Animalia playtest rules

Version 0.56 functional Deep Sea draft • 4 October 2026 • Two players

Animalia is a trading card game about building ecosystems, consuming your own animals to invoke larger ones, and collecting opposing animals as research material. You are a Zoowalker: a human intelligence that seems alien from the animals’ perspective, acquiring material for a PhD in Zoowalkery through zoological research. Your Zoo is your Main Deck. The specimens and valued records you collect support your scientific papers and thesis. Win by reaching 40 Corpse Value, emptying the opponent’s Zoo, or completing the Alien sequence and sacrificing an Apex to its final token.

Research terminology: Your Zoo is your Main Deck, distinct from the Environment card named Zoo. Your Corpse Pile holds scored research material for the PhD; these names change no zone, payment, ownership, or victory rules. “Investigation Stack” creates no separate zone. See the research framing and Zoo manipulation keywords.

This document develops the handover into a playable paper rules draft. Rules marked Prototype choice resolve an open question in the handover; they are working proposals, not established balance conclusions. The Basic Resource abilities, keywords, special Diets, and new card concepts come from the project owner’s updates. The single-player deck sandbox uses the four current starters and an experimental Dragonfly/Wood Frog deck for browser play against a CPU. The preserved earlier digital draft uses its original rules.

Dr. Theodore Grown’s remarks appear throughout this book as flavor commentary. They have no rules effect.

"They call me Wrong. They are wrong. It's Grown." — Dr. Theodore Grown

What you need

"I have brought everything necessary. Anything missing is therefore unnecessary." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Each player brings a 70-card Main Deck and a 3-card Alien Deck, shuffled at setup and then kept face up. Bring tokens, a way to track damage, a Corpse Value counter, and one Alien Deckend win token. The win token is outside the counted decks and always follows the three Alien cards. Starters target at least four original Apex cards, with no total Apex cap beyond deck size and the per-name copy limit. Whale and future Arachnid builds may include more lighter Apex Animalia. This is a starter composition target, not a universal deck-construction minimum; Paragon (legacy Apex) Yield does not require a particular size or high combat statistics, but every original Paragon must meet the Paragon investment standard. Size, habitat and abilities grant no discount on that requirement. Numerical recipe equivalence is still being calibrated. Tokens and generated copies are outside the 70 cards. Deck construction limit: include at most four copies of any card name across your starting Main and Alien Decks. Basic Resource cards are exempt and may appear in any quantity within the deck size; non-basic Resources are capped at four. Different art, printings, or translated names of the same card do not create separate allowances. Distinct named Animalia cards have separate allowances, even if they share a species group or the same game values. Tokens and copies created during play do not count against this construction limit. Alien cards may repeat within their three-card deck and the same four-copy rule.

There are five Basic Resources: Kelp, Bush, Tree, Fungi, and Corpse. The first four are permanent resource cards. Corpse is one pile containing collected Animalia cards and valued Corpse tokens. Each entry has a scored Corpse Value, and their sum measures victory progress. A collected card and a token replacing it are alternative representations of that value, never two scores for the same collection. A counter may track that sum for convenience. Non-basic Resource cards can have one or more resource types, such as Bamboo’s Bush and Tree. Resource types describe what requirements a card can satisfy and which Basic abilities it inherits; being a Basic Resource is a separate property. Animalia have Damage, Defense, Trophic Yield, and Corpse Value. Some have Diet, keywords, and abilities. Apex is a Trophic Yield, not a threshold of size or statistics. [Apex] sacrifices an Animalia you control with Apex Yield. Tokens cannot have or gain Apex Yield.

Corpse Value scale

"Half an Insect was causing administrative problems." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Printed Corpse Values retain the earlier doubled scale: a fractional design value of 0.5 became a printed value of 1. These are already the current printed units; do not multiply a listed value again. The v0.48 victory target is 40; raising it does not rescale the cards.

Corpse Value 4 is an ordinary valid animal value on this scale. An Elephant, Whale, or Apex can reasonably be worth 6; those are design references, not automatic assignments by trait. Card-specific zero values remain possible, and Apex does not force an Insect to use the small-Insect reference. One qualifying fight corpse worth 6 is one entry worth 6: a collected card for a non-token Animalia, or a valued token when the dead Animalia was a token.

This printed scale does not change Damage, Defense, Diet or token counts. Direct attacks Ravage the opposing Zoo, one card per damage taken, and collect each actual Animalia Ravaged at its printed Corpse Value. No additional token is created. Existing starter values remain individual draft values.

Set up

"Randomisation is essential. Otherwise they claim I arranged the outcome." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Shuffle each Main Deck and, separately, the three counted Alien cards. Reveal the shuffled Alien sequence, then place the final Alien Deckend token last; never shuffle the token. Both Corpse counters start at 0. Choose the first player randomly. Draw seven cards each.

Each player may take one free selective mulligan. Choose any number of opening-hand cards to keep, put the rest on the bottom of your Zoo, draw the same number of replacements, then shuffle your Zoo. Kept cards stay in hand. Because replacements are drawn before shuffling, rejected cards cannot appear among those replacements. Decide in first-player order, before any turn begins. There is no second mulligan.

