Lab Wars Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• How to Interpret the Cards
• Setup
• Who Starts?
• How to Play
  • 1. Pick up 2 research points and 1 lab item card
  • 2. Pick a character to play with
  • 3. Prepare lab items for use
  • 4. Bonus phase
  • 5. Sabotage phase
  • 6. End of simultaneous phase
• Player Turn Order
  • A) Purchase lab items
  • B) Conduct an experiment
  • Data
  • C) Advance your career
  • D) Play action cards
  • End of turn
• Round Ends
• Game End and How to Win
• Alternate Versions of the Game
• Legends of Science Mini Expansion
  • Characters
  • Lab item cards
  • News article impact cards
• Icon Glossary

Components

• 40 x Research Points: Research points are the currency of the game. They are used to purchase lab item cards or impact cards. Blue tokens are valued at 1 and gold tokens are valued at 5.
• 24 x Impact cards: When purchased, the red impact cards give you the impact points necessary to win the game!
• 72 x Lab item cards: The blue lab item cards allow you to do the necessary work to gather resources such as data, or research points.
• 18 x Action cards: Players use them to sabotage competitors or get an unfair advantage!
• 5 x 5 Character cards: Each player is given a research team of 5 different character cards (post doc, PhD student, emeritus, principal investigator and professor). Each character card has a unique bonus whenever played.
• 1 Genius card: Use this card to indicate who goes first.
• 4 Cheat sheets: To allow for easier pick up of the game.

How to Interpret the Cards

• Name: the name of the card.
• Character bonus: the bonus the character card gives whenever it is played.
• Sabotage bonus: the bonus the sabotaging player receives when this character sabotages another player.
• Cost to purchase: the research points needed to purchase the card.
• Effect: what the card does when it is used.
• Value in impact points at end of game: the impact points the card is worth at the end of the game.

Setup

A. Lab item cards. Give every player two pipette and one thermal cycler cards from the lab item deck and they place these cards face up in their lab area. Any left over cards are shuffled into the remaining lab item deck. Then deal each player three cards, which form part of their hand. Place the rest in the middle of the table. Then arrange cards as shown below for each player. (2 player example given.)

B. Impact cards. Create 3 individual piles of the following cards: a) Nurture papers b) Published books c) Nobel Prizes. Order the cards by value and place them face up with the lowest value of each deck showing. Then place these three decks in the middle of the table. The total number of each card depends on the number of players in the game:

No. of Players	Nurture Papers	Published Books	Nobel Prizes
2	4	4	2
3	6	6	3
4	8	8	4

C. Action cards. Shuffle these cards and place them in the centre of the table.

D. Character cards. Each player receives one each of the post doc, PhD student, emeritus, principal investigator and professor. Return unused character cards to the box.

E. Research points. Players receive 2 research points to start with.

Who Starts?

The player with the most real life published scientific papers receives the genius card, which means they go first. If there is a tie, the person who most recently watched a documentary gets the genius card.

How to Play

Each round consists of a simultaneous phase and then individual players' phases. During the simultaneous phase all players do the following at the same time, in this order:

1. Pick up 2 research points and 1 lab item card

Pick up 2 research points from the research point supply and 1 lab item from the lab item deck. The research points go in players' lab areas and the lab item is added to their hand. NOTE: If a player exceeds 5 lab item cards in their hand, that player immediately chooses and discards cards to the bottom of the lab item deck. This hand limit does not apply to other card types such as action cards.

Note: This step is skipped in the first round.

2. Pick a character to play with

Players choose 1 character from their unused character cards. This card is placed face down in front of them. When everyone has selected a character, all players reveal their choice for the round at the same time.

Note: Professor cards are used to "pick up" used (set aside) characters for future rounds.

3. Prepare lab items for use

Turn any lab item cards which were turned sideways in the previous round upright. These items can now be used in the current round.

4. Bonus phase

Resolve the effects of any powers with the bonus icon on the character and lab item cards players have in play.

5. Sabotage phase

If a competing player has played a character card which matches the name next to the sabotage icon of a character card, that player may sabotage one such player. In the event that there are two players matching the name, the sabotaging player must pick one player to sabotage. The sabotaging player resolves the sabotage bonus stipulated beneath the sabotage bonus icon on their character card. They also draw an action card from the action card deck as a bonus. Players may look at the new action card, then place it face down in their lab area (see play action cards section on page 4). In the event that there are 2 players who could sabotage the same player, only the player closest in turn order to the genius card may sabotage them.

Note: the Professor card does not sabotage other characters.

Example: If another player has played a Principal Investigator, the Emeritus' sabotage bonus is activated.

6. End of simultaneous phase

Once all players have completed the simultaneous phase described above, players set aside their used character cards face up as shown on page 2. Each player then has their own individual turn, starting with the player who has the genius card and proceeding clockwise.

Player Turn Order

During their turn, the active player may use any of the following actions, in any order, any number of times, with the exception of sections C and D where special rules apply.

A) Purchase lab items

The active player may purchase a card from their hand, placing it into their lab area by paying the number of research points required, returning them to the supply. There is no limit on the number of lab item cards players purchase during their turn. When cards are purchased they may be used immediately.

B) Conduct an experiment

The active player may conduct an experiment by turning an available lab item card in their lab area sideways if the appropriate icon is shown on the card, then resolving effects listed next to that icon. Some lab item cards create an effect immediately, while others create an effect during the next bonus phase. Other lab item cards generate "Data" (discussed below) when conducting an experiment.

