Fossilis: How to Play

Greetings, fellow paleontologists! We are about to embark on the dig of a lifetime! An incredible deposit of dinosaur fossils has been discovered! This dig site is rumored to hold bones from many different species and eras but there are other paleontologists on the site so be sure to carefully clear away layers of terrain and find the bones the museum needs to finish its exhibits!

To set up the game you’ll need to start by setting aside 3 sand tiles to form a face up discard pile, one egg, one amber and one footprint. Then you’ll need to prepare the dig site! 

Then you’ll need to prepare the main game board, which will look like this with 9 skill tiles, 3 random events, and 4 plaster per player! 

Then shuffle the dinosaur deck and make a dinosaur display of 4 cards but keep the deck face down. Do the same for Tools & Supplies but they’ll only be 2 of each of them.Each player will take a player mat and pawn of their color choice and place their scoring marker of their colour near the start of the score track. After that each player will pick a starting corner of the dig site, these spaces cannot be shared. 

The starting player takes their turn and play continues until the end game is triggered and then the current round finishes and each player gets one more turn. The player with the highest score will win! 

On their turn, each player will experience 3 total phrases. The Spend Energy Phase, The Market Phase and the Claim Phase.

The First Phase allows the player to Spend Energy to take actions plus 1 extraction.

On their turn, each player will have 3 imaginary energy to spend on performing actions. Most of the actions will cost 1 energy but a few more powerful ones will cost more. 

Players can perform any action in any combination and any number of times as long as they have the energy to spend. If the player has any tools they can also use those on their turn and they don’t cost any energy to use. When they’re used, flip them over.

At any point players can score a dinosaur in their lab, even if they have not been completed. They may also score a dinosaur directly from the display if they have all the bones they need to complete it. 

The actions available to the players are the following:

Gain a Plaster

If the plaster runs out it will trigger the next event card which will flip at the end of that players turn. We’ll go over these in a bit. 

Move 2 Spaces

Move your paleontologist pawn upto 2 spaces on the dig site. Pawns may more orthogonally, left to right up or down, or they can move diagonally. Pawns can pass through each other but cannot end their movement on the same space as another pawn. 

Climb onto the Dig Site

Your pawn may get pushed off the dig site. It costs 1 energy to climb back up onto the dig site. When climbing up you must place your pawn on an unoccupied tile along the same edge of the dig site that the pawn fell off of. IF there isn’t an available tile place a sand tile there so that there is one. Placing that sand tile is an additional action that may be taken on your turn as well. 

Dig 1 tile

Slide a terrain tile that is orthogonally adjacent 1 space in any direction. The heavier the tile, the more energy required to move it! Sand is one, Clay is two and Stone is three. The sliding tile can push any number of other tiles ahead of it but only tiles of the same weight or lighter. 

Extract

Once per turn, at any time during their turn, the player may extract a bone or hammer from an open pit that their pawn is orthogonally adjacent to. They must spend the amount of plaster required in order to use the tweezers and extract the bone. When extracted it goes into storage on the players mat. While they’re more valuable if assigned to a dinosaur, they can always be kept for their end game value which is visible here:When extracting a hammer the player must choose a skill token from the display and add it to their leftmost empty skill slot in their player mat. Cover up the victory point point symbols on the board as they now won’t score you points at the end of the game so make certain it’s a skill you really want. When you gain a skill token, the benefits are immediately given to the player and serve them for the remainder of the game. 

Next up we have the 2nd phase of the game, Buy 1 card from the market!

Players may spend the fragments of their collected tiles to buy a card from the market. These can be a tool card or supply card. If you must overpay, no change is given!

Tool Cards are free actions that can be used during the action step of a future turn but they may also provide end game VP. The card remains face up if it has not been used yet. 

Supplies give players some combination of plaster, bones and endgame victory points. While plaster is immediately gained, the card will represent any bones displayed are treated the same as bones that are dug up.

The third phase allows the player to claim a Dinosaur from the display into your Lab! This reserves cards so that no other player can claim it! If there isn’t currently a dino in the players lab they simply put it into their lab but there’s only ever room for one dino in a lab! If the player has one already in their lab then they must score the one currently in there before collecting another. 

At any point on their turn the players may score their dinosaur. If it has all of the required bones, they gain the perfect score shown on the card and if they only have some of the bones required, they gain each bones value for partial scoring. Then its turned face down. If at any point a player has all of the bones required to complete a dino in the display, they may immediately do so and score the Perfect Score points. A new dino is added to the display! 

Any time the plaster pool runs out an event card is triggered. They are resolved immediately and then the plaster pool is replenished as it was at the start of the game, 4 cubes per player. After the third event, there is a fourth full plaster pool replenished. When THAT runs out, then the endgame you describe occurs.

Then each player will add up their final points. They’ll gain points for any dinosaurs remaining in their lab, points for any empty skill slots and any skill scores. They score leftover bones in their storage, 1 VP for every remaining plaster, points for any market cards like tools and supplies as well as any characteristic sets. For each characteristic the player has at least 3 of, the player gains the number of victory points that set is worth. They also gain 3VP for each extra symbol beyond the first three! They’ll also score 12 VP if they have at least one of all nine characteristics!

The player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner! That’s how you play Fossilis! Make sure you stay tuned and back the campaign because there will be more news coming soon regarding a simpler version of the game for younger kids. Tell us in the comments below what your favorite dinosaur is! Be Bold, Play Games, Be you! Happy gaming!