The Vaden Banking Clans

 Abilities: Whenever anyone uses your 2nd ability of the strategy card, get one of their icon tokens. Cash is in for the exact ship they loose in battle later on in the game. Or at the begining or a phase, they pay you 1 trade to get it back. 

Flagship: If you hit during bombardment, gain one trade. 

They tried to give us another trading species but failed on this one I think. How often will ships be destroyed by all players? Some of these tokens you may never cash in on and no ones going to worry about giving you a trade to get it back. 

This race doesn't appear to be that much of a threat at all. I think the creators swung and missed on this race. On paper, it sounds good but the practicality of everything going as planned for your race to benefit from such a power seems unlikely in my opinion. 

I guess I won't know until I see them in action. 

The Tnelis Syndicate

 

Abilities: Grab 2 secret missions and keep one. Can complete 3 secret missions. Even if ships get destroyed in combat you can still invade with ground forces afterwards. 

Flagship: One ship from opponent rolls one less die (your choice)

Nice. I wish you could complete 4 secret missions, which would be double the normal player but I like the idea of a spy agency faction you get to play with. Some of the powers would be interesting to play with here. I like that you can still go after the planet even if your ship is destroyed. A strategy I would try is just send a carrier packed with mechs and troops to take a planet someone controls. 

Depending on how you play with them, they could be one of the biggest threats in the game. 

Roh'Dhna Mechatronics

 Abilities: Replace a space dock with a War Sun for 6 resources. Exchange ships for resource cost -1

Flagship: Spend 4 resources and convert non-fighter ship to flagship

Uh.....wow. Super powerful and I guarantee will be the most popular race in this expansion to my group. Everyone loves a War Sun. These folks may be TOO powerful, but I'll see for myself when we play the game. 

Sure, I think they have an awesome ability too and would love to have them in a game just so everyone else couldn't. I wouldn't use them the way others would too which would piss them off. But whoever gets it will surely be the envy of every other player in my game group.  

The Zealots of Rhodun

 Abilities: Vote after the speaker. Use planet technology to ignore 2 pre-requisites to tech and gain a commodity. 

Flagship: +1 per tech upgrade your opponent owns. 

I'm guessing for the flagship that's "ship" upgrade or else it would be too powerful. I don't care about the voting thing, that seems a little weak and tacked on to a race that doesn't appear to be political at all. But the ignore 2 prerequisites for tech is interesting. I rarely use planets for that reason yet with this species I would. 

The Olradin League

 Abilities: Get power of 3 starting "policy cards"

Flagship: +1 to all ships which move with you. 

I love speed but the flagship doesn't sell me on this race. The policy card powers are nice but its purely based on luck of the draw. So it could be awesome or suck. Not sure how I feel about this race with that being said. 

It's not my least favorite but it is in the bottom tier of races for me because of my concerns. 

The Nokar Sellships

 Abilities: Start with 4 extra Destroyers that don't count against what you can produce per round, each destroyer is +1 in combat. 

Flagship: +1 for every 2 destroyers you control

Everyone loves warrior races it seems. The only difference between this and the other 12 I've seen so far is the specialty on Destroyers. I wish they'd come up with more tech and political races to play with but I guess the average fan doesn't care for those too much. 

There's another ability they have which can give 3 ships to someone at any time but with zero in return. I guess its there to make agreements and deals with other who made need help in battle. But I don't really see that being appealing to my gameplay. 

Have a good weekend everyone!

The Nivyn Star Kings

Abilities: Ignore Rifts and Nebula effects. "Wound" tokens create areas that are both rifts and nebulas 

Flagship: Instead of destroying a unit, remove it from the board

A space-faring race is something we haven't seen yet in this expansion so it's nice to see "wound" tokens making a big difference in where they're placed. You can really make opponents think twice before entering in your regions with them. It's about the only exciting thing about this race I can see since the Flagship ability only screws someone if they had a secret objective to take out one of your ships in combat. 

Other than that, I consider this a low-tier species. 

The Myko-Mentori

 Abilities: Gain commodity after combat or convert it to trade after battle. Value or commodities increase with each space dock built, 4 Omen dice can be rolled to replace one dice roll in battle. 

Flagship: Gain one commodity each time you destroy a ship in combat

An interesting mix of war and trade here. I like how you can manipulate commodities during the game and I believe the Omen dice are 4 generic 10 sided dice you place with the race. 

If it weren't for the trading aspect I would've said this is a boring race but with that element thrown in, it would be interesting to see the pathways to victory pursued while playing this species. 

The Glimmer of Mortheus

 Abilities: During battle use influence to build ships (while you're the defender) 

Flagship: When exploring planet place Dark Token in area. 

Interesting. Nice defensive measures, which I would gladly take advantage of but the ability to generate dark tokens would also allow you to study them in the next phase. Not the best race but one that would interest me in testing out to see how that would play out. 

The Mirveda Protectorate

 Abilities: Unlimited PDS cannons on planet. Fighters convert to troopers during invasion. 

Flagship: Produce one fighter each round of combat. 

Yuck! What were they thinking creating a race like this? No one cares about having multiple PDS cannons on a planet. Sure there's an advantage but in my opinion, not much. And where having fighters convert to troopers is awesome, fighters are the exact things you destroy in combat during a battle because they're so weak. 

This one looks like a hard sell for me and my group but if I get it, I'll try my best to discover a path to victory. 

The Li-Zho Dynasty

 Abilities: Lay out "trap" tokens on places you control. 

Flagship: Can only be destroyed by actual hit. (no action cards)

I can't find anywhere what the trap tokens mean. Looking at the tokens themselves, I can guess they are a mixture of both bad and good but am unable to find a reference sheet in the file for them. So at this moment I can't comment too much on this race. 

The Lanfir Remnants

 Abilities: Cannot get relics. Explore 3 planets you control instead. Use shards to sub in for tech requirements. When winning in combat explore one of your planets again. 

Flagship: End of turn, explore one planet you control. 

An interesting concept about exploring but one I ultimately find useless if you can't gain relics. Using shards for tech upgrades is interesting though. Theoretically you could gain certain tech faster than other but then again, that never interested me that much in the first place. 

Though I love exploration races, this one isn't for me. 

The L'Tokk Khrask

 Abilities: Votes are counted with resources not influence on the planets you control. +1 to resources on planets you control, during bombardment instead of applying hits, add more troopers to battle. 

Flagship: During battle 2 non-fighter ships are given Sustain Damage ability

Overall this race doesn't appear that interesting though to be honest there are a few things here I like. +1 on planet resources is great. You can build a lot that way. Also you'd be covered in battle with your flagship making it harder to be defeated. 

Again, overall I'm not too impressed with them. But I don't doubt anyone would be happy to have them if given in random selection.