Creature College

Creature College Rulebook

Table of Contents

In this box you will find:

6 player mats
54 creature cards
48 battle cards
36 special mission cards
24 ability cards
36 battle gem research lab cards
36 victory point research lab cards
36 element track research cards
One play order board
150 battle win gems (green), 50 battle loss gems (red)
6 sets of player tokens in the different player colours including 5 square element markers, one square round order marker and nine round bidding tokens numbered 1 to 9
3 Kevin the Giga-Pig cards
1 square game round marker
2 card dice
1 scoring pad

Goal

To win the coveted Creature College Cup you must collect more victory points than your opponents. Victory points can be won by collecting creatures, completing missions, building your research lab and smacking down your enemies!

Creature College is played in 3 university terms, Spring, Autumn and Winter. Each term consists of 3 bidding rounds and 1 battle round. At the end of 12 rounds the game is over and you count up the victory points. The player with the highest number of victory points at the end of the game is the winner.

There are four different ways of winning victory points in Creature College:

You can collect five different types of elemental creatures during the game: Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Myth. Collecting creatures in a set gives you additional points. The coloured squares in the middle of the board are your element score tracks. Move up one box for every card of that type that you collect. Certain special ability cards and research lab cards will also help you advance up these tracks.

You can get points from completing your mission. Your mission card has card colours on it that correspond to creatures that you have to collect. Collect all the creatures and you'll get the score on the card.

As you expand your research lab you can take victory point cards that count at the end of the game.

Finally you can win battle gems from fights which are worth victory points. A green win battle gem is equal to +1 victory point a red loss battle gem is equal to -1 victory point.

Setup

Each player takes a player mat at random and a set of player tokens in the same colour as the mat. Place the game turn board in the centre of the play area. Determine the player order for the first round randomly (we suggest you do it by measuring who has the largest ears, it doesn't have anything to do with the game but you'll probably have fun figuring it out). Now take the creature card deck and remove cards, if necessary, for the two, three and four player games according to the table below.

Players	Setup
6 Players	Don't remove any cards
5 Players	Don't remove any cards
4 Players	Remove nine of the creature cards with a value of 1
3 Players	Remove all of the creature cards with a value of 1 and eight of with a value of 2
2 Players	Remove all of the creature cards with a value of 1 or 2 and seven with a value of 5

Now shuffle the creature cards and deal them into three equal piles, shuffle the Kevin the Giga Pig cards in order of strength (5, 7, 9) into the three piles placing the pile with 5 Kevin on the Autumn position on the game board then the pile containing 7 Kevin on the Winter position and the pile containing 9 Kevin on the Spring Position.

Now shuffle each of the three piles of Research Lab cards and place them separately face down next to the game board.

Deal three ability cards to each player. The players must each choose an ability card and place it face up on their player mat. The remaining abilities are discarded.

Deal three mission cards to each player. The players must choose one mission card from the three and place it face down on their player mat. The remaining mission cards are discarded. The symbols on the mission card show you which cards you need to collect in order to complete the mission, and the points value at the bottom indicates the number of victory points you'll receive.

Only creature cards count towards your mission. Abilities or research lab cards that enhance element tracks don't count towards your mission.

Wild creature cards (Multihued Symbionts and Chamelial Snoops) can be used for any element in completing your mission.

Placing the Creature Cards

Creature cards are drawn from Autumn, Winter and Spring decks on the game board dependent on the position of the game round marker. The creature cards are placed in the middle of the game play area at the start of each bidding round. The number of creature cards placed depends on the number of players. Six cards are placed in the 5 and 6 player games. Five cards are placed in the 4 player game. Four cards are placed in the 3 player game and three cards are placed in the 2 player game. At the end of the bidding round any remaining creature cards are discarded. Now place the black game round marker on the first bidding round in Autumn on the game board.

You're now ready to play Creature College!

Game Overview

Bidding Round Overview

Place new creature card.
Bid for creature cards in player order.
Change player order according to who has bid the most.
Take the creature card that you've won and turn over the token you bid placing it back in your store.
Move wooden counters on your element tracks.
Roll the research dice and take either a research lab card (gem research, element track research or victory point research) or battle cards according to your dice roll and in player order.
End your round.

At the end of the Bidding Round

Fight Kevin the Giga-Pig if he turned up. (panic, running round in circles and general mayhem is all encouraged in the presence of Kevin...he is, after all, a 50ft high enraged killer guinea pig)
Discard any remaining creature cards.

