- •Bios Megafauna Living Rules
- •1.0 Introduction
- •1.1 Bios Series
- •1.2 Overview of Play
- •1.3 Game Scale (footer)
- •2.0 Components
- •2.1 Components List
- •2.3 Cards and Tiles with dna.
- •2.4 Era Tiles (Immigrants & Biomes).
- •Dietary dna Codes.
- •Immigrant Era Tiles have no climax numbers.
- •2.5 Map Tracks
- •3.6 Place your placeholder cards and animals.
- •3.7 Place your size animal, map animal, and homeland.
- •Start the four Period Decks and the Display. 13
- •3.9 Place the Atlantic Rift, Era, and Greenhouse Disks.
- •4.0 Sequence of play
- •4.2 Choose an action to perform.
- •4.3 Herbivore & carnivore contests, and final culling.
- •4.4 Scoring Rounds
- •5.0 Purchase a card
- •6.0 Resolve the event14
- •6.1 New Era Tiles event.
- •6.2 Catastrophe event.
- •6.3 Milankovich event.17
- •6.4 Erosion event.18
- •7.0 Play a card
- •7.2 Mutation Size Limits.
- •7.3 Adding Roadrunner dna.
- •7.4 Playing a Genotype Card (Speciation).
- •7.5 Playing a Genotype Card (Fossil Record).
- •8.0 Resize one of your species.
- •9.0 Acculturate one of your species.21
- •9.2 Benefits of Acculturation.
- •10.0 Expand an animal.
- •10.1 Choose Parent.
- •10.2 Choose Child Silhouette.
- •10.4 Choose Destination.
- •12.0 Rooter biomes
- •13.0 Herbivore contests
- •13.1 Biome Habitability.
- •13.2 Niche Contest.
- •13.3 Predator-Defense Contest.
- •13.4 Herbivore Dentition Contest.
- •13.5 Competition with Immigrants.
- •13.6 Losing a Contest.
- •14.0 Carnivore contests
- •14.1 Prey Suitability.
- •14.2 Physiology Contest.
- •14.3 Carnivore Dentition Contest.
- •14.4 Competition with Immigrants.
- •15.0 Greenhouse28
- •15.1 Greenhouse Habitat Displacement.
- •15.2 Empty Slots.
- •16.0 Extinctions
- •16.1 Extinction of Biomes or Immigrants.
- •16.2 Extinction of Player Species.
- •17.0 Episodes
- •17.1 Atlantic Rift.
- •18.0 Ending the game
- •18.1 Determining the Winner.
- •18.2 Flowing this game into an Origins Game.
- •19.0 Solitaire game
- •19.1 When Two-Tuskers Ruled the World (Solitaire).
- •20.0 Example of play
- •21.0 Tips on winning
- •21.1 Grab valuable dna
- •21.4 Predatory child.
- •21.5 Crossing the Atlantic.
- •22.0 Milieu
- •23.0 References
- •24.0 Credits
- •25.0 Player resources
- •25.0 Odds for a catastrophe not happening (courtesy Bill Su)
3.6 Place your placeholder cards and animals.
Place your four placeholder cards (2.7) in a row in front of you. These cards are permanent, and indicate where your four species stacks will go. Put all the animals of your Color on or near the placeholder card with the matching silhouette. Each card should have 8 animals.
3.7 Place your size animal, map animal, and homeland.
Your starting species is the placeholder card labeled archetype. 12
Place Size Animal. Archetypes start at size one. Place one of your archetype animals in the size one block of the size track (2.5a).
Place Homeland and Population. Place your homeland biome (2.4f) face-up in the biome slot identified with the silhouette of your color. Remove any biome already occupying the homeland slot and put it into the tarpit (16.1a). Place one archetype animal on top of your homeland.
Note: Do not use homelands for players not in the game.
Start the four Period Decks and the Display. 13
Shuffle the deck and place cards face-down into four side-by-side decks as indicated below. You may store these in the box lid, which has indicators for these decks.
a. Triassic Period Deck – A number of cards = 3 times the number of players.
b. Jurassic Period Deck – 5 cards.
c. Cretaceous Period Deck – 8 cards.
d. Tertiary Period Deck – 7 cards.
e. Display. Draw 5 cards from the general deck and lay them face-up side-by-side. This is the Display. See example 20.0.
f. 4-Player game only. Make a deck of 30 cards and from this make a second 5-card display above the first. This Upper Display is treated as the Display except that cards purchased here are replaced from the 25-card deck and generate neither events (6.0) nor scoring rounds (4.4).
Note: The remaining cards will not be used.
Beginner’s Game: Remove all the Genotype Cards (see 7.4 & 7.5) before starting the decks.
3.9 Place the Atlantic Rift, Era, and Greenhouse Disks.
a. Atlantic Rift and Era. Place a clear red disk in the “ammonite” (Atlantic Rift”, 5.2d) and “sunflower” (Era Disk, 5.2d) spots.
b. Greenhouse Level. Place a clear red disk on the Greenhouse track on the map, in the 800 ppm “start” spot. See Greenhouse (15.0).
4.0 Sequence of play
4.1 Player Order. The player with the least-teeth (2.2a) goes first, thereafter play goes in clockwise order.
4.2 Choose an action to perform.
The current player chooses one of the following four (optional: five) actions to perform:
Purchase and play/discard a card. Purchase one card in the Display(s) per 5.0, and play it per 7.0. Then draw a new card, resolve its event per 6.0, and finally use it to replenish the Display. See 20.0 turn 2.
Resize one of your species. Move a size animal one spot per 8.0. See 20.0 turn 1.
Acculturate one of your species. If you have the two requirements, add an animal from your reserves to a culture per 9.0. See 20.0 turn 18.
Expand an animal. Add an animal from your reserves to a habitable habitat within its migration range (11.0) from a chosen parent per 10.0. You may expand with the same silhouette as the parent, or a new one. Your destination can be any habitable triangle or biome. See 20.0 turn 4.
Roadrunner club (optional). Place 2 genes on the leftmost card in the Display, and adjust the roadrunner of one of your animals by a step. If this animal has predator(s), they may similarly adjust a step (for free).
Important: Because one animal is dedicated to tracking the size of a species, all species are limited to seven animals on the map, cultures, and roadrunner tracks. If you run out, you can’t acculturate, expand, or mutate new roadrunner with that species.