Dig a Dino
Dig a Dino Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Overview
Choose tools and dig through soil and rock to discover buried surprises. The winner is the one to have discovered the most 'Palaeo Points' by the end of the game.
The discovery of a 66 million year old T-Rex tooth has ignited a bone-digging frenzy. Each player commands a team of paleontologists. Players battle for the limited tools available, and every day must decide which tools to use.
What's Inside
- 60 Worker tokens
- 5 'Tool' cards
- 15 Soil cards
- 15 Rock cards
- 1 Turn token
Setup
Each player chooses a colour and 15 workers of that colour.
- Lay out the 'tool' cards face-up in a line in the order: [Publicity] > [Bone Sonar] > [Spade] > [Rock Hammer] > [Recall and Rest].
- Shuffle the 'soil' cards and lay them below the 'tool' cards, face-down, in 3 rows of 5.
- Shuffle the 'rock' cards and lay them below the 'soil' cards, face-down, in 3 rows of 5. This forms a 5 by 7 grid.
- Place the workers in a 'pile' near you.
(Diagram: typical set up for 2 players. A 3 or 4 player game looks similar except for 2 more piles of workers.)
Play
Phase 1 - Worker Assignment
Starting from the youngest player, take turns (clockwise) to 'assign' teams of workers into 'tool' spaces. A player may only fill one space per turn. Any space may be filled on a turn, provided that the player assigns the correct number of workers to it.
Players take turns until no player can or wishes to assign any more workers. Once the worker assignment phase finishes, the 'Actions' phase begins.
(Example: Red assigns 3 workers in order to use the 'Recall' action and recall a worker from underground.)
Phase 2 - Actions
Moving from left to right across the row of 'tools', players sequentially perform actions for each space that they have assigned workers to. In this manner some 'tools' may be used up to 3 times in one round. The number of workers assigned to each 'tool' space is irrelevant, e.g. the 'Spade' space with the '3 worker' symbol will provide 1 action. Once an action is taken the workers return to the player's 'pile'.
If an action means that a player turns over a card, they must place 1 worker from their 'pile' onto the newly turned over card.
(Example: as actions are taken from left to right, Red takes the first action, then Blue, then Red again.)
Remember: players can only dig adjacently to other face-up cards.
(Example: Blue should perhaps have used the Bone Sonar to scan the ground before digging.)
Tools
Special Tool
Publicity. Workers use an action to place 1 worker per action onto a 'publicity' space to raise the profile of a team. The team with the most 'publicity' at the end of the game gains 'Palaeo Points'. Unlike the other tools, these cannot be removed for the remainder of the game.
Standard Tools
Bone Sonar. One 'bone sonar' action allows a player to peek at a number of face-down cards without other players seeing.
Spade. One 'spade' action allows a player to turn over one 'soil' card directly adjacent to any face-up card. The player must then allocate one worker to this new face-up card.
Rock Hammer. One 'rock hammer' action allows a player to turn over one 'rock' card directly adjacent to any face-up card. The player must then allocate one worker to this new face-up card.
Recall. One action from 'Recall' allows a player to return a worker from a 'soil' or 'rock' card to their 'pile'. This may be a useful move when discovering negatively scoring items.
Rest. One 'Rest' action allows a player to re-assign their worker to any tool space costing 1 worker. The new action will be taken in the following round. This is a way of tactically reserving tool spaces 'cheaply' before the next round begins.
End of the Round
Once the 'actions' have all been taken (with the exception of the re-assigned 'resting' workers) the next round begins, with the player clockwise from the last player to begin 'phase 1'. The next round begins again with phase 1.
Scoring and End of the Game
The game ends when all cards have been turned over, or all players have run out of workers, or players agree that they do not wish to turn any more cards over (i.e. the only face-down cards are negatively scoring).
Players collect all cards with their colour worker on and count up their 'Palaeo Points' (denoted by the star symbol).
Most cards have a set number of 'Palaeo Points' and this should be clear. Exceptions are the 'tyrannosaurus', 'diplodocus', 'triceratops' and the 'meteor chunks'. Complete dinosaurs score extra points.
(Example: Red found the King of the Dinosaurs and all the bits to go with it.)
Each 'Meteor chunk' is worth the number of 'chunks' that you have collected. For example, a player who has collected 4 chunks receives 4 Palaeo Points per chunk, totalling 16 points.
The winner is the player with the most Palaeo Points in total.