15. Win Conditions
The player with the most Story Points at the end of an Act wins that Act. A player who wins two Acts wins the game.
Story Points are scored from the board at the end of each Act, and then reset. Apart from the two self-inflicted awards (§16, §8.12) there is no running total to track during an Act and no threshold to reach — what matters is who is ahead when the Act stops, and the player who ends the Act chooses that moment (§8.9).
15.1 Scoring#
At the end of each Act, each player scores:
| Condition | Award |
|---|---|
| Each Galactic Factor sitting at that player's Homeworld's preferred value (§2.1, §5) | 1 SP each |
| Uncontested Surface Locations that player controls | 1 SP per two |
| That player's units in opponents' Bands, where a unit in an opponent's Planetary Band counts as two (§14.2) | 1 SP per two |
| Completing the Storyline that ended the Act (§8.9) | the reward it prints, to the player it names |
| That player's Homeworld on its Prime face | 1 SP |
Count each line independently and round down; two separate lines each scoring one odd unit do not combine.
Uncontested means the Surface Location is not on a face labelled Contested. A Surface Location captured from another player is Contested by definition (§14.11) and scores nothing until it is Restored (§18.49). This line pays for territory held in good order, not for conquest.
Units in opponents' Bands counts only Characters, Ground Units and Non-Capital Spacecraft — cards that occupy a Position. Reaching an opponent's Planetary Band requires passing through their Surface Band by way of the Space Band (§14.2), which is why depth counts double.
15.2 Why it is scored this way#
Nothing is awarded for destruction or Liberation. A player may ignore both entirely and still win. Combat and Liberation are how a player protects what they score and takes away what an opponent scores; they pay nothing themselves.
Every line scores a player's own board, never an opponent's misfortune. That keeps scoring absolute rather than relative, so it behaves the same at two players and at five, and no player is rewarded for damage another player did.
Storylines control when scoring happens; the board controls how much. Completing a Storyline ends the Act (§8.9), so the player who completes one chooses the moment the galaxy is measured — pushing the Galactic Factors their way and then locking the picture in. That timing is the real power of an arc, which is why a Storyline's printed reward is kept modest next to the board score.
Surface Locations are both a score and a shield. An empty Band is skipped for adjacency (§14.2), so a player stripped of Surface Locations has their Planetary Band directly adjacent to the Space Band — open to exactly the deep units that score double.
15.3 Ties#
If two or more players are tied for the most Story Points at the end of an Act, the active player wins the Act — the player whose turn it was when the Act ended.