Tyranno Ex Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup
  • 1. The Middle of the Table
  • 2. The Players
  • 3. The Environment Card
  • 4. Start
• Playing a Round
• Placing the Animal Cards
  • Meaning
  • The Animal Cards
  • Placement
  • First Round
• Environmental Change
  • Meaning
  • Placement Options
    • Trading Chips
    • Setting Chips
  • Changing the Current Living Conditions
  • Rapid Environmental Change
  • Strength Die
  • Round Limit
  • Extra Placement
  • Checking Survival
• Combat
  • Meaning
  • Challenging
  • Strength of an Animal Card
  • Determining the Number of Dice
  • Sequence of Combat
  • Effects of a 2:0 Result
  • Effects of a 2:1 Result
• Advancing the Evolution (Shifting Cards)
  • Meaning
  • Normal Shifting
  • Shifting onto the Special Spaces
  • Double Shifting
• Scoring
• End of the Game
  • Scoring Example
• The Game for 2 and 3 Players
  • Three Players
  • Two Players
• Quick Reference

Components

• 1 game board
• 1 environment card
• 4 storage trays
• 7 wooden markers (3 white, 4 in one color each)
• 1 cloth bag
• 28 animal cards
• 30 battle dice (plastic)
• 20 marker stones (5 each in 4 colors)
• 84 stickered chips:
  • sun/cherries (red)
  • fish/water (blue)
  • trees/leaves (green)
  • bones (white)
• 1 sequence-of-play summary sheet
• 1 rulebook

Setup

1. The Middle of the Table

Placed in the middle of the table: the game board, the environment card, the battle dice.

The symbol chips go into the cloth bag and are shaken up thoroughly. The 28 animal cards are likewise shuffled thoroughly and dealt into 4 piles of 7 cards each. From each pile, the top card is turned face up.

2. The Players

Each player receives:

• 1 storage tray
• 1 wooden marker printed with a "5", in their color
• 5 marker stones in their color (blank cubes, without pips)
• 12 symbol chips drawn from the bag, which they place on their storage tray

3. The Environment Card

Each of the environment card's 4 "current living conditions" spaces (brown) is given one chip, drawn openly from the bag. The wooden marker printed "Move" (white circle) is placed on field "1" of the round tracker. The wooden marker printed "End" (white circle) is placed on field "3" of the round tracker.

4. Start

A starting player is determined however the group likes. They receive the white wooden "Start" marker, and the game can begin.

Playing a Round

Play is divided into several phases, run through one after another. These phases are also the headings used below:

1. Placing the animal cards
2. Environmental change
3. Combat
4. Advancing the evolution (shifting cards)
5. Scoring

Each phase is described in detail below. The whole sequence, with all its phases, repeats over several rounds of play.

Placing the Animal Cards

Meaning

In this phase, players bring new animal species onto the Earth and send them into the struggle for survival. Which card to take is guided by the symbols printed on it: the better those symbols line up with the current living conditions shown on the environment card, the better that animal's outlook.

The Animal Cards

Besides its artwork, every animal card has 3 symbols printed on it in circles. These show which environmental conditions are favorable for that animal. A player should keep this in mind when influencing the chips on the environment card later on — the more of an animal's own symbols are represented among the chips for the current living conditions, the better that animal's position.

During placement itself, the "current living conditions" don't matter yet — you may perfectly well take a card that doesn't match any of the environment card's current symbols. It's only after the environment-change phase that a survival check takes place: from then on, every animal card must be represented by at least one matching chip among the current living conditions, or it is eliminated.

Placement

The player whose turn it is chooses one of the face-up animal cards and places it on the bottom space of their own color column on the game board (see diagram), marking the card at its edge with one of their marker stones.

First Round

Unlike in later rounds, in the first round every player places a second animal card as well. It goes in the space directly above their first card. This row is marked at the side of the board with a triangle (value "3").

The 4 colored triangles on the game board show each player which color column belongs to them. Each color column has 4 spaces, stacked one above another.

Once every player has placed a card, the environmental-change phase begins.

Environmental Change

Meaning

In this phase, players try to influence the current living conditions and shape them as favorably as possible for their own animal cards on the board. This happens by placing chips onto the environment card, within a limited number of placement rounds tracked on the environment card's round tracker.

Placement Options

The player whose turn it is has two options:

• trade chips
• set chips

If they want neither, they may pass, and the next player takes their turn.

Trading Chips

The player may trade up to 3 of their chips for new ones (only during the first 3 placement rounds — see the round tracker). To do this, they draw the corresponding number of chips from the bag onto their storage tray, then return their old chips to the bag. Then the next player takes their turn.

Setting Chips

The player places up to 2 of their chips, face down, onto the environment card's 4 "potential living conditions" spaces. They may split the 2 chips between two different spaces if they wish.

Changing the Current Living Conditions

If, on any of the 4 spaces, the number of face-down "potential" chips is now higher than the number of chips already shown for the "current" living conditions, that space's current chips are immediately removed and returned to the bag. The face-down potential chips on that space are then turned face up: whichever symbol has a simple majority among them becomes the new current living condition for that space, and its chips are moved up to represent it. The rest of the chips on that space are turned face down again.

