Strategy Card, Bureaucracy

8. THE BUREAUCRACY STRATEGY

Important: Every time a Bonus Counter is added to the Bureaucracy Strategy Card, immediately reveal the next Public Objective. Reveal a Stage I Objective until there are eight of them revealed – after that, reveal a Stage II Objective.

The primary ability of the Bureaucracy Strategy gives the active player a Command Counter, some control over which Objective will be revealed, and then the ability to fulfil one Public Objective outside of the Status Phase. Lastly, he may change the direction of Rotation by paying 1 influence.

The active player draws 3 (only 2 in Stage II) Objectives and shows them to the other players. He then chooses one of them to reveal and place in the common play area. Each of the other two he may then either discard or place on top of the appropriate Objective Deck. Whatever he chooses to do with the cards is public information. The Objectives are drawn from the Stage I deck until 8 Stage I Objectives have been revealed, after which they are drawn from the Stage II deck.

In order to fulfil an Objective, the active player must meet the Objective’s requirements. He then places his Control Marker on the Objective and gains the Victory Point. If this gives the active player enough Victory Points to win the game, the game ends immediately. (He may fulfil any face up objective and is not restricted to the newly revealed objective.)

A player who uses the Bureaucracy Strategy to fulfil a Public Objective may still fulfil another Public Objective in the Status Phase. A player may not use the Bureaucracy Strategy to fulfil a Secret, Preliminary or a Special Objective.

While this Strategy Card does not provide “free” Victory Points, it does give the active player a chance at qualifying for an extra Objective. Also, it is one of only two methods of winning the game during the Action Phase (the other being getting Victory Points through Political Cards).

The secondary ability allows other players to spend a Command Counter to draw 1 Action card and 1 Political Card.