RftG
Last game, I made some comments about the importance of card flow - making sure you were drawing a decent number of cards. You can do this by playing cards that give you bonus card draws in various phases (for instance, in the second-last round, omnis drew 6 cards when he produced). Another way to draw cards is by trading, which leads into a topic I thought worth covering - the goings-on of Phase IV (Consume). I think this is the most complicated of the five phases, but it's also a pretty important one. Here are some notes on what happens in it, and how players can use it.
Each player has two Action cards for Phase IV, with different bonuses. Let's put them to one side and assume someone else chose Phase IV. What do you do for your consumption? Consuming needs two components - first, you need a good to consume. (The goods turn up in Phase V and come in four different colours.) Then, you need a consumption power on a card in your layout to consume it. (Consumption powers are shown on a card next to the "IV" on the left-hand side.) Your role is to play matchmaker between these two groups.
Conceptually, imagine this. You gather up all the goods lying around on your cards. Arrange them in any order you want. Then, one by one, you take each good and assign them to one of your Consume powers. You keep doing this until there's no longer any way for you to put another good on a consumption power. (If you have any goods left over, they stay where they were produced. If you have leftover room on any consumption powers, it just doesn't get used this turn.) Then, you take each good you assigned to a Consume power, put it on the discard pile, and take the stated reward for consuming it.
One important point: if you can consume, then you have to consume. It's not voluntary. You can't just say "No, I'm saving that good for later".
So that's consumption:
1. Take all of your goods and arrange them in order.
2. One by one, assign them to your Consume powers, until there are no more possible matches.
3. Discard the goods and collect the consumption rewards.
Let's return to the Action cards. Because there are two things that Phase IV can do for you, and the two Action cards line up pretty neatly with them.
First and foremost, consuming gets you VPs. It is one of the two major ways you can earn points in the game. If you get set up with a few production worlds and Consume powers to match, you can earn some nice points. Produce one round, consume the next. Rinse, repeat.
Once you're ready to do so, you want to choose Phase IV (x2). That bonus doubles your Consume points. Doing this, you can be earning 6, 8, 10 or more VPs every two rounds.
The second thing that Phase IV can do is give you cards. If you choose the other Phase IV Action card, you get to do something new. Before you go ahead and consume, you can pick just one good and trade it for cards. This is an entirely new thing, and gets its own powers in its own row on cards, the row marked "$". (This row appears just above the "IV" row - trading happens before consuming.)
When you trade, you discard the one good you're trading, and draw cards for your hand. The number of cards varies by the kind (colour) of the good you trade. Blue is cheapest, Yellow most expensive. If you don't hvae other powers that give you card flow, trading may be your best option to draw more cards.
Trading is a bonus. Only those players who chose Phase IV ($) get to do it. Once all such players have made their trade, then everyone goes ahead and consumes as normal.
So, in summary (and why it matters), players choose Phase IV for one of two reasons. If they want cards, they choose Phase IV ($). They get to trade a good and draw multiple cards. If they want points, they choose Phase IV (x2) and can potentially earn high points.
If anyone has any questions, just let me know.