Squeaky Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Game Objective
• Setup
• Gameplay
• Game Ending
• Advanced Mode
  • Game Ending (Advanced Mode)
• Variants
  • Harsh Winter [Base/Advanced]
  • Be Nuts about Acorns [Advanced]
  • Climate Change [Base/Advanced]
• Game Flow
• Scoring

Components

• 1 Comic card
• 100 Food cards (20 for each type)
• 5 starting Food cards (1 for each type)
• 3 Season cards (Summer, Autumn, Winter)
• 10 Acorns
• 5 double-sided Nest boards (green and blue sides)
• 1 double-sided Sweeper board (side 1: Basic mode, side 2: Advanced mode)
• 1 Park board
• This rulebook

Game Objective

Taking the roles of enterprising squirrels, during the game you will need to work hard to gather food in preparation for the coming winter, aiming to have a good variety in your nest. But be careful! If you're greedy and take too much, it will end up overflowing from your nest!

Setup

1. Place the board in the center of the table and place the Sweeper board next to it with side 1: Basic mode (the one without the hawk) facing up.
2. Based on the number of players, prepare a number of Acorns as indicated in the Sweeper board (4-6-8-10 for 2-3-4-5 players) and place them next to the board (for example, in a 3-player game, prepare 6 Acorns).
3. Take the Food cards and create a draw pile using a variable amount of Food cards for each type (Sweets, Lollipops, Peanuts, Biscuits, Dog Treats) based on the number of players. Put away in the box all the remaining cards as you won't be needing them in this game.

Players	Cards in the pile	Cards to be removed from the pile
2	8 for each type	12 for each type
3	12 for each type	8 for each type
4	16 for each type	4 for each type
5	all	none

4. Shuffle the newly created deck, then draw 5 cards and place them face-up in the rightmost 5 spaces on the board to form a draw line.
5. Split the remaining cards in the pile into 3 smaller piles of roughly the same size and shuffle inside each one of them 1 Season card face-down. Lastly, stack the piles one on top of each other so that the pile with Winter card is in the lower part (A) of the draw pile, the Autumn one in the middle (B) and the Summer one on top (C). Place the newly created pile in the leftmost space of the Park board, opposite the Sweeper's board.
6. Each player receives a Nest board to be placed in front of them (for your first few games, keep them on the green side).
7. Shuffle the starting Food cards and deal 1 face-down to each player. Each player can secretly look at their card until the start of the game, after which they will place it face-down on their own Nest board and will no longer be able to look at it again for the rest of the game. Place the remaining starting Food cards face-down on the Sweeper board: these can never be looked at.
8. The player who most recently ate some excellent dried fruit starts the game.

Gameplay

During the game, players take turns in a clockwise order. On their turn, players will choose 1 type of Food from those available in the draw line and will take all the cards of that type. After doing so they will choose to either:

A. Place those cards face-down on their Nest board.

B. Place those cards face-down on the Sweeper board and take 1 Acorn next to the board placing it in front of them. It's only possible to place cards on the Sweeper board if there is at least 1 Acorn next to it.

Attention: You can never look at the cards on the Nest or Sweeper boards.

It's always mandatory to take 1 of these 2 actions, even if this would work against the player. It's not possible to partially take an action (for example placing a card on the Sweeper board without taking the Acorn, or only taking some cards of one type of food from the draw line, etc.)

Once the player's action is complete, draw cards from the pile to refill the missing cards from the draw line. If a Season card is drawn at this time, it needs to be placed in line in the closest space next to the drawing pile where a Season card is not already present (if there are any Food cards, they need to be moved to the closest empty space). This space is now blocked and the rest of the game will be played with one less Food card.

Attention: It is never possible to acquire a Season card.

Example: Antonio draws the first 2 cards of the pile to refill the line and draws the Summer Season card. He places the Season card as the first card next to the drawing pile by moving the Peanut to an available space, then places the Dog Treat in the remaining empty space. From now on the draw line will only have 4 Food cards!

Note: in the last phase of the game, after the Autumn card is revealed, there will be only 3 cards in the line and choices will become much more limited. Remember this!

Whenever the third Season card is drawn, the game ends immediately and we move on to the scoring phase.

Game Ending

Each player flips their personal deck with all the cards accumulated during the game and splits them into groups based on Food type (Sweets, Lollipops, Peanuts, Biscuits, Dog Treats).

Each player must now assign all Acorns he owns. Each Acorn must be assigned to a different food type and it is worth one extra card of that type. It's possible to assign an Acorn to a Food type the player doesn't even own.

Acorns must be divided as equally as possible between all the Food types, including those for which the player has 0 cards (for example, if a player has 2 Acorns, he cannot assign both of them to the same Food type but must split them among 2 different Food types).

Note: the only way to assign 2 Acorns to the same type of Food is to possess at least 6 Acorns and to have already assigned 1 to all 5 types of Food, including those for which the player has 0 cards.

