Zoo-ography: The Card Game Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup Objectives
  • Objective Card Detail
• Setup
  • Animal Draft Cards Detail
  • Setup Zoo Draft Cards
• Turn Summary
  • Zoo Card Detail
• Reset Zoo Draft
  • Run Out of Animal Spaces?
• Rules for Building
  • Habitat Sizes and Borders
  • Building Rules Samples
• Rules for Taking Animals
  • Habitat Guide
  • Sample Legal Placement
• Attractions and Amenities
  • Adjacency
• Objectives and Winning the Game
  • Animal Values
  • Size Penalty
  • Tie Breaks
• Objective Descriptions
  • Objective Card 1
  • Objective Card 2
  • Objective Card 3
  • Objective Card 4
• Solo Game
  • Solo Setup
  • Solo Gameplay Rules
  • Solo Reset Rules

Components

• Zoo Cards (21)
• Player Cards (2)
• Gates (2)
• Animal Draft Cards (3)
• Objective Cards (4)
• Animal Tokens:
  • Small Animals: 3x Ostrich, 3x Monkey, 3x Zebra
  • Large Animals: 3x Rhino, 3x Giraffe, 3x Elephant, 1x Hippo
  • Secluded Animals (in gray): 1x Gorilla, 1x Lion

Setup Objectives

Players build their zoos and place animals to meet objectives and earn stars to win.

Objective Card Detail

1. Primary Objective – most valuable objective worth 3 Stars
2. Secondary Objective – on opposite side of primary objective and worth 2 Stars
3. Bonus Objectives – two harder objectives on the backside of the card worth 2 and 1 Star respectively.

Setup steps:

1. Choose one Objective card and place it with its Primary Objective showing.
2. Choose another Objective card and place it on top of the first with its Secondary Objective showing.
3. Choose a third objective card and place it on the stack with its 2 Star Bonus objective showing.
4. Place the final objective card with both Bonus objectives showing on top of the stack.

Setup

1. Give the player who most recently attended a zoo the First Player Card and the other player the Second Player Card.
2. Give each player a Gate Card. These two cards make up a player's starting hand.
3. Shuffle the Zoo Cards to create a Zoo Card deck (animal side facing up).
4. Setup the Animal Draft Cards (see diagram).
5. Setup the draft cards (see diagram).
6. Flip over all Zoo Draft Cards to their front side.

Animal Draft Cards Detail

1. Animal Draft Cards are setup adjacent to one another.
2. Animal Draft spaces have numbers. Animals are always placed on the lowest available number first.
3. The Reserve Queue is generally for animals that cannot be placed on regular number spaces. Animals are placed on the lowest queue number.

Animals are never removed from their animal draft spaces until they are taken by a player. During the game, animals in the Reserve Queue move down the queue to fill available animal draft spaces at specific times but may never be taken by players while in the queue.

Setup Zoo Draft Cards

1. Draw a Zoo Card on its animal side and place it beneath the Animal Draft Cards. Place a matching animal token on the lowest available numbered Animal Draft Space.
2. Keep drawing Zoo cards one at a time beneath the Animal Draft Cards placing each animal on the next lowest number Animal Draft Space.
3. When drawing the 6th and final Zoo Card, place its animal in the first spot in the Reserve Queue.

Turn Summary

Follow each step for each player's turn.

1. Draft a Zoo Card from those in the Zoo Card Draft and add it to your hand.
2. Take a Build Action, Bonus Action, both, or neither.
   • Build Action – Place a Zoo card from your hand into your Zoo (See Rules for Building).
   • Bonus Action – You may build a second card from your hand OR you may take all animals from a single Animal Draft Card and place them into habitats in your zoo. (See Rules for Taking Animals.) Animals in the Reserve Queue may never be taken with this action.
3. If there is only one Zoo Card left in the draft, reset the Zoo Draft (see diagram).
4. Play passes to the next player.

If there are no cards left in the Zoo Card deck when the Zoo Draft is to be reset, then the game ends instead. The last card is never drafted.

Zoo Card Detail

1. Habitat – consists of Animal Spaces (A), Watering Holes (B) and surrounded by habitat walls.
2. Walkways – surround cards where there are no habitats.
3. Attractions / Amenities – special structures used to meet objectives.

