Fauna Junior
Fauna Junior Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Contents
- 90 animal cards with 180 animals
- 1 card box
- 1 game board (with the estimate categories Weight, Plant-eater, Egg-laying and the score track)
- 6 habitats
- 16 estimate discs in 4 player colors
- 4 scoring stones in 4 player colors
Setup
Before the very first game, carefully break the six habitats out of the punchboard and place them, together with the game board with the other estimate categories, in the middle of the table. Each player receives 4 estimate discs and one scoring stone in their color. Then place your scoring stone on the start space of the score track. Shuffle the animal cards well and fill the card box. It is recommended to fill the card box completely, even if you only need about half the cards, in order to play for about half an hour. The youngest player becomes the starting player of the first round. He receives the card box.
Object of the Game
In every round you ask yourselves the following questions about the four estimate categories:
- Habitats – Where does an animal live in the wild, or where does it mainly stay?
- Weight – Between which two things does the heaviest animal of its species fall in weight? Or put another way: is the heaviest animal heavier than a cotton swab, is it heavier than a glass of orange juice, or is it even heavier than a sack of potatoes, etc.?
- Plant-eater – Does the animal eat only plants, or also insects, meat, etc.?
- Egg-laying – Does the animal lay eggs or bring forth live young?
Depending on what you consider correct, you place your four estimate discs on the four estimate categories. At the end of a round you receive points for correct estimates; for wrongly placed discs you go away empty-handed. Whoever has collected the most points at the end wins.
The Animal Cards
Put the card in the card box; you see on the upper half of a card the animal in question and its German name.
The lower half of the card stays hidden while you place your estimate discs. Only when you are all finished with that may you take the card out of the card box. Now you can find out whether you estimated the animal correctly, because now you see in which habitats the animal lives, how it is to be classified by weight, whether it lays eggs and whether it is a pure plant-eater.
The Game
The game runs over several rounds. A round consists of:
- I. Placing the estimate discs
- II. Evaluation
- III. End of round and change of starting player
I. Placing the Estimate Discs
Look at the foremost animal in the card box exactly. For this, each player may take the card box. You may not take the card out, however.
Beginning with the starting player, you now place, clockwise, exactly one estimate disc each on one of the estimate categories Habitats, Weight, Plant-eater and Egg-laying. Whoever is the first to place a disc on an estimate category chooses the space with the orange edge. All other players who also want to place their estimate disc on the same category stack their discs on the space with the white edge. In turn you place all four estimate discs on the four categories. On each category you must place exactly one disc.
II. Evaluation
Take the animal card out of the card box and lay it next to the playing field.
Evaluation of the Habitats
On the animal card you see in which habitat an animal lives. Some animals stay in several habitats, therefore several answers can be correct for these animals.
The six habitats:
- Town and farmyard
- Forest, river, lake
- Desert and semi-desert
- Mountains, high mountains, scree slopes
- Tropical forest and rainforest
- Open habitats (e.g. grassland, moor, heath, savannah, fields, scrub)
For an estimate disc that you placed on a correct habitat, you get points: the player who, as the first, placed his disc on a correct habitat (orange edge) moves his scoring stone two spaces forward. All other players who placed their disc with it as second, third or fourth on a correct habitat (white edge) move their scoring stone one space forward.
Evaluation of the Three Estimate Categories Weight, Plant-eater, Egg-laying
Here there is always only one correct answer. The evaluation takes place as described above: the first player who estimated the animal correctly moves two spaces forward on the score track; all others who estimated an animal correctly move one space forward.
After the evaluation each player gets his four estimate discs back.
III. End of Round and Change of Starting Player
The starting player of the evaluated round passes the card box on to the next player clockwise and a new round begins.
Things You Should Know
- There are fewer habitats in the game than there are in reality. For example the ocelot lives not only in lakes, tropical forests or rainforests and open habitats, but also in wetlands and mangrove swamps.
- On a habitat card you see forest, river and lake. Fish otters or crocodiles, however, live for example only in rivers and lakes and not in forests. Nevertheless you of course get points if you assign the habitat forest, river, lake to them.
- When weighing the animals we always proceeded from the heaviest specimens for the correct solution. So you should estimate how much the heaviest animal can weigh. But of course there are also animals that weigh less, so a big, heavy jaguar weighs for example 110 kilograms, a small, light one only 70 kilograms. You find these details also on the cards.
End of the Game
The game ends as soon as, at the end of a round, the first player reaches or exceeds 30 points. The player with the most points after this last round wins. In case of a tie there are several winners.
Note: The information on the animal cards comes from various Internet sources as well as from specialist books on special zoology. The sources may deviate from one another in their details.
More Excitement
More excitement from Fauna can be found in Fauna and Fauna logic!