STEP ONE: You need to print a deck.
For beginners, we recommend using our starter deck #2 (20Mb pdf), since it should have a good assortment of different kinds of cards necessary for play. Just download and print the above file – although it isn’t necessary, this is best done on card stock and in colour.
Once, you get the hang of the game, you can easily expand your deck by printing new cards. This, you can do by going to the card section, selecting cards you want (tick the “select” boxes), grouping your selected cards (by clicking the “selected cards” link), and then hitting the “print” button (the website will reformat and print cards that are currently on the screen – scroll through your selected cards by clicking the “next” button and keep printing each page until you are finished). Note, that this is also how you might also make your own completely customized deck.
Also, new pre-sorted decks will be continually added to the Deck List. Often, these might be locale specific, and/or special decks made by educational institutions.
- – -
STEP TWO: Getting familiar with information presented on the cards.
This is something that will inevitably take a little bit of time to get use to. Luckily, there’s nothing too complicated on the cards. To speed things up a little, here is a picture showing you the basics of the most common sort of card (the “SPECIES” card). You can also learn more by checking out the glossary section.
- – -
STEP THREE: Learn the rules of the game.
Because, Phylo is a crowd sourcing initiative, there exists the possibility of many different rules that can be used with the cards. However, if you’re new to this game, we recommend focusing on our first two sets of rules. One is designed for younger kids whilst the other for older (say about 8 and above). See the following links for your needs:
BIODIVERSITY TRUMPS (<8 yrs) | PHYLOMON ECOSYSTEM (>8 yrs) | MODIFY/DESIGN NEW RULES
- – -
Age: Best for children younger than 9 years old.
Number of Players: 2 to 4
Minimal Deck Required: At least one Starter Deck per 2 players is best. Also, all event and home cards should be removed.
Instructions: Cards are shuffled and distributed face down to all players. Youngest player goes first by looking at his/her top card (the card that is visible). He or she will place his/her card down on the table and call out one of the following stats:
Scale number
Food Chain Rank
Move or Flight number (if not on card then equal to zero)
Number of Terrains
Number of Climates
Essentially, the player with the highest number wins the other player’s card and gets to put them in the back of his/her deck. In the event of a tie, then the players with equal numbers will place three cards face down, and then the fourth card face up. Players will look at the same stat again, with the highest number winning all cards on the table (if it is another tie, you keep continuing this two cards down, one card up, until a winner is found).
When a player loses all of their cards, they are out of the game. Winner is the last player left.
- – -
Age: 8 years old and up.
Number of players: 2
Minimal Deck Required: Each player needs a deck of at least 25 cards (1 home card + at least 24 others). You can download the starter deck to build these individual player decks – as a guideline, it’s usually best to have at least 10 FOOD CHAIN RANK=1 cards in your deck. Note that players can use bigger decks, but that the 25 card per person total is a reasonable size that won’t crowd average tabletop sizes (cards are played on a table top and take up space!)
Easy Instructions:
(Note that full rules with diagrams can be found here). Short rules presented here, provided by Tanis Gieselman and David Ng.
Printable pdf of Easy Instructions here
There are 2 players sitting at a table across from each other. Before starting, the table will have two home cards placed next to each other, one for each player and also “facing” that player. Players will also each have their own deck of 24+ cards and their own discard pile. These player decks can be custom built, or shuffled randomly from a starter deck.
When players play a card, they will put down their cards so that they are facing them. This way, at the end of the game, each player will know which cards are theirs and which are their opponents. For each turn, a player gets to pick up 1 card and can take 3 actions. An action can include the following
Pass and do nothing.
Discard one card to pick up 3 new ones.
Move a card.
Play a species card.
Play an event card (limit once per turn)
Rule#1: Home cards are considered wild cards with respect to terrain and climate. One always needs a plant or other autotroph played first (food chain rank = 1). Furthermore, for the rest of the game, because these cards make their own food, they can be played anywhere as long as the Terrain and Climate matches.
Rule #2: Once a plant is played, herbivores and omnivores can be played beside plants with matching Terrain and Climate, then matching carnivores can be played. Note that an animal must be larger in scale and of higher food chain number in order to eat their neighbouring prey (unless otherwise stated on the card). Together, these first two rules allow you to build food chain webs and create ecosystems.
