number of Red Contact tokens equal to the value of the Machine's Defense, gain 1 Victory Point, and then discard the Machine into the Machine discard pile.

RAGE

Machines with the keyword, RAGE, add +1 to their Defense value IF the number of Deployed Machines is equal to or less than the number of players.

End of the Game

At the End of the game, before players count Victory Points for their Locations, the player with most Victory Points loses 2 Victory Points for each Deployed Machine.

New Game Mechanism

Gaining Ruins

To gain a Ruins (for example via a Production card), you draw a card from the Deck and place it face down in your State (you do not have to care about where in your State you place this card). You may look at the front of any of your Ruins to check what card it is.

Hacked Cards

When a Hacked card is discarded, it goes straight to the Machine discard pile.

Razed Hacked cards go straight to the Machine discard pile and you gain Ruins by drawing a card from the main Deck and placing it face down in your State.

Card Clarifications

Draw 1 Hacked

When a card effect instructs you to draw a Hacked card, take a card from the bottom of the Machine deck and add it to your hand with the Hacked side facing you.

Goods Placed on a Location

Goods placed on a Location that is limited to Hacking/Destroying a Machine are discarded when the Location they are on is Razed / Developed / removed from State.

Cards With a Production and a Feature

Cards with both a Production and a Feature Category are counted as both rows, but are placed in the Production Row, and thus are Razed for the Production row cost of 3.

X Is the Number of Deployed Machines

X is the number of Deployed Machines (min. 1 Deployed): This indicates that there must be at least 1 Deployed Machine to use the Action of this Location.

Hacked Conflagrator

Hacked side of the Conflagrator card (Distance 1, Spoils, HACKED indicator). Printed card text: PRODUCTION: Choose an enemy Production Location and you gain the Good(s) it provides instead of its owner. BUILDING BONUS: Choose an enemy Production Location and gain the Good(s) it provides.

This card may not target a Production Location with Features.

When this card targets a card that counts types in the State, count a number of types in the Location owner's State.

Conflagrator

Machine side of the Conflagrator card, Defense 4. Printed Assault text: "ASSAULT: Place [gear icon] on the [Action icon] Action on your Faction board. It is unavailable until the [gear icon] is removed. Remove the [gear icon] during the Cleanup phase."

Note on the icons: the icons in the Conflagrator Assault text, and in the Appallach Federation clarification below, were read from low-resolution card art and are shown as bracketed placeholders; verify them against the printed Machine card.

When you play the Appallach Federation you may place a [orange icon] on your Faction board to indicate that you may not perform an Action to gain a [gear icon].

Alternative Variant: Collaboration

If you want to have a more cooperative experience while fighting the Machines you may follow these rules:

Players may, as an Action, try to partially Hack / Destroy a Machine. As an Action you may place a number of Red Contact tokens or Resources / Workers (matching the Code) on a Machine that may not be enough to Hack / Destroy a Machine. Other players may perform an Action to Hack / Destroy a Machine by paying the missing costs. If a player Hacks a Machine with Red Contact tokens from another player attempting to Destroy it, they still gain the Hacked card—and the same goes for a player Destroying a Machine that was being Hacked by another player, they still gain 1 Victory Point. The only time a player does not gain the Card / Victory Point is when they fulfill the cost, partially paid for by an opponent, of the Action they perform.