Each player has a Zoo, private hand, Resource row, Animalia field, ordinary discard, Corpse Pile, Alien Deck and used Alien area. There is one shared Environment slot and an Archive for actual Corpse cards spent as currency. Ownership never changes. Consumption, sacrifice and ordinary blocked-attack deaths send actual cards to their owners’ discard; token victims cease to exist. Declared Hunt collects its fight victims on both sides, including hunter and Ambushers, at their awarded current Corpse Value. Kill explicitly collects its victim. Direct attacks instead collect actual Animalia Ravaged from the Zoo at printed Corpse Value. A collected card supplies its value directly; never also create a duplicate trophy. Qualifying Animalia-token victims create valued Corpse tokens, while Fungi explicitly creates its fixed token. Corpse entries are not in-play Animalia and cannot supply ordinary Diet bodies. Archived cards are outside normal zones and cannot return during this game; return all physical cards to their owners afterward.

Zoo exhaustion: you lose if your Zoo is empty when victory is checked, whether emptied by drawing, Ravage, or another effect. If an instruction asks for more cards than remain, use the available cards and finish resolving. Check victory after each fully resolved action and its resulting deaths and triggers; an effect that replenishes the Zoo before this check can prevent exhaustion. An empty Zoo awards victory to its opponent. If the same resolution awards victory to both players, the game is a draw.

Forfeit: a player may concede at any time. Their opponent wins immediately.

Your turn

"Six stages. I have numbered them to discourage improvisation by anyone other than myself." — Dr. Theodore Grown

1. Start. Resolve effects that say “at the start of each turn,” including Invasive Species obligations, before refreshing.
2. Refresh. Ready your resources and Animalia. Reset your once-per-turn abilities and spent attack and defense allowances.
3. Draw. Draw two. Prototype choice: the first player draws only one on their first turn.
4. Main. Play at most one Resource card, Basic or non-basic. Invoke animals, use resource and Animalia abilities, play single-use Ability cards or Events, Equipment, Habitats, other Field cards, and Environments, and activate your top Alien card in any order you can afford.
5. Combat. Declare and resolve attacks one at a time. The defender makes blocking and interception decisions. You cannot return to Main after declaring combat.
6. End. Resolve end-of-turn triggers, including any attacks explicitly created by them. Working timing: finish those attacks and their cleanup before removing damage from surviving Animalia and expiring temporary turn effects. Pass the turn.

You may pass Combat without attacking. There is no hand-size limit. Ability cards, Events, invocation, Alien activations, and voluntary abilities happen only in your Main, except mandatory triggered abilities and the defender’s combat decisions. This version has no instant-response stack.

Animalia enter ready and may attack, block and use abilities immediately, subject to their allowances. On the first global turn, no normal attack or Hunt may be declared. Explicitly created attacks, such as Alien Streets’ Car, still resolve. An Animalia cannot be consumed on the turn it enters play, except a token labeled Biomass. This applies to created tokens and all tribute payments, including Diet, Any, Fungi and Apex offerings. Re-entering play starts a new entry turn; joining or separating a Swarm does not. Resources can be used immediately. Exhausted Animalia cannot block or Ambush, but may be consumed after their entry turn.

Printed symbols and card classification

Exhaust turns a ready card sideways; it is then exhausted. Ready returns it upright. Exhausted cards cannot pay exhaustion costs, declare attacks, block or Ambush. Readying does not restore a spent attack or defense allowance.

The downward arrow entering an upright card means When this card is invoked. It introduces the effect that follows a successful invocation; printed conditions and optional choices still apply.

The curved card-turn mark ↷ means exhaust this card: turn this ready physical source sideways. [Kelp], [Bush], [Tree] and [Fungi] are named Resource payment badges. Every badge uses a separate ready source. In ↷, [Kelp], exhaust this card and another Kelp; the same card cannot pay twice. A resource ability printed [Kelp], [Kelp] retains its two-source payment and does not require its own source to be one of those two.

[Animalia] is the generic sacrifice payment badge: sacrifice one non-token Animalia you control, with no particular Yield requirement. It is not a Resource, a new Yield, Blood payment or an ordinary Diet meal. It creates no ordinary corpse and transfers no Fat. Fungi prints one badge in its top invocation requirements and another in its activation cost; they are separate sacrifices. The entry sacrifice alone creates no trophy. A later activation is ↷, [Animalia]: Create one Corpse Trophy token worth 1 Corpse Value.

Costs before a colon are paid together before the effect. Semicolons separate instructions resolved in order. Oarweed reads ↷, [Kelp], Sacrifice Oarweed: Search your deck for an (Aquatic) Animalia, reveal it and put it into your hand; shuffle. Sacrificing Oarweed is part of the cost, even though Oarweed has just been exhausted. Its remaining inherited Kelp ability is separate.

Animalia property types are defined by current Trophic Yield: an unqualified Aquatic Animalia means an Animalia with Aquatic Yield. Rounded property badges in effect text denote these Yield filters. Explicit identity and family labels remain separate: an effect naming Penguin identity, Herbivore identity or Wolf family checks that printed label. A name or illustration grants no Yield.

