Warp's Edge – Tips, Strategies & Common Mistakes

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Warp's Edge – Expansion: Anomaly

Do you know the basic rules and have you achieved your first victories? The Anomaly expansion introduces a completely new mechanic to the game: rifts in space-time that benefit you short-term, but become a problem long-term. Also included: 2 new starfighters, 2 new motherships, new enemies, new skill cards, and optional challenge cards.

Prerequisite:
The Anomaly expansion cannot be played alone. You need the Warp's Edge base game.

What's New? – Overview

• 12 Anomaly tokens + 1 Anomaly bag
• 9 Time tokens, only used with THE HOURGLASS
• 6 new Power tokens (2 new types: Pulse and Wayfinder)
• 6 new Skill cards
• 27 Challenge cards, 3 per mothership
• 6 new Enemy cards (2 per level: Level 1, 2, 3)
• 1 double-sided Starfighter dashboard → 2 new starfighters: AVENGER and RELIC
• 1 double-sided Mothership dashboard → 2 new motherships: THE HOURGLASS and THE DECAY
• 1 Player Aid

What's Mandatory, What's Optional?

Mandatory when playing with this expansion:
Anomaly tokens, the new enemy cards, and the new skill cards must always be integrated, they get shuffled into the existing stacks from the base game. Without them, the expansion does not function as intended.

Optional, everything else:
The new starfighters, the new motherships, and the challenge cards are entirely optional. You can use them in the base game without the rest of this expansion, or play the expansion without integrating them.

Setup – Changes from the Base Game

1. Prepare the Anomaly bag: Place all 12 Anomaly tokens into the separate Anomaly bag and shake it to mix them.
2. Integrate the enemy cards: Shuffle the 6 new enemy cards into their matching level piles (Level 1, 2, 3) before you build the enemy deck.
3. Integrate the skill cards: Shuffle all 6 new skill cards into the existing skill deck.
4. Starfighters and motherships: Add the two new starfighters and the two new motherships to the available options. If you pick Avenger or Relic, you'll also need one of the two new power token types, shown on that starfighter's loadout. If you pick The Hourglass, you'll also need the time tokens.
5. Challenge card (optional): After choosing your mothership, shuffle the 3 matching challenge cards and draw one at random. Place it face up next to the mothership dashboard.
6. Time tokens (The Hourglass only): Place 1 time token into the main token bag at the start of the game. The remaining 8 stay in the supply.

The New Mechanic: Anomaly Tokens

Anomaly tokens represent your ship's newfound capacity to tear at the fabric of spacetime. They hand you an immediate advantage, but tampering with cosmic realities always comes back around.

Each anomaly token has two sides:

• Side A, the immediate bonus: Once per turn, during Step 2 (Pilot Actions), you may voluntarily draw a random token from the Anomaly bag and add it to your pool with side A face up. This costs nothing. You may resolve its A-effect at any time during that Step 2. Afterwards it goes to your discard. You cannot store an anomaly token in your hold.
• Side B, the delayed penalty: At the end of each warp, all anomaly tokens sitting in your discard go into your main token bag, not back into the anomaly bag. If you then draw one of them from your main bag during Step 4 of a later turn, place it in your pool with side B face up. At the very start of Step 2 of the next turn, you must resolve that B-effect before taking any other action. Afterwards it goes to your discard again.

Important: You may only voluntarily draw one anomaly token per turn from the anomaly bag. The A-effect only happens on a token you drew yourself; the B-effect happens automatically whenever an anomaly token turns up in a normal Step 4 draw from your main bag, and it can keep happening again in every later warp until that specific token is somehow removed from play.

