I have 2 questions:

1) I have a scientist in a planet under my control and an adversary it plays "Local Unrest" (or a similar card) and the planet becomes neutral.
The manual says "Leaders can never exist on neutral ..." Does the Leader die or Leader automatically escapes?

2) version exp. Shattered.
In the objective public there is the last card Stage I and under there is the first card Stage II.
I play the Strategy Bureaucracy that allows me to draw the top two cards (last Stage I and first Stage II), place one (Stage II) faceup in the common play area and the other (Stage I) on the top of the deck. It is possible?
Do I have so invert the order of the Stage; first the Stage II and then the Stage I? In a following round could propose him the same situation.

Thanks

mborgioni

1. The paragraph previous to the one you quoted addresses the situation:

"If a Leader is present on a planet whose ownership
changes for any other reason than invasion, the
Leader automatically escapes and may be placed on
any friendly planet."

This includes a planet reverting to neutral (as this is an ownership change).

2. You can place the Stage I objective on the deck, and the Stage II objective in play. Nowhere in the rules is it forbidden for Stage I objectives to be drawn after Stage II objectives.

Thank you for your speedy reply!

About questions, do you agree all forum members?

I agree wholeheartedly. That's how we've been playing all the time. Especially the first question - that's clearly stated in the rules.

I also agree on both counts.  The first one is written in the rules pretty explicitely.  The second one is also correct, as the rules for Bureaucracy don't say that once you play a Stage II, that you have to play Stage II's from there on out.  In fact, if there WAS such a rule, if you ever played the Stage II before the final Stage I, the rest of the game would offer no "choice" of what to play, as you'd always have to pick the Stage II, and this loss of choice would effectively kill the power of late-game Bureaucracy.

As already stated I do agree with the rules as put forth.

However I like to see the Stage I objectives all out before the Stage II objectives.  When I set up the deck I always have an extra Stage I card in the deck so that they are never mixed and once the proper amount of Stage I objectives are placed the other card is removed.  This is not how the rules are stated but a house rule.