For non-Animalia cards, their named Resource invocation requirements define cost affiliation. A Kelp-cost Event is Kelp-affiliated; it does not have Aquatic Yield. This does not replace its category (Resource, Event, Environment, Habitat or Alien). Resource cards still supply their printed Resource types and inherit the matching Basic abilities, even when their invocation has no Resource cost. Fungi’s generic Animalia establishment sacrifice does not confer a Resource affiliation.

Consumed means given up as an Animalia tribute or payment, regardless of whether the card calls the resulting action invoking, summoning, bringing into play or evolving. It covers ordinary Diet, an Animalia used to pay Any, and Animalia sacrifice costs for invocation or activation, including both Fungi’s establishment and activated ability. River Shrimp reads “When consumed, look at the top card of your deck. You may put it on the bottom.” It triggers once for each eligible tribute, including a Fungi sacrifice, after the paid action finishes. These names do not grant free invocation or alter costs. Kill, Destroy, combat death, expiry, Blood payment and spending out-of-play Corpse entries are not consumption. Looking and optional bottoming are not drawing.

Resources and payment

"One bamboo, two qualifications. Sadly, the bursar still counts it as one expense." — Dr. Theodore Grown

A requirement such as [Kelp][Kelp] exhausts two different ready resources with the Kelp type. They remain in play. Bull Kelp and Oarweed can satisfy Kelp requirements. A requirement with multiple Resource symbols uses a distinct ready Resource for each symbol. Exhausted cards stay in play and become ready at Refresh or through an effect.

Bamboo has both Bush and Tree types and may satisfy either requirement. One Bamboo cannot pay both symbols in [Bush][Tree] in the same payment; it is still one source that exhausts once. Resource types are separate from Trophic Yield: a Kelp resource is not an Aquatic Animalia.

Each [Corpse] requires 1 Corpse Value from your own Corpse Pile. Total all standalone Corpse symbols in the invocation and spend whole cards or tokens whose combined value meets that total. Remove their entire value from your score; there is no splitting or change. Four symbols can be paid with one value-4 entry or four value-1 entries. A value-4 entry can pay one symbol, but all four points are lost. Spent actual cards go to Archive, retaining ownership and remaining unavailable for the rest of this game; spent tokens cease to exist. Corpse is never exhausted. Check victory after the whole action and its triggers resolve.

Fungi establishment: pay [Animalia] to invoke a Fungi Resource. This is separate from the sacrifice required by its activated ability. Spending Corpse Value is not an alternative to this entry cost. Kelp, Bush, and Tree have no establishment cost. A non-basic Resource with the Fungi type follows the same establishment rule. Working interpretation: the entry sacrifice pays a cost and does not itself create a trophy; the activated ability is the explicit trophy-producing effect.

[Any] accepts a ready Resource card, one whole Corpse entry, or an eligible in-play Animalia you control. Exhaust the Resource, spend the Corpse entry and lose its entire value, or consume the Animalia respectively. Actual Corpse cards spent this way go to Archive; consumed in-play animals go to their owners’ discard. An exhausted animal may be consumed after its entry turn. No source can pay twice. Standalone Corpse symbols are the exception to one-source-per-column: total their point requirements and pay from whole Corpse entries.

“Sacrifice N Resources” is an additional permanent cost: move N Resource cards you control to their owners’ discard piles. Basic and non-basic Resource cards both qualify, including exhausted cards. This replaces the earlier wording “lose N Basic Resources.” Animalia and Corpse trophy tokens cannot satisfy this card-sacrifice cost; spending Corpse is a separate payment that must be specified. A Resource may satisfy a normal exhaust requirement and then be sacrificed for an additional cost in the same action. Choose and validate the entire payment before moving any cards. Unaffordable or invalid actions change nothing.

Herbivore identity and Huge Yield

Herbivore is an explicit printed identity, not a Trophic Yield or an automatic keyword. It grants no inherent ability and is not inferred from a species’ real diet. Tundra checks that identity together with Large Yield. Existing animals acquire neither property merely because their real-world species might qualify.

Huge is an explicit Trophic Yield property with no automatic inheritance. Moose prints Large, Huge, and Apex, so it supplies all three properties from one body where applicable. It still pays only one ordinary Diet column; unused properties do not create extra bodies or refunds. A card with Huge alone supplies neither Large nor Apex. Generated Moose copies retain Large and Huge but lose Apex. The new starter currently has no Huge requirement; future card text can introduce one.

Tumbleweed Resources

Tumbleweed is a Denominator Label for specialized Bush Resources, not an automatic ability. Cards using the characteristic recursion print: “Exhaust: Replace a Basic Bush you control with a Tumbleweed Resource from your discard pile. If the replaced Basic Bush was exhausted, the entering Tumbleweed enters exhausted.” Only a Basic Bush supplies the substrate; specialized Bushes and other Tumbleweeds cannot replace each other through this ability. The replaced Basic Bush goes to its owner’s ordinary discard. Burning Tumbleweed retains both Bush and Tumbleweed. Read the replacement procedure and working timing.

