Living Forest Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Object
• Elements
• Components (overview)
• Guardian Animal Types
• Setup
• Game Turn
  • 1. Guardian Animals Phase (simultaneous)
  • 2. Action Phase (in turn order)
  • 3. End of the Game Turn
• End of the Game

Object

Be the first Spirit of Nature to reach one of three victory conditions:

• Plant 12 different Protective Trees, or
• Collect 12 Sacred Flowers (awakening Sanki), or
• Extinguish 12 Fires (repelling Onibi).

Elements

Guardian Animals and Protective Trees provide five kinds of Elements used to fuel your actions each turn:

• L (Attract) — recruit new Guardian Animals.
• W (Water) — extinguish Fires.
• P (Plant) — plant Protective Trees.
• S (Solar) — move on the Circle of Spirits.
• N (Sacred Flower) — not spent on actions; it is a victory condition (collect 12).

Components (overview)

A Circle of Spirits central board (12 rocks, each with a bonus); a Guardian Animal board and a Fire Varan board; per player: a Forest individual board, a starting Protective Tree, 3 Victory tiles (Fire, Sacred Flower, Tree), a Spirit standee, and 14 starting Guardian Animal cards; plus shared decks of leveled Guardian Animal cards (Level 1/2/3), Fire Varan cards, Protective Tree tiles (in dispensers by value), Fire tiles (values 2/3/4), Fragment tiles, and the Sacred Tree standee.

Guardian Animal Types

Each Guardian Animal is solitary (black coin), gregarious (white coin), or neutral (no coin). These symbols govern how many cards you may reveal and how many actions you get.

Setup

1. Place the Circle of Spirits on the table. Put a value-2 Fire in its center.
2. Each player takes a Forest board (with their starting Protective Tree in the center), 3 Victory tiles set to its left, a standee, and their 14 starting Guardian Animal cards shuffled into a face-down personal draw stack.
3. Randomly choose a first player and give them the Sacred Tree standee. Place standees on the Circle of Spirits' starting rocks per player count.
4. Sort the remaining Guardian Animal cards into three level stacks (Level 1 = white sun, 2 = yellow, 3 = red), shuffle each onto the Guardian Animal board, and reveal 4 of each level to form the reserve.
5. Stack Fire tiles by value on the board. Load the Protective Tree dispensers in ascending value (removing some trees for 2–3 player games). Set up the Fire Varan board with Fragment tiles and Fire Varan cards.

Game Turn

Each turn has three phases: Guardian Animals, Action, and End of Turn.

1. Guardian Animals Phase (simultaneous)

All players simultaneously build their Help Line by drawing Guardian Animal cards one at a time from their personal draw stack, face up. If your draw stack empties when you want to draw, shuffle your discard into a new draw stack.

• You may stop drawing whenever you like.
• If you reveal a third solitary symbol, you must stop—that card closes your Help Line.
• A gregarious symbol cancels a solitary symbol, so revealing gregarious animals lets you keep drawing past three solitary cards. Only the symbol is canceled; the animal still provides its Elements.
• Fire Varan cards (Onibi's servants) act as solitary symbols but provide no Elements.

Fragment tiles: at any time this phase you may discard a Fragment tile to either destroy a Fire Varan card you just drew (returning it to its stack) or send a just-drawn Guardian Animal to your discard. Then continue or stop.

2. Action Phase (in turn order)

Players act in turn, starting with the holder of the Sacred Tree, then clockwise.

• If your Help Line shows fewer than three un-canceled solitary symbols, you perform 2 different Actions.
• If it shows exactly three un-canceled solitary symbols, you perform 1 Action.

An action's strength equals the total of the relevant Element shown across your Help Line and your Forest board.

The Actions:

• Take a Fragment tile — place it by your Forest for use in a later Guardian Animals phase.
• Attract (L): take one or more Guardian Animals from the reserve whose combined cost is ≤ your L; place them face down on top of your personal draw stack.
• Extinguish Fire (W): take one or more Fire tiles from the center of the Circle of Spirits whose combined value is ≤ your W; keep them by your Forest (blank side up). Collecting 12 wins.
• Move on the Circle of Spirits (S): move your standee clockwise up to your S in rocks. Jump over other Spirits without counting their rocks, stealing one Victory tile from each you pass, then trigger the bonus of the rock you land on. (You must move at least one rock to gain a bonus. This move can also be one of your regular actions.)
• Plant one Protective Tree (P): take exactly one Protective Tree whose cost is ≤ your P and place it on your Forest adjacent (orthogonally) to a tree you already have. Its Elements apply immediately (and can count toward your second action). Collecting 12 different Trees wins. One special tree lets you perform the same action twice instead of two different ones.

Forest bonuses: completing a row or column of Protective Trees grants a permanent Element bonus (1 W, 1 L, 1 S, or 2 N depending on the line). Planting a tree in one of the four corners triggers an immediate extra action (an extra Attract +3 L, extra Extinguish +2 W, or two Fragment tiles).

3. End of the Game Turn

1. Onibi attacks you: if Fires remain in the center, sum their values. Each Spirit compares their own total W to that firepower; anyone whose W is strictly lower adds one Fire Varan card to their discard stack per remaining central Fire (distributed if Varans run short).
2. Onibi attacks the Sacred Tree: add Fires to the center based on Guardian Animals taken this turn—one value-2 Fire per Level 1 card, value-3 per Level 2, value-4 per Level 3. The center never holds more than 7 Fires; if it is emptied, add a single value-2 Fire.
3. New Guardian Animals: refill the reserve, revealing as many new cards per level as were taken this turn.
4. Return of Guardian Animals: move all Help Line cards to your personal discard stack.
5. Pass the Sacred Tree to the next Spirit clockwise. Begin the next turn.

End of the Game

The game ends at the end of a complete Action phase in which a Spirit has reached 12 of any one victory type:

• 12 different Protective Trees (count different trees on your Forest, including the starting tree and any Tree Victory tiles),
• 12 Fires (count tiles won, not their values, plus Fire Victory tiles), or
• 12 Sacred Flowers (count N visible on your Help Line, your Forest, and any Flower Victory tiles).

That Spirit wins. If several Spirits reach a victory condition on the same turn, each sums the totals of all three conditions, and the highest total wins.