Rapid Environmental Change

If a large enough number of chips have piled up face down, this can lead to a situation of "rapid environmental change": resolving one majority can immediately reveal a further majority underneath it, so the current living conditions shift again right away, in a chain, before finally settling.

Strength Die

If a player's placement of chips has just changed the current living conditions such that all 3 of one of their animal card's symbols are now represented among the current living conditions, that card earns a so-called strength die. The player takes a battle die and sets it to show "2": this means that from now on this animal no longer succeeds in combat merely by rolling a "1", but needs at least a "2".

If a card already has a strength die, the player may instead raise it by one pip.

A card's strength die can only be raised this way during the first 3 placement rounds (see the round tracker).

A special card, Homo sapiens, automatically comes with a strength die.

Round Limit

How often chips can be set is limited. The number of placement rounds is tracked and advanced with the round tracker. The "Move" marker shows which placement round the players are currently in; the "End" marker marks where placement will stop. Every time the turn comes back around to the start player, they advance the "Move" marker to the next number on the tracker. Once the "Move" marker reaches the "End" marker, placement is over.

Extra Placement

Once per game, each player may place 2 additional chips onto the environment card. To do this, they must give up their wooden "5" marker. If several players want to do this at the same point, priority goes to whichever of them is closer to becoming the next start player. A "5" marker that is never used this way is worth 5 points to its owner at the end of the game.

Checking Survival

Once the environmental changes are finished, it's checked whether every animal card still "survives." To survive, an animal card needs at least one symbol chip whose symbol also appears on the card, among the current living conditions. A card that does not meet this condition is removed from the board and eliminated.

Combat

Meaning

In this phase, the animals directly measure their strength against one another. An animal that comes through a fight grows stronger and can go on to earn points later. Combat is settled with dice. Players try to knock out rivals they'd rather not have around.

Challenging

Each player may pick one fight. They choose one of their own animal cards to fight with, then challenge the card of any other player.

Strength of an Animal Card

An animal's strength is set by the strength die sitting on its card. It shows up to which pip value a roll counts as a "hit" for that player.

A strength die showing "3", for example, means that any die roll of 1, 2, or 3 counts as a hit; rolls of 4, 5, or 6 are misses.

Determining the Number of Dice

If an animal card has no strength die yet, its rolls only hit on a "1".

To determine how many dice a card fights with, count, for each of the card's three symbols, how many chips of that symbol are currently on the current-living-conditions spaces. That total is the number of dice the player gets to roll in combat with that card.

Sequence of Combat

Both players roll all of their dice at the same time — using dice cups is recommended. The first roll is the first combat round; whoever scores more hits wins that round. If both sides score the same number of hits, the round is a tie and doesn't count.

Combat rounds continue until one side has won 2 rounds. There are then two possible outcomes: a 2:0 win or a 2:1 win, and each has a different effect on the game.

Example of a fight: Player A — strength die "3", rolling 2 dice. Player B — no strength die (so hits only on "1"), rolling 7 dice.

• Round 1: A rolls "2" and "5" = 1 hit. B rolls "1", "2", "3", "3", "3", "5", "5" = 1 hit. This round is a tie and doesn't count.
• Round 2: A rolls 1 and 4 = 1 hit. B rolls 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6 = no hits. A wins this round. It's 1:0 for A.
• Round 3: A rolls 4 and 5 = no hits. B rolls 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6 = 2 hits. B wins this round. It's 1:1.
• Round 4: A rolls 3 and 4 = 1 hit. B rolls 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5 = 2 hits. B wins this round. It's 2:1 for B.

The fight is over: B has won 2 rounds and is the winner.

Effects of a 2:0 Result

The losing player must take their animal card off the board — it is eliminated from the game entirely. The winner may raise their strength die by 1 (to a maximum of "6"), but only if their animal card's strength was not already higher than their opponent's. The number of dice rolled plays no role here — only the comparison of the two strength dice matters.

Effects of a 2:1 Result

For the winner, this works exactly as with a 2:0 win: they may raise their strength die by 1 under the same conditions described above.

The loser does not have to remove their animal card from the board — instead, they turn it face down. This marks the card so that it does not count in the scoring that follows. At the same time, that card's strength die is reduced by 1. (If the card had no strength die, this reduction is skipped.) Face-down cards stay in the game and are carried along face down during the shifting phase. Only after the next scoring are they turned face up again.

Advancing the Evolution (Shifting Cards)

Meaning

Shifting represents the process of time passing on Earth. The development of the animal species advances, so to speak: old species disappear from the Earth and new species take their place.

To explain it, we distinguish between normal shifting (within the board's grid), shifting onto the special spaces (the board's brown spaces), and double shifting.

Normal Shifting

After combat, every card on the board is shifted up one row. Cards stay within their own color column as they do. Any existing "empty spaces" are carried along with the shift.

Shifting onto the Special Spaces

Cards pushed off the top of row 9 land on the board's 3 special spaces.

A card pushed off row 9 first moves onto special space "13," on the left. From there, on later shifts, it moves rightward onto special spaces "10" and then "7," until it is finally pushed out of the game for good.