Example: The active player conducts an experiment with their research grant card. This activates a bonus during the next bonus phase.

Data

Data, of which there are two types, are temporary (or "floating") resources gained during the active player's turn. They are used to gain extra resources from cards during the same turn that you acquired them. Once the player's turn is over, data may not be carried over to the next round. Green chemical data are used to earn extra research points. Purple DNA data are used to draw extra lab item cards. A minimum of two data are needed to trigger an effect on a chosen card. Once the chosen card's effect has been used, it may not be used again until the next round. Furthermore, a single card may be used to generate a data type and then used to trigger an effect stated on the card itself (or on another) as long as you have enough data in total. Examples are given below.

Example 1: The active player conducts an experiment with their 2 pipette cards. This generates 2 chemical data, allowing them to receive 2 research points from the supply.

Example 2: The active player conducts an experiment with their 4 thermal cycler cards. This generates 4 DNA data, allowing them to draw 5 lab item cards from the deck.

C) Advance your career

The active player may pay the number of research points listed on the top card of any of the three impact card decks. The player then places that card into their lab area. These cards grant you the listed number of impact points, but generally have no other function. You may only buy two impact cards per turn, which may be of the same type or different.

D) Play action cards

Players may play 1 action card per round at any time. When an action card is played, resolve its effects and place it in the action card discard pile. When all action cards have been used up, shuffle the action card discard pile to create a new action card deck to draw from.

End of turn

When the active player has completed their turn, they place their used character card to the side of their lab area, face up. Play then proceeds to the next player, in a clockwise fashion. Since players seem to drift off once they complete their turn, we suggest you use the phrase "Eureka!" or some other crude word to imply that you are finished!

Round Ends

When all players have had their individual turns, the genius card is passed to the next player in a clockwise fashion. That player will begin the next round.

Game End and How to Win

The game ends at the end of the round in which two of the face up impact card supply piles have been depleted. Players tally up the impact point totals from their impact cards. The player with the most impact points, including bonuses (see below), has the strongest scientific reputation and wins the game! In the event of a tie, the player with the most remaining research points, and then lab items in their lab area, wins.

Bonus impact points are given at the end of the game to:

1. The player with the most Nurture papers: 3 bonus impact points.
2. Each player with lab item cards of total value (the price you paid to put into your lab) being at least 20, 30, or 40 in their lab area gains 1, 4 or 8 extra impact points, respectively.

Alternate Versions of the Game

To play more strategic or different variants of the game (that typically take slightly longer to play) you may use any extra combination of the following alterations to the rules:

1. Add an extra 2 Nurture Papers and 2 Published books per player to the open supply.
2. Research points accrued using chemical data must be used immediately to purchase lab item or impact cards. They may not be kept by the player in their lab area or placed on centrifuges or DNA sequencers. Any remaining research points generated in this way must be returned to the supply.
3. Remove the action cards entirely from the game. Players receive 1 lab item card for successfully sabotaging other players instead.

Legends of Science Mini Expansion

If this version of Lab Wars includes the Legends of Science mini expansion pack, the expansion cards will look slightly different to the base version to allow for easy separation. They will be denoted by a golden border. The 5 extra legendary character cards will be denoted by a golden background. Setup the game as normal, then follow the instructions below for the Legends of Science cards. Once set up, follow the normal rules of Lab Wars and start the game!

Characters

1. Each player is randomly dealt one of the five legendary character cards and shown to all competitors.
2. These are added to each player's character hand, which would now total 6 cards.
3. Each legendary character gives that player a lab item card from the deck to place in their lab area for use immediately, as follows:

• Darwin = Lab book
• McClintock = Corn plant
• McBarnette = Stethoscope
• Franklin = X-ray tech
• Mendel = Pea plants

Lab item cards

Shuffle the mini expansion lab item cards with those from the base set to form a single lab item deck.

News article impact cards

1. Shuffle the news article cards and deal three to each player.
2. Players choose 2 to keep and they are kept face down in front of them. These do not count towards players' hand limits.
3. Discard the remaining cards and mix with any unused News Article cards to form a face down deck.
4. When players complete the requirements of any of their news article cards, they place that card face up in their lab area and draw a new news article card from the deck.
5. The news article deck is not considered an impact card supply for game-ending conditions.
6. In a 4-player game, deal 2 cards which players keep.

Icon Glossary

A brief overview of how each icon is used in the game is shown below. They are also referred to on the cheat sheet cards provided.

• Research points: the cost of a lab item or impact card to place in your lab, or to activate an ability on a card.
• Bonus icon: activates an ability on a card during the bonus phase. Also appears in the corners of some lab item cards to remind players that an effect activates during the bonus phase.
• Sabotage icon: shown on character cards to indicate which characters other players may play may be sabotaged. This gives the sabotaging player a bonus stipulated on their own character card.
• Conduct experiment icon: means to place the card sideways, which activates a bonus or generates a data type.
• Discard icon: indicates that N number of cards are required to be discarded to activate an ability on a card. Discarded lab item cards are placed at the bottom of the lab item deck.
• Instant icon (Legends of Science expansion only): only shown in the corners of some lab item cards. Indicates that this card gives the player who owns it a bonus when a competitor plays an indicated card.