Petri Dish
Petri Dish Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Splorf
Splorf: This is a technical term which refers to the blobby nature of a mass of bacteria and its ability to ooze from one area to another by contracting here while bulging out there.
Equipment
- Three Trios of one color for each player
- The Wheel
- Three Lightning dice
- An extra marker to track an uncommon bonus action (ideally, the Color die)
Overview
You are a colony of bacteria, fighting for dominance in the only world you will ever know: the inside of a Petri Dish.
Goal
Become the most powerful germ in the dish, either by destroying everyone else or by growing your colony to its maximum possible size.
Terminology
- Wedge: A triangular "pie-slice" of four spaces of the board is called a Wedge. The Wheel has ten Wedges.
- Adjacency: Two spaces are adjacent, and therefore connected, if they share a solid line border. In addition, the two spaces in the center of the board directly across the center axis from each other are considered adjacent. This is the only exception, other close-connections are not adjacent.
Setup
Each player starts by filling a Wedge with four of their pieces: a Large, a Medium, and two Smalls. These pieces are placed on each player's Wedge as shown. The diagrams also show which Wedges to use for a 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 player game. To play with 7 or more players, start with the 6-player setup, then fill in empty Wedges with additional players' pieces as needed.
Who Starts
Someone with big hands gathers up a small piece of each player's color and cups them all together in both hands. Shaking them up, they then allow one piece to fall out of their hands first, and that player starts. Play proceeds clockwise.
How to Play
On your turn, roll the dice. Immediately adjust the dice to match any bonuses you may have rolled (see below). You will then take three actions (or on rare occasions, four) which you can perform in any order. If you are unable to perform an action, you can take any of the other options instead. The actions are:
- Divide: Split one of your pieces into two smaller pieces. A Large becomes two Mediums, or a Medium becomes two Smalls. One goes in the original space, the second into an empty adjacent space.
- Grow: Replace one of your pieces with the next larger size, or spawn a new Small in an empty space adjacent to a space containing one of your Larges.
- Infect: Replace an opponent's piece with a piece of your color of the same size. You must be "touching" the target piece, i.e. you must occupy a space adjacent to the space containing the piece you are infecting. You must use a replacement piece of the same size as the one you are infecting; if all of your pieces of that size are in play, you cannot infect.
- Move: You can move a piece to any empty adjacent space; and you can also move to an empty space adjacent to ANY piece in the same contiguous group of your pieces. This type of ooze-movement is called Splorfing.
- Zap: Remove any Small piece from the board, or reduce a Large or a Medium to the next smaller size. A piece cannot be Zapped if there are no pieces available of the size to which they'd be shrunk.
- Wild: Choose any of the other five actions.
No Passing
You cannot pass, you must perform all of your actions.
Duplicates Become Wild
If you roll two of the same symbol, one is changed to Wild. If you roll Triples, two become Wild, plus you get a bonus move.
Null = Wild
If you can't perform an action, or if said action is rendered meaningless, it is treated as a Wild.
Effectively vs. Literally Turning Wild
Notice the important difference in the two ways a die roll can become Wild. If you roll doubles, one of the rolls literally becomes Wild: as soon as the results are observed, one of the dice should be physically changed to the Wild position, as if that's what had actually been rolled. On the other hand, when you are unable to use the action shown, the move becomes effectively Wild. In this case, you should NOT physically change the position of the die, because an action you are unable to take at the start of your turn might become possible, due to your other actions, before your turn is over. Actions only become temporarily Wild for the span of time when their original functions don't work.
Bonus Actions
You gain an immediate additional Wild action any time:
- You roll three of a kind.
- You eliminate another player from the game.
It's helpful to use the Color die, placed Atom-side up, to keep track of your extra action.
How to Win
There are two ways to win:
- You become the only player with pieces on the board.
- All nine of your pieces are on the board.
Other Notes
Dice Placement Protocol
After rolling, line the dice up before you. As you take each action, place the corresponding die in front of the next player. For extra fanciness, stack the second die onto the first and the third onto the stack, thus forming a noticeable indicator that it's the next person's turn.
Warnings
Increased Danger of Premature Elimination: Be aware when playing with more than five people (and escalating as the player count approaches the maximum), that some players will be eliminated quickly. In a ten-player game, it's common for someone to get knocked out before they even get a turn. (Such is the unfair climate in a Petri Dish swarming with ten types of bacteria.) Please make sure everyone knows the situation before starting a large game, so that those knocked out early won't be overly disappointed. (There are plenty of two-player games in the Arcade to keep you busy if you get squeezed out quickly.)
Don't Match Setup with Turn Order: As the number of players approaches the maximum, it becomes increasingly important not to arrange the starting wedges in the same order as the players are sitting. It might seem clever, but such a setup can create an unfair wave of destruction that moves around the Wheel as the players take their turns.