Reset Zoo Draft

1. Move the animals in the Reserve Queue in order to the next available lowest numbered Animal Draft Space. If there are no spaces left, move the animals in the Reserve Queue down the queue to fill the lowest available slots.
2. As with Animal Draft Setup, draw Zoo cards one at a time beneath the Animal Draft Cards placing each animal on the next lowest number Animal Draft Space.
   • Exception: If a third Large Animal would be placed on a card, instead put it into the Reserve and skip that draft space when placing the remaining animals.
3. Once 5 Zoo Cards are drawn and their animals placed, flip over the cards to their front side revealing 6 total Animal Draft Cards.

Run Out of Animal Spaces?

If there are not enough Animal Draft Spaces, begin to fill up the Reserve Queue with the remainders. Animals that cannot fit in the Reserve queue are out of the game.

Rules for Building

1. Cards must be placed orthogonally adjacent to other cards in your Zoo. Your first card placed into your zoo may be placed anywhere.
2. Cards may be placed in any orientation.
3. Player Cards and Gate Cards are double sided and may be played on either side. Other Zoo cards may not be played on their Animal side (back).
4. • Habitat walls must touch Habitat walls
   • Walkways must touch Walkways
   • Entrance Gates may never touch any other card (see diagram).

Diagram captions:

1. Habitat Walls touch
2. Walkways adjacent
3. Habitat Walls must meet exactly
4. Habitats may not end in Walkways.
5. It is illegal to have an Entrance Gate adjacent to another card.

Habitat Sizes and Borders

As habitat walls touch one another, larger and larger habitats are created often spanning multiple cards in size. Regardless of how many cards are used to create it, a habitat with its walls touching is always considered a single habitat.

Habitats may always hold animals regardless if they are fully enclosed by walkways.

Building Rules Samples

Illegal Builds (diagram; numbered examples 3, 4 and 5 correspond to the illegal-build captions above).

Rules for Taking Animals

1. Take all animals from one Animal Draft Card. Animals in the Reserve Queue may never be taken.
2. Each animal taken must be placed onto an animal space in a habitat in your zoo.
3. Two watering holes are required for each large animal in a habitat.
4. Animals may only be placed in a habitat with other animals if they can share the habitat with all other animals already in the habitat. (see diagram)

Habitat Guide

Each colored triangle represents a habitat. Each animal touching the triangle is an animal allowed in that habitat. Some animals may even be in multiple habitats. Note that secluded animals never share a habitat with any other animal. Each Large Animal requires two watering holes. (Diagram: Rhino Habitat, Hippo Habitat, Habitat Guide.)

Sample Legal Placement

1. Any animal may be placed here. There are two watering holes for a large animal.
2. With the Zebra already present, adding a Monkey or Rhino would make the habitat a Rhino habitat. Adding an Ostrich or Giraffe would make it a Giraffe habitat. With two watering holes, only one large animal may be placed in this habitat.
3. This is an Elephant habitat and may have Elephants, Monkeys and Ostriches. However since the Elephant present is already using the two watering holes, no other Elephants may be placed here currently. The habitat would need to be expanded with two more watering holes to hold another Elephant.
4. Because of the Lion present, no other animals may be placed in this habitat as it is a secluded animal. Not even other secluded animals may be placed in this habitat.

Attractions and Amenities

In addition to habitats, Zoo cards can also contain attractions and amenities. Building them into your zoo and meeting their requirements allows them to be counted toward your zoo's objectives.

• Attractions: Exhibit, Feature, Restaurant, Observation Point, Gift Shop.
• Amenities: Seating Area, Gate.

Restaurant Attraction – Must be adjacent to two Seating Areas.

Observation Point Attraction – Must have required animal within its Habitat.

Gift Shop Attraction – Must be adjacent to a Gate.

Observation Points – Observation Point attractions require that the animal shown below the icon be on an animal space inside the habitat created by this card. (see below for example)

Attractions may be built into your zoo even if they do not meet the requirements. However if they do not meet the requirements by the end of the game, they will not be counted toward meeting objectives.

Adjacency

When a card requires another card or card element to be adjacent, it means the card must be orthogonally adjacent to the other. The orientation of the cards do not matter so long as they touch.

