I don’t think it CAN be argued both ways. “A” implies “one or more,” but does not imply “only one.” And yes, it remains the start of the regroup phase until the regroup has occurred.

@Vidiot: After you've devoured the first planet, it is still "the start of any regroup phase"? Even if it is, look at how many times they use the singular: "if you have a foreign colony on a planet by yourself (i.e., there are no other ships on the planet with you), use this power to devour the planet, removing it from the game and placing it on this sheet. Your ships on that planet are returned to your other colonies." Now look at how many times they imply plurality or iteration: none.

My point is, the power could have explicity said "one" or "each", but it didn't, and there is room for interpretation either way. Just because your intuition tells you it works one way doesn't mean the other way isn't also arguable. Again, I don't care which it is I just wish they had made it clear which it is.  It would have been so easy to make it clear that it's iterative:

"At the start of any regroup phase, if you have any foreign colonies on planets by yourself (i.e., there are no other ships on the planets with you), use this power to devour those planets, removing them from the game and placing them on this sheet. Your ships on those planets are returned to your other colonies."

Since they didn't do that, it leaves the question open. My guess is, the design team had an implicit assumption that there would never be more than one; after all, it would be quite rare. So it's possible this question never came up during development. I"m not sure the frequency of occurrence is worth the number of posts we're generating here ... I just wanted to raise the issue.

 I don’t see where the ambiguity is. If you have two foreign colonies, then “if you have a foreign colony on a planet by yourself” is true. Once that planet is devoured, “if you have a foreign colony on a planet by yourself” is still true, so the next planet is devoured as well. How is that ambiguous?

This one sounds relatively weak to me, but still very cool.  I really like the feel of it, with planets vanishing from the board.

Huhwhat?  How are your getting "for each" out of the fact that they say "colony on a planet" followed by "planet"? I don't see any explicit iteration at all.  (I'm not arguing it doesn't work that way; I just don't see any obvious evidence either way.)

They used "a foreign colony on a planet", then proceed to use the term "the planet". Seems like a rather obvious case of "for each" to me - you munch one planet, it's still Regroup and there's another planet eligible for munching, so you do it again.

Holy crap!  That's a pretty fearsome power; I love it. Excellent use of the separate planets in this edition. Now I know where to point my Omega Missile. ;-)

@Hugesinker: Normal shared colonies still count toward victory (the text does not prohibit this).

One concern ... This text seems ambiguous to me as to what happens in the (rare) case that Locust has two unshared colonies at the start of a regroup phase. Everything is written in the singular, but they didn't explicitly prescribe "one". I wish they had said either "one" or "each" so I would know.

The text implies that devoured planets are in addition to any regular foreign colonies.

Parasite basically means Locust's fun is done.

Does a shared foreign colony also count towards victory, or do they need to devour the plane?

Sounds like fun for the parasite.

I love the fact that the devoured planet still counts as a colony... Locust won't be reduced below his current number of foreign colonies very easily.