Outpost rules

Each player commands a colony on a distant planet. Build factories, staff them with colonists and robots, and spend the production they generate on more factories, more operators, and powerful colony upgrades. The first player to reach 75 victory points (VP) wins.

This page describes the online implementation, which follows the 20th Anniversary / Expert Rules v1.32 set.

Victory points

You score VP from:

• Manned factories: 1 VP each for ore and water; 2 VP for titanium and research; 3 VP for new chemicals
• Colony upgrades: 1 to 20 VP each, as printed on the card

Only factories with an operator assigned count. VP are recalculated every round and determine the purchase order.

The round

Each round has these steps, in order:

1. Purchase order is set: most VP first; ties broken by total credits spent over the game, then seat.
2. Colony ship arrives: the market of colony upgrades is refilled to one card per player (rolled from the supply; unsold cards stay).
3. Production: every manned factory deals you one production card of its type, and producing upgrades (Scientists, Orbital Lab, Space Station, Planetary Cruiser, Moon Base) each deal you one free card. Production cards are your money.
4. Discard: if you hold more cards than your hand capacity, discard down. Research and microbiotics cards never count against capacity.
5. Actions, in purchase order. On your turn you may, in any order:
   • Auction a colony upgrade from the market (see below)
   • Buy factories, colonists, and robots by spending production cards
   • End your turn by assigning your operators (colonists + robots) to factories
6. Next round begins.

Spent production cards are discarded face-up; when a deck runs out, its discard pile is reshuffled. You never get change, so overpaying burns the extra credits.

Production cards

Each factory type produces cards from its own deck. Deck value ranges and averages:

Some upgrades produce cards instead of factories (one free card per copy each round):

Research and microbiotics cards are exempt from hand capacity — they never count against it, and you never have to discard them. Microbiotics is produced by the Orbital Lab upgrade.

Hand capacity

You start with a hand capacity of 10 cards. Warehouses add +3 each, an Outpost adds +5. At the start of each round (right after production), if you hold more counting cards than your capacity, you must discard down before actions begin. Only research and microbiotics cards are exempt.

Mega production cards

With 4 or more manned factories of water, titanium, or new chemicals, you may exchange each full group of 4 production draws of that resource for 1 Mega card instead. Mega cards have a fixed printed value (no luck of the draw) and count as 4 cards toward hand capacity:

So with 5 manned water factories you could take 5 single water cards, or 1 Mega Water plus 1 single. Mega cards are their own face-up pool (9 of each type); a spent or discarded Mega returns to its pool, and like all production cards you get no change when you spend one. Held Mega cards are public — their value is printed on the card.

Operators

• Colonists cost 10 each (5 with Ecoplants), up to your population limit (starts at 5; Nodules add +3 each, an Outpost adds +5).
• Robots cost 10 each, require the Robots upgrade, and ignore the population limit — but each Robots copy only lets you operate as many robots as your current population.

Each operator mans one factory when you end your turn. Unmanned factories produce nothing and score no VP. You may reassign operators freely each turn.

Colony upgrades

Upgrades are won by auction. On your turn, pick a card from the market and open the bidding at no less than its list price. Going around the table from you, each player either raises the bid or passes; once you pass you are out. The highest bidder pays their bid (minus any discount) in production cards and takes the card. You may auction at most one card per turn, and only before making other purchases.

Discounts reduce what you pay when you win, not the bids themselves. Copies stack: two Data Libraries give −20 on Scientists and Laboratory bids.

The market and game phases

The market refills to one card per player each round by rolling from the supply. Which upgrades can appear depends on the leading player's VP:

• Under 10 VP: only Data Library, Warehouse, Heavy Equipment, Nodule (d4)
• 10+ VP: upgrades 1–10, up to Outpost (d10)
• Past the threshold (30–40 VP depending on player count): upgrades 2–13, up to Moon Base (d12+1)

No more than half the players (rounded down) can hold the same upgrade type in the market at once. The starting supply of each upgrade depends on the player count (the expert setup chart); 2-player games roll 1–2 copies per type.

Fast bid (game option)

With the Fast bid option enabled, auctions become sealed-bid: when a card is put up for auction, everyone (including the auctioneer) secretly places one bid at the same time. Bids stay hidden until all are in, then the highest bidder wins and pays the second-highest bid + 1 (never more than their own bid); a sole bidder pays the list price. Ties go to the player earliest in purchase order, starting from the auctioneer.

Kicker expansion (game option)

With the Kicker option enabled, a separate row of Kicker slots appears next to the colony upgrades (1 slot for 2–4 players, 2 for 5–7, 3 for 8–9). Kicker cards are auctioned exactly like colony upgrades but have no discounts. Empty slots are refilled from the current era pile; when an era's pile runs out, its leftover slot cards are removed and the next era begins (Era I → II → III).

Prices/VPs are the printed card values. Refinery's are not documented (the rulebook's card image is missing) — it is shown here as the Era II analog of Ice Prospector (60/1, like Merchant House). Ice Prospector and Refinery discard the cheapest of the just-drawn cards automatically.

Wily Trader / Merchant House exchanges happen at the end of the discard phase (after everyone has discarded their excess cards), in player order. Each owner may hand one card of a matching type to another player who holds a non-Mega card of that type; that player must hand back a higher-valued card of the type if they have one (their lowest such card), otherwise they return the given card. A card taken this way is set aside on the Kicker card until the phase ends, so it cannot be taken again by another exchange that phase. Mega cards cannot be offered or taken, and each owner exchanges at most once per round.

Strategy in one paragraph

Production is everything early: water factories and colonists before upgrades. Warehouses and Nodules are the strongest early buys. Mid-game, race for Scientists and Orbital Labs to fuel research production and New Chemicals factories. In the end game the big upgrades (Space Station, Planetary Cruiser, Moon Base) decide it, so hold cash when they are about to appear.

Full rules

This is a summary for online play. For the complete rules, see the official Outpost rulebook (20th Anniversary Edition, PDF) on BoardGameGeek.