Objectives and Winning the Game

At the end of the game players are awarded up to 10 stars for meeting objectives according to how they built their zoo.

1. Each player that meets the requirements of the objective is awarded all stars associated with it.

   Objectives Requirements are Minimums. Going beyond an objective's requirements still completes the objective. For example, if the object required 2 enclosed habitats and you made 3, you still get credit for meeting it.

2. Each player loses 1 star for each penalty earned.

3. The winner is the player with the most stars.

Animal Values

Each animal has a value used for objectives and breaking ties. Large and Secluded Animals = 3. All other animals = 1.

Size Penalty

There is currently only one penalty in this prototype. If a player's zoo exceeds 4 cards in any direction (row or column), that player loses 1 star.

Tie Breaks

Break ties first by summing each player's animal value (see diagram). The player with the highest total animal value. If there is still a tie, the player with the higher player number card wins.

Objective Descriptions

Objective Card 1

• Primary (3 stars): The habitat on the gate card must have no part of the habitat touch the edge of the zoo.
• Secondary (2 stars): At least three Seating Area Amenities must be orthogonally adjacent to one another.
• Bonus (2 stars): At least two habitats must have no part of the habitat touch the edge of the zoo.
• Bonus (1 star): Have at least 5 separate habitats.

(Diagram: Sample Enclosed Habitat.)

Objective Card 2

• Primary (3 stars): At least one habitat must contain at least four animals.
• Secondary (2 stars): At least one habitat must contain at least two large animals.
• Bonus (2 stars): At least one habitat must have three different colored animals inside it.
• Bonus (1 star): Have at least one animal in every habitat.

(Diagram: 3 Attractions in a line.)

Objective Card 3

• Primary (3 stars): Total animal value must be at least 20. Large and secluded animals are worth 3. All others, including those on cards, are worth 1.
• Secondary (2 stars): Zoo must contain at least 10 animals. The 10 includes animals on cards.
• Bonus (2 stars): Must have at least 8 unique animal types. Each secluded animal and each animal on a card is its own type.
• Bonus (1 star): Must have at least three pairs of animals and they need not be in the same habitat. Two secluded animals do not count as a pair.

Some Zoo Cards come with animals on the card. These animals are counted toward objectives and worth 1 animal value.

Objective Card 4

• Primary (3 stars): Have at least 4 of the 5 unique attractions.
• Secondary (2 stars): At least four attractions must be orthogonally adjacent to one another.
• Bonus (2 stars): Have at least 5 attractions.
• Bonus (1 star): Have at least 3 attractions adjacent to one another in a line (either row or column).

Attractions must meet all requirements to be counted toward objectives. For example, a restaurant not adjacent to two seating areas cannot be used to meet any attraction based objective. Amenities (seating areas and gates) are not attractions and are not counted toward attraction based objectives though they may be required by specific attractions (such as the gift shop or restaurant).

Solo Game

Solo Setup

1. Setup the Objectives randomly as you would in the regular game.
2. Shuffle the Zoo Cards then randomly remove one from the game without looking at it.
3. Draw the top two Zoo cards, build one into your Zoo, and place the animal on the back of the other card onto the first animal draft space and discard that card from the game.
4. Deal 6 Zoo cards on their animal side as you would normally and place their animals onto the animal draft cards with the following exceptions:
   1. Do not place an animal into the reserve, instead place it onto the 7th animal space.
   2. Do not flip over the cards to their Zoo side.

Solo Gameplay Rules

Each turn, turn over only two Zoo cards under one of the Animal Draft cards. Take one card into your hand and discard the other from the game.

Take actions as normal.

Once all six cards have been taken or discarded, reset the cards according to the solo reset rules (see below).

After the 3rd reset, when the deck is exhausted, the game ends and the player scores their zoo.

A score of 8 or higher is considered a victory.

Solo Reset Rules

Remove all animals from a single animal draft card if all slots are full. If more than one is full, remove the animals from the card with the most animals.

Then deal out 6 new cards from the deck placing two face down beneath each animal draft card. Add their animals to the lowest numbered animal draft spaces as normal. Since the reserve is not used so there can be 3 large animals on a card.

If there is ever no room for an animal on the cards, you lose the game immediately.