Zoo manipulation keywords

These actions provide planning, selection and opposing deck depletion. They do not manipulate the Alien Deck. Ordinary Ravage and Zoo discard award no Corpse unless stated. Direct-attack Ravage instead captures each actual Animalia for the attacker at printed Corpse Value, including zero; non-Animalia go to the defending owner’s discard. No duplicate trophy is created. Ravaged cards do not die in play or count as consumed. Use available cards if fewer than N remain. These actions are not draws, but an empty Zoo loses at the victory check. The full keyword procedure records ordering and examples. Its proposed two-Tree Forage revision is not adopted; Tree retains its one-source rearrangement ability.

Invocation and Diet

"The shark has been classified as lunch. Please update its records." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Cards have one invocation requirement area: Resource symbols and Animalia, Blood, or Corpse requirements are shown together, without separate Resource and Diet sections. The rulebook uses these terms to explain different payment methods within that one requirement. For example, Salmon shows [Kelp] [Small + Aquatic]: exhaust one Kelp and consume one Small Aquatic Animalia. Multi-symbol body columns stack their properties vertically. A number tab tucked under a bubble’s leading edge repeats only that complete requirement bubble; it never counts the following bubble. Resource and ordinary Diet payments still use separate sources. A count on a single-property Diet bubble is a total of that Yield across distinct consumed bodies. A count on a multi-symbol column repeats the whole column, requiring separate qualifying bodies. On a Yield bubble, an attached count instead states how many units that one body supplies. To invoke an Animalia, fulfill every printed requirement. Ordinary Diet consumes the selected Animalia; Blood and Corpse use the special payments below. Consumption sends the animals to their owner’s discard, with no deaths, ordinary fight trophies, or death triggers. Paying a Diet does not represent evolution: a shark is a meal, not a bear’s previous form.

Plant-fed requirements: Reindeer costs three Bush and one Tree; Mountain Goat three Bush and two Tree; Muskox three Bush and two Tree; Moose four Bush and three Tree. Each symbol still requires a distinct ready Resource. Their statistics and personal abilities are unchanged; Mountain Goat retains its optional Tree ready.

Single-property Diet totals: repeated standalone requirements for the same property pool their quantity. Select distinct eligible Animalia whose combined Yield meets or exceeds the total. Consume each body once, with one consumption event and one Fat transfer; excess Yield gives no change. No body can also pay another requirement. Minke needs six Plankton: two Antarctic Krill yielding two each plus two Plankton Biomass suffice. Humpback needs six Plankton and two separate Small Aquatic meals; Plankton supplies neither missing property. Blue Whale needs sixteen Plankton. Northern Krill costs one Kelp and supplies one Plankton Yield; Antarctic, North Pacific and Ice Krill cost two Kelp and supply two each. Whales pay food only, with no Kelp payment or Resource minimum. Ordinary Krill cannot be consumed on their entry turn; Biomass can.

Multi-symbol columns: all symbols stacked in one column must come from one body. Repeated columns require different bodies. Match symbols as a multiset: two identical symbols within one compound column require two units from that body. Humpback’s two Small Aquatic columns need two different bodies each providing both properties; its six Plankton form a separate pooled requirement.

SMALL      SMALL      SMALL
BIRD       BIRD

This Diet requires two different Small Birds and a third Small animal. A Penguin with Small, Bird, and Aquatic can fill either Bird column, but cannot fill both.

LARGE      LARGE
AQUATIC    AQUATIC

This Great White Shark Diet accepts two Tuna, two Whales, or one of each. The game checks the symbols, not the plausibility of the meal.

The Yield vocabulary is Plankton, Insect, Baby, Small, Giant, Large, Huge, Aquatic, Bird, Paragon and Winged. Paragon replaces the earlier Apex name; Giant replaces Titan. The current game accepts both legacy aliases and displays the current names. Paragon is printed alongside the animal’s other Yield properties and is consumed to pay an Alien’s offering requirement. Generated copies cannot provide Paragon. Giant Insects provide neither Small nor Large automatically. Winged is an explicit Insect food subtype; Fly does not grant it. Plankton represents the smallest aquatic food tier, but its Yield does not automatically count as Small or Aquatic. Match only explicitly provided symbols; living in water does not itself supply an Aquatic Yield unit. Northern Krill yields one Plankton; Antarctic, North Pacific and Ice Krill yield two Plankton each. None supplies Small or Aquatic Yield. They can feed a Plankton Diet but cannot fill Small Aquatic or Large Aquatic columns without an effect granting every missing property. Northern cannot fill a one-body double-Plankton column without an additional Yield grant. Current Krill text overrides the older values in data/cards.json through data/starter-animal-definitions.json. Mammal, Crustacean, Bear, Rat, Rabbit, and regional identities remain textual traits. Traits can matter to a particular card without gaining a global symbol.

Instinct responses and cancellation

Instinct cards may be played outside your Main, as their text permits. Each card specifies its timing and lifecycle.