The 4 Anomaly Tokens at a Glance

• Anomaly #1 – A: Gain a value 2 laser token from the supply, directly into your pool. B: Discard a laser token from your pool, then draw a token from your bag into your pool.
• Anomaly #2 – A: Gain a power token of your choice from the supply, directly into your pool. B: Discard an energy token from your pool, then draw a token from your bag into your pool.
• Anomaly #3 – A: Gain a maneuver token from the supply, directly into your pool. B: Place this token below the enemy with the highest speed stat, that enemy cannot be stunned this turn. Then draw a token from your bag into your pool.
• Anomaly #4 – A: Draw up to three tokens from your bag into your pool. B: No effect.

Reward: Gain one anomaly token and add it to your pool with side A face up. This does not count against the normal once-per-turn limit.

New Power Tokens

• Pulse – Counts as three energy, but deals one damage to you first when used. Cannot be used to repair your shields.
• Wayfinder – Reveal up to five tokens from your bag. Add any maneuver tokens among them to your pool, then return the rest to the bag. This does not trigger the end of the warp, even if fewer than five tokens remain afterward.

New Starfighters

Avenger (Model TR) – A repurposed Talosian ship with an advanced three-stage shielding system. Once your shield meter is reduced to a purple space, it can no longer be increased above that space again, so the shielding effectively wears down as you take damage. To compensate, you may spend two energy in Step 2 of each turn to repair your hull by one. Hold: 2. A ship for pilots comfortable trading long-term shield capacity for a steady hull-repair option.

Relic (Model MX) – A classic starship design, precursor to the later Artemis SI. If you do not draw at least three identical tokens (same type and value) in Step 4, you may draw one extra token from your bag. Hold: 1. A dependable ship for pilots who like a more consistent, predictable pool.

New Motherships

The Hourglass ★★★★ (Species Gaard) – A rotating dreadnought that only lets you attack the one section currently marked by the mothership marker, unless every enemy from the deck and row has already been defeated this warp, in which case all sections become attackable. Its Ominous Silence ability adds a time token to your bag whenever the active section is stunned rather than destroyed on a given turn. Drawing a time token later moves the marker to the next remaining section, strips the highest-valued laser token off that new section back into the supply, and, if the marker cycles all the way back to the leftmost section, forces you to exhaust one of your skill cards. Strategy: stunning the active section repeatedly speeds up its own rotation and drains your laser supply, so it pays to commit fully and destroy a section rather than whittle at it turn after turn.

The Decay ★★★★★ (Species Talos) – A dying Talosian cruiser leaking antimatter. It can attack and be attacked every turn. Its left section must be defeated with a combination of lasers and maneuvers, its right section only with energy, though energy can also stun that right section. Whenever all remaining sections are stunned in Step 3, the Antimatter Decay track advances one space and triggers that space's effect, permanently removing a token or token pair from the supply on spaces 1 through 4, or one of your skill cards on space 5. Strategy: avoid leaving every remaining section stunned at once if you can help it, since that is exactly what feeds the decay track.

With 5 stars, The Decay is currently the toughest mothership in the whole Warp's Edge line, a full star above The Hourglass, The Array, and The Revenant.

Challenge Cards

There are 3 challenge cards for every mothership released so far, including the ones from the base game. Each card adds a new rule or ability to that mothership.

Recommendation: Start with a single challenge card. Trying to defeat a mothership with all three of its challenge cards active at once is extremely difficult, even for experienced pilots.

Common Mistakes with the Anomaly Mechanic

• Drawing too many anomaly tokens: every A-effect bonus you take now comes back as a B-effect drawback in a later warp. Getting greedy early can leave you short on resources several warps down the line.
• Forgetting the B-effect: if an anomaly token turns up in your Step 4 draw, its B-effect must be resolved first at the start of the next turn's Step 2, before any other action.
• Underestimating Anomaly #3's B-effect: an enemy that cannot be stunned this turn will attack no matter what. Plan your shields or your token assignments around that in advance.
• The Hourglass, over-prioritizing stuns: stunning the active section instead of destroying it still counts as the section being stunned for Ominous Silence, so it still adds a time token to your bag and still speeds up the marker's rotation. Repeated stunning against this mothership costs you resources in the long run rather than saving you any.

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