If several cards leave the grid for the special spaces at the same time, their strength dice decide the order in which they are placed, in a way that guarantees the weakest card ends up scoring the fewest points; each card after the first is placed one space further along than the previous one. If a tie in strength remains, the tied cards fight it out for the placement, and the loser of that fight is treated as the weaker card. When a face-down card (see "Effects of a 2:1 Result" above) reaches the special spaces at the same time as a face-up card, the face-down card takes space "13" first; if there is more than one face-down card, their own order is settled the same way as for face-up cards.

Double Shifting

The pace of shifting picks up once one of the 4 starting card piles has run out: from then on, the board is shifted twice at the end of each round instead of once (including all the usual effects on the special spaces). This way, animal cards placed late in the game still get a chance to reach the special spaces before the game ends.

Double shifting also means that, for the next round, the bottom two rows (row 0 and row 3) are both empty. Because of this, each player now places 2 new animal cards during the placement phase instead of 1. Which row a player fills first is up to them.

Scoring

A card sitting in the grid earns points equal to the number of its row on the game board — a card on row 3, for instance, is worth 3 points. On top of that, a card also earns extra points for any "empty spaces" in its row: each empty space in that row is worth 1 extra point.

Animal cards on the special spaces earn the number printed on the game board there instead — 13, 10, or 7. No extra points are given there.

Now the next round is prepared. Each player may top their supply of symbol chips back up to 12 chips, drawing from the bag. The "End" marker on the round tracker is moved one space further along (down the track), so that it soon runs off the track altogether.

The "Start" marker passes from the current start player to the next player, who becomes the new start player and sets the "Move" marker on the round tracker back to "1." The next round then begins with placing animal cards.

End of the Game

The game ends as soon as one player has no animal card left in the board's grid and can no longer place a new one either. The round already in progress is played out to its end. The player who has collected the most points wins.

Scoring Example

	Cards and row/space value	Row total	Extra points	Total
A gets	Shark 9, Chicken 3	12	3 + 1 = 4	16 points
B gets	Octopus 6	6	2	8 points
C gets	Frog 13 (special space), Fish 3	16	1	17 points
D gets	Hedgehog 10 (special space), Mouse 6, Tiger 3	19	3	22 points

(In this example, row 9 has only one card in it, so it has 3 empty spaces — worth 3 extra points to the Shark on it — and so on for the other rows.)

The Game for 2 and 3 Players

These rules assume 4 players. Below are the changes for games with 2 or with 3 players.

Three Players

The game plays exactly like the 4-player game, except that one color column of the board is left unused. To match, 4 animal cards are removed from the game: shuffle the animal cards, set aside the top 4, then deal the rest into 4 piles of 6 cards each.

Two Players

Here, each of the two players runs 2 of the board's color columns as their own, and the remaining color column is left out of the game. It works well for each player to take one "outer" and one "inner" color column — for example, one player might take red and green, while the other takes black and yellow. The number of symbol chips each player gets stays the same (12).

In the combat phase, each player fights 2 battles, one per color they control. They start with their "outer" color group, then follow with the battle for their "inner" color group.

Here too, the game ends as soon as one color group's space in the board's grid can no longer be filled.

Quick Reference

This section summarizes the sequence of play; it does not introduce any new rules.

• Start of a round: each player has their storage tray, "5" marker, and marker stones, plus 12 chips. The environment card has its "Move" marker on "1", its "End" marker on "3", and one chip on each of the 4 "current living conditions" spaces. The board, 4 card piles of 7 cards each, lie in the middle.
• 1. Placing animal cards: 1 card into the bottom row (2 cards in the first round; 2 cards after a double shift).
• 2. Environmental change: trade up to 3 chips (rounds 1–3 only); set up to 2 chips onto "potential living conditions"; a potential majority overtaking the current chips replaces the current living conditions; watch for rapid (cascading) changes; earn or raise a strength die when a change completes all 3 of a card's symbols (rounds 1–3 only); the round tracker limits how many placement rounds happen; each player may once give up their "5" marker for 2 extra chip placements (priority to whoever is closer to being start player; an unused "5" marker is worth 5 points at the end of the game); finally, every card needs a matching chip among the current living conditions or it is eliminated.
• 3. Combat: any player may call one fight; an animal's strength die sets what counts as a hit; the number of dice equals the count of matching chips across its 3 symbols; 2 winning rounds decide a fight (tied rounds don't count); a 2:0 win eliminates the loser's card and may raise the winner's strength die; a 2:1 win instead turns the loser's card face down for the next scoring and lowers its strength die by 1.
• 4. Advancing the evolution: normal shifting moves every card up one row; shifting onto the special spaces sends cards off row 9 onto spaces 13, 10, then 7, weakest last; double shifting (after a card pile runs out) shifts twice per round.
• 5. Scoring: points equal a card's row (plus 1 per empty space in that row), or the special space's printed value; 5 points at the end of the game for each unused "5" marker; then the "End" marker moves on, the "Move" marker resets to "1", the "Start" marker passes to the next player, and everyone tops their chips back up to 12.