Game Overview (cont.)

Battle Round Overview

Choose an element to fight in (Air, Earth, Fire, Water or Myth).
Compare your battle score with neighbouring players, playing battle cards as necessary.
Take win or loss gems.
Turn cards played in attack only 90°. These cards will take no further part in any battles for the rest of the game but they still count towards your element score track at the end of the game.

Playing Creature College

The Bidding Round

Deal the creature cards from the appropriate deck on the game board into your play area.

You start the game with nine bidding tokens in your colour face up in front of you. You'll play one of them in each of the nine bidding rounds. Once a token has been played it can never be played again. It is returned to your token collection and turned over to indicate that it's been used (tokens are always visible to all players).

At the start of the bidding round and in player order, each player bids on a creature card. You can be outbid by another player placing a higher value token on the creature card that you've bid on. If this happens you must immediately move your token to a different creature card. You may bump someone from another creature card if your token has a higher value than theirs. If you are playing the same value token as someone else has played you cannot bump them, their token has precedence unless you have an ability card that changes your bid.

Example: Jane bids first and wants the Chamelial Snoop, she bids the nine and so is unbeatable. Alice bids the yellow three on Sparx Franklin but is outbid by Rolf with the light blue eight. Alice moves to the Crabulant Clipper. Hans bids a red five on Oakly Treeheart. Arthur then bids a green five on the Crabulant Clipper forcing Alice to move again to Vesper Bunnysnatcher. Omar moves last and places a blue one on Ruby Rumblestone.

Changing Player Order

Once everyone has bid, but before you take your creature cards, you need to determine player order. Play order is rearranged with the player who bid the most taking the first position and the other players following in order of the amount that they bid. If two players are tied then they keep the play order they already have respective to each other on the play order board.

Example: Jane has the highest bid so becomes first player. Rolf with the light blue eight is next followed by Arthur and Hans who both bid five and stay in the order they were in before bidding. Alice bids the yellow three and is the fifth player in the player order followed lastly by Omar who bid the one.

Moving Tokens on the Elements Tracks

Once you've taken your creature cards you should update the element tracks on your player mat to represent the creature cards that you currently own (1 element space per creature card owned). Note that you don't play wild cards on the tracks until the end of the game. An important rule here is that if you use a wild card to represent a certain colour so that you can complete your mission then you must use it as the same colour on your element score track.

Research Lab Cards and Battle Cards

In order of play, the players now roll the two card dice. The dice with numbers on represents the number of battle cards you could take and the dice with the symbols represents which of the research cards you could take. Based on your dice roll you may either take 1 or 2 battle cards, or one of the two research cards represented on the research card die roll (note you can't take both as that would be naughty and bad.)

Example: Jane throws both dice. The Battle die comes up with a "2" meaning she could take 2 battle cards whilst the research die comes up with an element track research and gem research card meaning that Jane could take an element track card OR a gem research card instead of battle cards. She decides to take two battle cards.

Research Lab Cards and Battle Cards (Cont.)

Research Lab Cards come in three varieties:

Gem Research Cards – These lab expansions add to the number of green battle gems you win from battle victories or reduce the number of red battle gems you receive from battle defeats.
Element Track Research Cards – These add to your score on an element track of your choice at the end of the game. They add 1 or 2 places on the track.
Victory Point Research Cards – These give you victory points at the end of the game and are worth 4, 5 or 6 victory points.

Research lab cards are placed immediately face up on the player mats whilst battle cards can either be placed face down in front of the player or held in the player's hand. Once all five research lab slots on a player's play mat have been filled they cannot be changed or replaced.

The player must take a battle card if all their research lab slots are filled. Battle cards are used in battles and improve your ability to fight other players. Battle cards either give you extra battle points or increase the effectiveness of your creatures in battle.

Kevin the Giga-Pig

He's big…he's furry…and he's really annoyed! Kevin the Giga-Pig was once a happy little guinea pig eating the occasional seed, running around in his little wheel and generally being at one with all that was basically rodenty. That was until Derek decided to use him to test out a shrink ray he'd found on a distant, long dead, alien planet. Let's just say that the test didn't quite work out as planned. The result was a 50 ft high fluffy ball of really unhappy guinea pig-ness. Not only does Kevin never seem to get enough to eat but he no longer fits in his little wheel and he's really, really annoyed. He occasionally escapes from his holding pen at the University and wreaks havoc downtown until he's stopped by the Creature College students with an enormous pile of guinea pig food, a cannon and about 20 gallons of elephant tranquilizer.