At this point, each player sums up the number of cards and Acorns in each group and gains points as indicated on the Nest board. Each group can be worth from a minimum of -4 points to a maximum of 8 points.

The player with the most points is the winner. In case of a tie, the player with the least number of Acorns wins. In the case of another tie, the player with the highest number of different Food types wins. If the tie still hasn't been settled, the victory is shared.

Example: at the end of the game, Margherita flips her deck face-up and splits it based on Food types. She then assigns her 4 Acorns to Lollipops, Sweets, Biscuits and Dog Treats, even if she doesn't have any of this last type. Luckily, she only has 4 Acorns: if she had 5, she would've been forced to assign the fifth to Peanuts, receiving a greater penalty! Margherita now checks the chart on her Nest board and gains: 4 points for Lollipops, 8 points for Sweets, 4 points for Biscuits, -2 points for Peanuts (she has way too many!), and -2 for Dog Treats. She therefore scores a total of 4 + 8 + 4 - 2 - 2 = 12 points!

Advanced Mode

Follow setup as usual (see Setup) but apply the following changes:

• During step 1, place the Sweeper board on the side 2 (the one with the hawk).
• Only for 5 players: During step 4, place from the draw pile 2 face-down cards on the Sweeper board (nobody can look at them, as usual).

In this mode, victory conditions will depend on how many cards of the same type are present on the Sweeper board at the end of the game. But be careful! As usual, all cards on the Sweeper board will be placed face-down and players can no longer look at them throughout the game. Players will need to remember them!

Game Ending (Advanced Mode)

Before placing the Acorns and calculating the score, cards placed on the Sweeper board are revealed and split into groups based on Food type. Check how many food type groups are composed of a number of cards higher than the number of players (e.g. in a 3-player game you count groups of 4 cards or more), then:

• If they are 2 or more, while the Sweeper is cleaning the park, the hawk's attention is being caught! In this case, as indicated on the board, whoever has the least amount of points wins. Run for your lives!

  Example: at the end of this 3-player game, 2 groups with a number of cards higher than the number of players have been revealed (4 Peanuts and 5 Sweets). In this case, whoever has the least amount of points is the winner.

• If, however, there are none, or there is only one of them, the hawk has not been attracted and the player with the most points wins.

  Example: at the end of this 3-player game, only one group with a number of cards higher than the number of players has been revealed. In this case, whoever has the most points is the winner.

Variants

To add variety to the game, it's possible to introduce the following variants. For each one of them, you will find indications for which game mode (basic or advanced) it's compatible with. You can choose to use multiple variants at once.

Harsh Winter [Base/Advanced]

This year's winter is harsh, and the nest is smaller than usual! During Setup, place the Nest board on the blue side. During scoring, players gain maximum score (8 points) for each group of exactly 3 identical cards. The lowest score (-4 points) will be scored by having exactly 1 or 5 cards of the same type. It will be harder to gain high scores from your own group of cards and, in the Advanced mode, it will be equally harder to lower your score voluntarily.

Be Nuts about Acorns [Advanced]

Acorns are a delicacy, why wait to give them a taste? During scoring, Acorns must be assigned to the various group before revealing the cards on the Sweeper's board; therefore, you will need to decide in advance whether to use Acorns to increase or decrease your score based on how many cards, in your opinion, are present on the Sweeper board. Only after all players have placed their Acorns, cards on the Sweeper board are revealed, determining the victory conditions.

Climate Change [Base/Advanced]

Seasons are truly unpredictable nowadays! During step 4 of the Setup, split the drawing pile into 2 parts more or less equal and shuffle the Summer Season card in one half and the Autumn and Winter Season ones in the other half. Place the pile with the Autumn and Winter Season cards on the bottom and the other one with the Summer Season card on top. It is therefore possible to find the Winter Season card before the Autumn one! The game ends only when all 3 of the Season cards have been drawn as usual, even if they are distributed more unpredictably in the draw pile. The game can thus end earlier than usual!

Game Flow

During their turns, players will choose a Food type from those available in the draw line and will take all cards of that type. Afterwards the player chooses to either:

1. Place them on their Nest boards.
2. Place them on the Sweeper Board and take 1 Acorn (there must be at least 1 Acorn next to the board).

Once the action is resolved, the turn ends, and the player draws cards to refill the line of cards.

When a Season card is drawn, this must be placed at the beginning of the line. For each Season card present, the game will continue with 1 less Food card in the line for the rest of the game.

Whenever the 3rd Season card is drawn, the game ends immediately and scoring takes place.

Scoring

Each player:

1. Flips their deck face-up and splits it into groups based on Food type.
2. Assigns all available Acorns to the various Food types as equally as possible. It is also possible to assign Acorns to a Food type for which the player has no cards.
3. Sums up the number of cards and Acorns for each of the 5 groups and gains points following the chart on the Nest board.