Beginning the game off the board, the legend of Thunder’s Edge starts with an expedition. At the end of your turn, you can choose to “commit to the expedition” and lay claim to an unclaimed piece of the planet. Each “slice” of Thunder’s Edge tile has a different cost associated with it, and each slice can only be claimed once. The slices are as follows:
- Spend 5 Resources
- Discard 2 Action Cards
- Spend 5 Influence
- Discard 1 unscored Secret Objective
- Exhaust 1 Technology Specialty Planet
- Spend 3 Trade Goods
The first time you claim one of the expedition slices, you gain your faction’s “Breakthrough,” which is a new faction-specific component. After all six slices of Thunder’s Edge are claimed, the expedition is complete, and the player who claimed the final slice flips the tile to its planet side and places it in a system of their choice (so long as that system doesn’t have a planet, supernova, or printed wormhole). Then, the player who claimed the most slices takes control of it, placing infantry on the planet equal to the number of slices they’d claimed. In the case of a tie, the player who claimed the final slice chooses which tied player places infantry on Thunder’s Edge. Thunder’s Edge cannot be placed in The Fracture.