Rule #3: You can build these food chain webs using only your own cards, or you can build them by playing your cards next to your opponent’s cards. Both strategies work, but each has different advantages and disadvantages
Rule #4: Event cards can be played as an action. These cards have specific instructions on them, but are often played on an opponent’s species card, altering or removing them from the table. Be careful of the consequences as removal of cards can have far reaching effects
Rule #5: You can also move cards as an action. A species with the term “move” can only move in a horizontal or vertical way (up/down, sideways). Species with “flight” abilities can also move in diagonal directions. Don’t forget that moving a species can sometimes disrupt food chain webs!
If a species card has the word “spread” on it, it means that if you have another of the same card in your hand, you can play it next to the original. This still requires a space on the table, but does not take up an action (spreading tends to be only possible with plant and microbe cards).
Rule #6: Your opponent will get one turn to react to the effects of an event card or to the effects a species card moving. This might involve moving species to a place on the table where they can still connect to a food chain web. (see detailed instructions for examples). As well, sometimes, there are event cards that can help out.
After this one turn, any cards which have lost their food chain connections (like a herbivore without a plant containing matching climate/terrain) will then be removed from the table and put in the discard pile. Do look at the table carefully: sometimes many cards will need to be removed (i.e. kind of like a domino effect where losing one card, means losing another, and etc, etc, etc)
Rule #7: Invasive species can be played on top to replace an opponent’s species card and gain you points. Parasite cards are played underneath another species card and don’t kill the species, although still gain you points at the end of the game.
Rule #8: Continue playing until no more cards can be played. At that point, each player will count up their points on the table. The player with the most points is the winner!
Optional Rule: Sometimes, two cards will be played next to each other where it works according to the game’s rules, but would never actually happen in real life. This might be because the two species don’t actually live in the same country, despite sharing compatible terrains and climates. Or it might happen because according to scientific study, a species diet might be quite special and limited to certain types of things, so that whilst a card might “fit” as food (according to the rules), it wouldn’t actually be eaten in real life.
Because of this, you can play the game where you agree not to worry about such things, or you can play the game where you include a “call your bluff” rule. Here, in a way similar to the game Scrabble, a player can challenge these strange connections by using Wikipedia or the Encyclopaedia of Life to check for something that may be inaccurate. Whoever wins this “call your bluff” gets to remove any card from the table with immediate consequences (i.e. no giving a player a turn to react). Note that sometimes, this will be hard to check. To help, some future decks may provide a food web key to help
- – -
1. CURRENT GAMEPLAY RULES (RULES COMPLETE? CONTINUE PLAY TESTING):
(v1.4a) “PHYLOMON AS AN ECOSYSTEM BUILDING GAME (BASIC RULES)” by Fenrislorsrai with input from ColinD/Naturalismus/Wootfish/Forbidding/TheCharles/glunsforddavis/Havoc Jack/Cubist/Picks-at-flies
(GAME HISTORY” initial forum thread | v1.0 | v1.1 | v1.2 | 1.31 | 1.4a2 | 2.03)
Footnotes:
1. Better starter deck combination, and removal “half card” placements; 2. Getting rid of habitat cards; 3. Changing “spread” rule, and addition of “bluff” option.
Please click here for full VERSION 2.0 INSTRUCTIONS.
NOTE: pdfs of working starter decks would be great! Send suggestions to the forum!
- – -
We welcome other game ideas, especially if they can make use of the root information displayed on the SPECIES cards. Other interesting ideas might include:
- Ecosystem building games where a particular ecological mechanic is emphasized (mimicry, co-adaptation, etc).
- Ecosystem building games in the context of a thematic environmental challenge.
- Ecosystem building games in the context of a specific locale.
- Games that illustrate evolution and/or how organisms are classified.
- Trump-like, my organism vs your organism games.
- Games that incorporate actual outdoor wildlife spotting activities.
Really, because the number of cards we can aim to make is truly immense, the possibilities of how these cards might be used is also endless. Anything goes* – we’ve even had suggestions on Pokemon vs Phylomon type activities (my money would be on Raccoon all the time)!
If you have an idea you like to work on, or contribute to, please check out the phylomon forum, add to a thread, or even better start a thread with a rough outline. Anything that looks like it has good potential will be exhibited on this official website for further commenting or testing.
- – -
*Remember that any rules you design will fall into a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Creative Commons License, so that others can use and/or adapt accordingly. Also note that we have to be careful of certain intellectual property issues since some card games are very protective of their work. As an example, you can take a peek at the patent that Hasbro holds on “Trading Card Games.” However, feel free to work on your ideas – it appears that we have folks in the community that can flag your work if there is any copyright issues surfacing.