Prototype choice — Peer Review's single response window. After a player validates and pays a card's complete invocation costs, pause before that card enters play or resolves. The opposing Zoowalker may play one Instinct whose text permits that response, paying its own requirements, or pass. Resolve that Instinct and put the single-use card in its owner's ordinary discard, then resolve the original invocation if it was not cancelled. The responding card cannot itself receive a response in this window. This draft has no response stack.

Peer Review — Instinct, Dr. Theodore Grown. Proposed requirements: [Fungi] [Any]. “Cancel an opposing card invocation other than a Resource. Its costs remain paid. Put that card in its owner's discard; an Alien instead becomes used.” Its Instinct type is confirmed; its cost and response model remain playtest proposals. It replaces the two Bird Flu in Bears. Keeping payment available means leaving Fungi ready and reserving an Any payment instead of spending everything during Main.

Cancellation stops the entire pending card before entry or effect resolution. It is neither Kill nor Destroy, creates no corpse, and triggers no entry or invocation effect of the cancelled Animalia. Food consumed, sacrificed Apex, sacrificed Resources, exhausted sources, and spent Corpse costs are not refunded. A cancelled Main Deck card goes to its original owner's ordinary discard. A cancelled Alien moves to the used Alien area and advances the sequence, but establishes no lasting effect. Four Apex offerings are still needed to complete the sequence and final marker; cancellation does not repeat an Alien for free.

Peer Review may stop Animalia card invocations, Events, Environments, Equipment, and Alien activations. It cannot stop Resource plays, attacks, Hunts, activated or triggered abilities, creation of copies or tokens, or the Alien Deckend marker's activation. A Polar Bear with Guns stopped before entry does not perform its entry Kill; Peer Review cannot cancel that Kill once the Bear has entered. Ordinary card creation is not a new card invocation and opens no additional window.

Working Taxidermy interaction: choose a collected card that cannot also pay its own invocation. After its other costs are paid, it leaves the Corpse Pile as the pending card. If successfully invoked, replace it with a token of its former awarded value. If cancelled, put the card in its original owner's discard and create no replacement; its removed score is lost. An unaffordable or illegal attempt moves no cards and opens no response window.

Baby

Baby is a Yield label and a keyword ability. It has no Small, Giant, Large or Huge size Yield. Explicit Aquatic, Bird or Insect food descriptors may remain. A token or generated copy is not automatically a Baby.

A Baby cannot attack, declare Hunt or join a Swarm, either as front or rear. It can block normally. After the normal food waiting period, consume one Baby you control as the sole invocation cost of an Animalia with the same explicit species. Replace the whole printed invocation payment, including Resource and Diet requirements, with that Baby. Shared family is insufficient. Normal card access, entry restrictions and successful-invocation effects still apply; this ability does not recover a card from a zone without permission. It consumes the Baby and invokes the actual adult card, rather than growing automatically.

Male Seahorse creates Baby Aquatic offspring. Rabbit and Rat offspring are Babies; copies created by Breeding remain copies of the printed animal. Crèche creates a Baby Bird Aquatic Chick whose species is chosen from one of the two exhausted parents. A Chick may satisfy a Bird/Aquatic meal after waiting, but cannot satisfy a Small meal. Its species is shown beside its card so that same-species invocation can be checked.

Starter effect timing

The starter effects are playtest proposals. Every effect and its purpose is recorded alongside the full card-by-card guides. Their definition layer is data/starter-effect-definitions.json, applied after earlier printed definitions. Seal gains transferable Fat when another friendly Animalia with both Large and Aquatic Yield enters play. Its printed 3/4, two Small Aquatic requirements, Large + Aquatic Yield, Mammal identity, Ambush, and Corpse Value 3 remain unchanged. Bear retains its five-original-Apex lineup. Pacific Sardine's extra Kelp requirement and Dive remain proposals, while its Swarm and Sardine family remain confirmed.

Stat counters. A +1/+1 counter adds 1 Damage and 1 Defense; a +0/+1 counter adds only 1 Defense. Counters last while the Animalia remains in play and are separate from marked damage. End removes marked damage but does not remove these counters. Counters do not change printed Yield, size, identity, or Corpse Value: a 3/7 Seal still yields Large + Aquatic and has Corpse Value 3. Remove its counters when it leaves play, including when consumed, sacrificed, killed, or collected into a Corpse Pile. Named Fat counters have the Diet transfer exception below. Reinvoking that actual card starts fresh. Generated copies copy printed definitions, not accumulated counters or marked damage. In a Swarm, the front’s counters affect the unit; rear members retain their counters but their bonuses are inactive until separated or made the legal front. These changes create no entry trigger. Whole-unit modifiers apply once, separately from front counters.

Fat counters. Each Fat counter gives +0/+1. When an Animalia is consumed to satisfy ordinary Diet, capture its Fat at payment and transfer all of it to the successfully invoked consumer before its entry effects. Fat from multiple meals adds together and can pass further up the food chain. The consumed card loses its counters; recovering or reinvoking it does not duplicate Fat. If the invocation is cancelled, its costs remain paid and the Fat is lost. Sacrifice (including Fungi and Alien offerings), Kill, Destroy, Blood payment, Any-only consumption, and Corpse scavenging do not transfer Fat. Generic stat counters do not transfer. Fat adds no Yield, Damage, or Corpse Value; it survives End but is not copied. The front’s Fat affects a Swarm; rear Fat bonuses are inactive, but an individual member consumed as Diet still passes its own Fat.