If Kevin turns up at the start of the bidding round, then at the end of a bidding round all the players will have to try and defeat him. Put Kevin aside and deal another creature card so that a full number of creature cards are dealt for the round. If he is the last card remaining in a season then he automatically comes out in that round.

Kevin has two numbers on his card; next to the fist is Kevin's combat strength and next to the red gem is the number of loss gems the player gets if they are beaten by Kevin. Each player now needs to choose creature cards in a single element to battle Kevin with, those cards (one or more) are turned 90° and may take no further part in battles during the game. The player can also add battle cards to try and beat Kevin. If the player beats or draws with Kevin they can pump their fist in the air and generally be very smug, but if they lose then Kevin tramples them into a little squishy pulp of ex-studentness and they have to take the number of loss gems indicated on the [the printed sentence continues here but its final words are hidden by the artwork in the source PDF; the remainder of the sentence could not be read].

End of the Bidding Round

At the end of the bidding round the creature cards are reset, the turn marker is moved on and the players are ready to start the next round.

The Battle Round

After three bidding rounds the battle round is played. Each player in turn order chooses a single element and uses one or more creature cards in that element to battle the neighbouring players on his left and right. He turns one or more cards 90° and leaves them turned. These cards may not be used in battle for the rest of the game to attack or to defend.

Example: It's Omar's turn to battle. Alice and Jane are his neighbours. Omar decides he's going to battle with the air creature Sparx Franklin turning it on its side to indicate that it's been used in battle and can't be used in again.

He decides to battle Jane first playing a Sonic Disassembler battle card for +2 battle points giving him a total of 7 battle points.

Jane has no battle cards but she does have an air card, Vesper Bunnysnatcher, worth three 3 battle points and a Chamelial Snoop wild card worth 3 battle points giving her 6 battle points total. Omar wins the battle 7 points to 6 and takes 3 green win gems as he has a +1 research lab expansion.

He then discards his battle card and fights Alice expecting an easy win as Alice has no air cards or wild cards. Omar has Sparx Franklin with 5 battle points. Alice plays a Neutron Grenade + 3 battle points and a Really Big Gun for +4 battle points giving her 7 battle points against Omar's 5 battle points.

Omar has no more battle cards so he loses the battle and must take 2 red loss gems.

The attacking player then chooses whether to fight the player on his left or right first. Players may add battle cards at any point in the battle in order to try and win.

They then compare their battle points in the chosen element against their opponent's battle points, the higher value wins.

Finally they take either 2 green win gems or 2 red loss gems depending on whether they won or lost the battle. The number of win or loss gems may be modified by any gem research lab cards they have. Battles against the left neighbouring player and right neighbouring player are fought individually meaning that all battle cards played against the player on your left are discarded before you fight the player on your right or visa versa. You use the same creature(s) to fight both battles. If you draw no one takes any gems.

The defending player never turns defending creature cards 90° nor do they take any win or loss gems.

The defenders battle strength is equal to the battle power of all creatures he possesses in the chosen element that are not turned 90 degrees. Only one wild card can ever be used in defence.

Once you have fought your battles take your win or loss gems and place them on the area provided on your player mat.

The 2-Player game – in the two player game only one battle is played per battle round. It's played in exactly the same way but if a player wins they receive 6 win gems and if they lose they receive 4 loss gems. Gem expansions in your research lab are also worth double.

Winning the Game

To determine who has won the game, total the four different victory point scores in the following manner:

Add up all the victory point scores from your element scoring tracks.
Add the victory points that you scored from completing your mission (creature cards only).
Add your battle points: +1 for every green win gem, -1 for every red loss gem.
Add any victory points from victory point cards in your research lab slots.

You can note the scores down on the pad provided and whoever has the most points is the winner and gets to do a little dance whilst generally lauding their victory over their opponents.

In the event of a draw the person with the largest number of win gems is declared the winner.
If it's still a draw then the person with the lowest number of loss gems is the winner.

If it's still a draw then hey, it really is a draw and you're all awesome!

Rules Clarifications

Doppleganger Field Battle Card – This card doubles your lowest value creature card. It has no effect on battle cards.

Ability card "draw 2 discard 1 battle card" – If you roll a 2 on the battle card dice you draw four cards and discard two of them.

Stretch Goal Cards

Stretch goal cards replace the 4 battle value creature cards in the game. They give you no extra benefit other than being a cute set of alternate cards that you can use in the game.