So I bought the full deluxe set at Gencon, and am struggling with the rules.
So, it looks like to unlock Tech 2 you have to have a Tech 1 building as one of the prerequisites. And to unlock Tech 3, the same is true of a Tech 2 building.
I am noticing the Green Faction does not have any available Tech 1 buildings to buy, hence, I don’t see how they can ever progress to Tech 2. (They have a Tech 0 building, and a Tech 2 building, but that is about it)
In fact, I see other factions have missing buildings as well, so their tech progression breaks.
Am I misunderstanding the way tech progression works?
Tech buildings are not represented by cards, and are available to everyone. When you build your Tech I building, you just place a ‘building’ token on the tech one space on your play mat. This building then allows you to play the Tech I cards which you draw. You don’t need to have any specific card in your hand to build a Tech building, you just pay the amount listed on the play mat (1g for Tech I, 4g for Tech II and 5g for Tech III), and the tech building is built.
A couple of things to note: Tech buildings can’t be used on the turn you build them, so you have to have a tech building completed at the start of your turn to be able to play cards of that tech level. Secondly, when you build your Tech II building, you choose one spec from your codex, and you can only play Tech II (and eventually Tech III) cards of that spec. Finally, each Tech building has a required number of workers in order to be able to play it, as well as requiring the tech building of the level below.
Tech buildings are different from cards. If you open up the play mat, you’ll see on the left side there are three areas designated as Tech buildings. Next to your base.
Those are building cards at those tech levels. Usually when people say “Tech 1 building” they mean a building that is not represented by a card, that you can build for 1 gold when you have 6 workers. You build this building by paying the gold and placing the building token on the “tech 1” spot on your playmat.
I guess it’s confusing that a card like Rickety Mine could also be called a “Tech 1 building”.
Building cards are not tech buildings.
There are only 3 tech buildings available and they are not cards.
If you have 6 workers, you can just pay 1g and say “I build my tech 1 building !” Then mark that on the board with a House Token.
Starting next turn you can play any card that says “tech 1” at the bottom of it
After few turns when you have 8 workers, you can pay 4g and say "I build my tech 2 building and I specialize in the BALANCE SPEC"
then starting next turn you can play cards that say “tech 2” if they match the spec you choose.
Having a building card in play is not required to build your "tech building"
However you cannot build your “tech 2 building” if your “tech 1 building” is not available
Ah! I see. The original included rule book wasn’t clear on that…
The next follow up question (and tell me if this needs to be a different topic) is, when you choose a Spec after building your Tech 2 building, are you constrained to acquire only cards of that Spec during the tech phase?
You can add any cards to your deck during each of your tech phases for the whole game.
In practice you’ll probably want to stick to just one spec for all your tech 2 cards, but if you don’t like that idea you can build the tech lab to unlock a second spec. To be clear, the tech lab just lets you play an additional spec of tech 2 cards if you have a tech 2 building and an additional spec of tech 3 cards if you have a tech 3 building. It doesn’t change what you’re allowed to add to your deck, because there are no restrictions on that.
No.
Since you place the techd cards face down, you can put any 2 cards from your binder. However if they eventually come to your hand you will not be able to play them if you dont have the required tech level and tech spec.
Just to add to sharpobjects post above: There are never any restrictions on what you can tech - if it’s in your codex, you can tech it. Generally, you want to tech cards before you’ve built the corresponding tech building, so that they have time to cycle into your hand when you build their tech building. As an example, usually players will tech one or two Tech I cards at the end of their first turn, and build their Tech I building on their second turn. Hopefully, you draw one or both of the cards you teched at the end of turn 1 when you discard and draw on turn 2, and you can play them with your newly completed Tech I building on turn 3.
You are allowed to tech any card you like at any time. You could tech Tech 3 cards on turn 1 if you really wanted.
Tech buildings just say what you can and can’t play normally. There are cards which allow you to play things you’re not teched into, and they’ll say that on the card.
For example, this card tells you to “… put a unit of the same tech level and the same cost or less from your codex into play. (Even if you don’t meet the tech requirements for it.)”
Admittedly that pulls directly from your Codex. Let’s find a better example…
Feral Strike allows you to “… put up to two units from your hand into play if you have tech buildings of the same tech level as them.”
So that doesn’t require you to have be teched into a spec, you can just put any spec unit into play.
One more important thing: Spells don’t require Tech buildings, but they do require the hero of that spec to be in play.
So for both of those cards I just posted, you don’t need a Feral Tech 2 or anything, you just need a Geiger or a Calamandra respectively. (Admittedly, the Calamandra must be maxband at the start of the turn to cast an ultimate, but that’s slightly unrelated at the moment.)
@Tenebris Congratulations for buying the game though. After the inital rules and learning, it is really really quite fun.
Also, @mysticjuicer has a bunch of games up on youtube that you can watch with his narration. There’s also some official tutorial videos as well which are really helpful.