Seal’s Large Aquatic entry growth. “When another Large Aquatic Animalia enters under your control, gain a Fat counter.” The entrant must have both Large and Aquatic Yield; identity alone does not qualify. An active Seal observes successful invocations, Taxidermy invocations and created qualifying tokens, including Biomass copies. It excludes itself. A standing 3/4 Seal becomes 3/5 when Tuna enters, 3/6 when King Penguin enters, and 3/7 when another Seal enters; the new Seal starts at 3/4. Small Fish, Small offspring and Plankton give no counter. Cancelled invocations, opposing entries, changes of Yield and Swarm rearrangement do not qualify. There is no once-per-turn limit. A Seal consumed as a cost is gone before the entrant arrives. This personal ability is inactive on a rear member or a food-only copy.

Invoked versus entered or created. A “when invoked” effect requires a successful invocation. Taxidermy counts when its invocation succeeds. Explicitly invoked tokens count, but mere creation of Kelp Plankton, Seahorse offspring, Camera biomass, or Breeding copies does not. An entry ability such as the armed Bear's Kill still works on an ordinary Breeding copy. Cancellation prevents invocation and entry effects of the cancelled card.

Consumption, Diet and sacrifice triggers. Record a consumed body's active abilities, Yield, family, original owner, and identity when the payment occurs. An unqualified “when consumed” ability triggers for every eligible Animalia tribute route, including Fungi’s two sacrifice payments and Animalia used as Any. Record it once even if the same payment also qualifies as ordinary Diet. Unqualified consumed triggers include Salmon’s draw and North Pacific Krill’s Kelp ready. Explicit Diet-only effects, including Fat transfer, keep their stated restrictions. Brown Shrimp’s “when consumed” trigger follows the same tribute rule as River Shrimp. Grizzly specifies sacrifices to establish or activate a Fungi-type Resource; other sacrifices do not qualify. Camera biomass has no abilities. A Swarm’s front retains its personal abilities; rear members’ personal abilities are inactive until separated.

Working queue: pay all costs without interrupting payment. Record cost-generated triggers, offer the one permitted Instinct response, and resolve or cancel the pending invocation. Its entry/effect resolution finishes before queued triggers are resolved and victory is checked. Cost-generated triggers still resolve if the paid invocation was cancelled, because the consumption or sacrifice happened. A Salmon consumed as ordinary Diet may therefore draw after Peer Review cancels the intended predator. An illegal or unaffordable attempt pays nothing and triggers nothing. For Fungi's establishment or activation, finish that action before its sacrifice triggers. Simultaneous optional triggers controlled by one player may be ordered by that player; resolve the active player's queued triggers before the opponent's.

Meal recovery and family bonuses. Brown Bear and Minke can recover only an actual card consumed for that specific invocation and still in their controller's ordinary discard. A token cannot be returned as a card, and an opponent-owned meal went to its owner's discard, which is ineligible. Return to hand does not waive its next invocation costs. Minke checks Plankton Yield at consumption. Tuna checks the two ordinary Diet bodies' nonempty printed family labels at consumption; both must match. Sardine and Pacific Sardine qualify together. Aquatic, Fish, size, or geographic labels alone do not establish a family match.

Fight and Hunt timing. Settle each fight's deaths, Corpse entries, and applicable triggers before a surviving hunter continues past an Ambusher. Seal no longer heals after intercepting; its accumulated Defense counters determine whether it survives, and fight damage stays marked until End. Platypus's proposed Debilitating Venom 2 resolves even if it dies, and reduces the surviving hunter's Damage by 2, to a minimum of 0, for the rest of that Hunt; it does not retroactively change the first fight's damage. This named ability triggers on an Ambush interception, not an ordinary block or being the original Hunt target. The reduction ends with that Hunt. Apex Great White tests its original Hunt target's marked damage when the Hunt is declared; the +2 Damage lasts through interception and continuation, then ends with that Hunt. Reef Shark readies only after the entire successful Hunt ends, and cannot attack again that turn. An exhausted animal can still be targeted by Hunt, although exhausting removes its ordinary blocking and interception availability.

Once per turn. Track each physical source or generated copy separately for each Zoowalker's turn. Leaving play and returning within that turn does not reset an allowance already used. Humpback's standing fight-death trigger requires it to survive the death settlement; sacrificing or eating another animal does not trigger it. Each Grizzly may ready one Fungi after a qualifying sacrifice once per turn. Each active physical Marsh allows one qualifying trigger per Zoowalker per turn. Ready a Resource without creating another trophy; a further Fungi activation still needs another eligible sacrifice and creates only one point.

Looking and optional draws. Look at up to the printed number if fewer cards remain; looking is not drawing. Put cards back or on the bottom exactly as instructed. An optional draw may be declined; if chosen, draw the available cards and apply the normal Zoo-exhaustion check after resolution. A search has its usual reveal and shuffle, and never puts the found card directly into play unless specified.

Blood and Corpse Diets

"The blood is a loan. The corpse is an expenditure." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Blood — Exhaust a ready Animalia you control that is neither an Insect nor Plankton. Do not consume it.

Corpse — Spend 1 Corpse Value per symbol using whole entries from your Corpse Pile. Total the symbols before selecting entries; lose every selected entry’s full value. Actual spent cards go to Archive and cannot return during this game; tokens cease to exist.

These are special Diet payments, not new Trophic Yield. An Animalia with either Insect or Plankton Yield or identity cannot supply Blood, even if it has other properties. An eligible token can supply Blood; this is different from Fungi’s non-token restriction. A Blood donor remains in play exhausted, awards no Corpse, and triggers no death abilities. You cannot use that donor for another Diet column or another payment in the same invocation.

Each standalone Blood column requires a different donor. Standalone Corpse symbols instead form one point requirement: [Corpse][Corpse][Corpse][Corpse] costs 4 Corpse Value and can consume one value-4 card or token. You cannot split an entry, take change, or pay with an opponent’s pile. For a single Corpse symbol, choosing a value-1 entry preserves more victory progress than consuming a value-4 corpse. Scavengers trade scored corpses for tactical Animalia and may pursue another win condition.

Blood is an exhaust payment, not consumption; a ready Animalia may supply it on its entry turn. Keep Blood and Corpse in standalone Diet columns for this draft; mixed columns such as Blood plus Small need a separate definition before use.

For example, a Diet with Blood, Blood, and Corpse in three columns exhausts two different eligible animals and consumes one whole trophy. Choosing a trophy worth 1 loses one victory point; choosing a trophy worth 5 loses five. It consumes neither donor.

Basic Resource abilities

"The kelp produces plankton. The bush produces paperwork. Both are indispensable." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Use activated resource abilities during Main. Each source must be ready before you exhaust it. “Exhaust two” requires two different sources; both exhaust. A Tree’s rearrangement leaves those cards on top of the deck and draws none. If fewer than three remain, look at all remaining cards and rearrange those; looking is not drawing.

Kelp creates 0/1 Plankton Biomass with Plankton Yield and Corpse Value 0. It is a normal Animalia body: it can fight, block, be hunted and be consumed immediately. It enters ready and remains until used or removed. Normal evasion and defense allowances apply; Plankton Yield alone grants neither Aquatic nor Dive. Plankton cards and tokens retain base 0/1 in Deep Sea and receive no Plankton bonus. Without another modifier, its −1/−1 penalty leaves them 0/1 because of the minimum. They can block, but deal 0 damage without another modifier. Their ordinary blocking death scores nothing; Hunt or explicit Kill produces a value-0 Corpse entry. Biomass grants only the entry-turn consumption exception. Other sources’ ordinary Plankton keeps the normal consumption delay. Camera separately creates food-only 0/0 copies that cannot attack, block, use abilities or join Swarm and expire at End; Deep Sea does not change those copies. Kelp and Bush pair abilities may repeat with additional ready sources; a readied Tree may use its ability again.

Fungi pays [Animalia] on entry and for each activation. An exhausted Animalia may pay this cost; the activation exhausts Fungi. The activated ability creates exactly one Corpse trophy token worth 1 for Fungi’s user, regardless of the sacrificed Animalia’s Corpse Value. An Insect, Lion, or even an Animalia with printed Corpse Value 0 gives the same one-point trophy. Add the value-1 token to the user’s Corpse Pile; the opponent receives no trophy. This is an explicit non-fighting route to 40. Each ready Fungi can activate; multiple Fungi require separate sacrifices and can each contribute during the turn.

Inherited abilities: non-basic Resources inherit the Basic abilities of all their listed types in addition to their own text. Bull Kelp and Oarweed may participate in Kelp’s two-source Plankton production. Bamboo may activate Tree’s rearrangement or participate as one of two Bush sources for drawing; one Bamboo cannot exhaust twice to do both without being readied. Two Bamboo can together draw a card.

Trophy triggers: Fungi’s sacrifice is not a fight death and never awards an opposing trophy. Rats do react to the Corpse trophy that Fungi explicitly creates. This does not make the sacrifice a fight or award any extra trophy for removing the animal.

The earlier universal “exhaust any two resources to draw” Research action is withdrawn from the active draft. Bush now has that specific role. Draw Events and species abilities remain separate sources of cards.

Non-basic Resources

"Bull Kelp was simply kelp until it showed initiative." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Bamboo — Resource — Bush • Tree. Bamboo may be used as either Bush or Tree.

Bull Kelp — Resource — Kelp. When invoked, you may ready another Kelp. The choice is optional; Bull Kelp cannot select itself. “Another Kelp” refers to another resource with the Kelp type, including a non-basic Kelp. It need not be a card named Kelp.

Oarweed — Resource — Kelp. Exhaust Oarweed and another Kelp, then sacrifice Oarweed: search your deck for an Animalia with Aquatic Yield, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your deck. The two exhausted sources must be different cards; Oarweed cannot satisfy both parts of its own cost. The other Kelp stays in play exhausted. Oarweed goes to its owner’s discard and gives no Animalia Corpse Value. Two Oarweed cards can supply the two sources, but only the one activating the ability is sacrificed. Search cannot find a Resource or Environment merely because it is water-related.

Oarweed’s final shuffle is a wording completion for the search procedure, not an extra printed payment. These cards and the Basic abilities are collected in Resource card definitions.

Resource sacrifice costs: Alien costs now say Resources, so Bamboo, Bull Kelp, Oarweed, and ordinary Basic Resource cards are all eligible. One card counts as one Resource, even if it has multiple types.

Tokens and copies

"The original declined to participate. The copy has been considerably more cooperative." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Animalia tokens are real Animalia while in play: they can be consumed, killed, block, and meet trait requirements. Corpse tokens are scored entries in the Corpse Pile, not in-play Animalia, and cannot do those things. Once an Animalia token leaves play, it ceases to exist. It never enters a hand or Main Deck. Copies retain the copied card’s printed statistics, non-Apex Yield, traits, species, family, keywords, and abilities; they do not inherit damage, temporary changes, or Equipment. Generated copies never have Apex Yield, including Breeding, Camera, and copies made by other effects. Remove Apex from copied Yield and any obsolete trait or boolean metadata. A copied card may keep a name containing “Apex”; the name gives no Apex Yield. An actual original card returned and invoked again retains its printed Yield because it is not a generated copy.

Corpse Pile

"The specimen may leave the collection. Its replacement must remain in the ledger." — Dr. Theodore Grown

There is one Corpse Pile per Zoowalker. It holds collected Animalia cards and valued Corpse tokens together; their awarded values sum to your score. Reach 40 to win. Corpse Value is also called Carcass Value. A declared Hunt collects every fight victim for its current opponent, including a dead hunter or Ambusher, at current Corpse Value unless explicitly overridden. Ordinary blocked direct-attack deaths award no collection. Explicit Kill also collects opposing victims. Direct attacks collect actual Animalia Ravaged at printed Corpse Value, including zero. Each Swarm member is a separate entry and ownership stays with its original player. Human Hunting Team caps its awarded victims at 1, preserving zero. Mark any overridden award clearly.

An Animalia token collected by Hunt or explicit Kill ceases to exist; create one Corpse token at its awarded value. Tokens dying during ordinary blocking simply cease to exist. Direct hits collect actual Zoo cards and create no replacement token. Fungi creates exactly one value-1 token for its user; its sacrificed actual Animalia goes to its owner’s ordinary discard. You may separate an eligible non-token Swarm member and sacrifice it, keeping the others in play. Fungi’s entry sacrifice and other ordinary removals create no reward.

Taxidermy preserves what it removes. When it invokes a collected Animalia card, replace that card in your pile with one Corpse token worth the same scored value. The card moves into play under your control, with normal invocation costs, ownership, and new-animal restrictions. The replacement happens when the card leaves the Corpse Pile through a successful invocation. A value-4 corpse becomes a value-4 token, so the replacement itself changes your score by 0. A victim awarded 1 by Human Hunting Team becomes a value-1 token. Any separately paid Corpse or Any requirements still reduce your score. Choose and validate all costs before moving cards; the card being invoked cannot also be scavenged to pay its own cost, and its replacement token cannot pay that invocation’s costs.

Scavengers spend what they remove. Spend whole entries to meet the total Corpse Value required, deducting all selected values. Actual cards enter Archive and cannot return during this game; spent tokens cease to exist. This also applies to Corpse entries used for Any. Scavenging creates no replacement. One value-1 entry is economical for [Corpse]; a value-4 entry exactly pays four symbols. Overspending gives no change. Archive is separate from discard and Corpse Piles, so neither Paper Rewrite nor Taxidermy can retrieve those cards.

Cards in this pile are not in play or in hand: they cannot use abilities, supply ordinary Diet bodies or pay an Apex offering. Taxidermy invokes actual collected cards, not generic Corpse tokens or Archived cards. Later death in a declared Hunt or explicit Kill creates a new collection for the appropriate opponent; ordinary blocking and other departures follow their unscored destinations. Return all physical cards to their owners after the game. Current definitions are in data/corpse-pile-definitions.json.

Combat and Corpse Value

"Mutual destruction is still a result. Write it down twice." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Choose one ready Animalia with an unused attack allowance. Exhaust it to attack the opposing Zoowalker. The first global turn permits no normal attack or Hunt declarations. The defender may choose one or more ready legal Animalia with available defense allowances, or allow the hit. Blocking spends their allowances but does not exhaust them. Resolve that attack completely before declaring another.

Stacked defense. Multiple Animalia may defend against one attacker, while each defender normally faces only that attacker for the turn. There is no family restriction and no rules cap on the group's size. Each member must individually satisfy every Fly, Dive, or Burrow restriction and have an available defense allowance. Declare the complete group before damage. Members remain separate units with their own Defense, damage, Yield, Corpse Value, keywords, and abilities. This temporary group is not Swarm and grants no additional 1/1 contributions.

Working resolution — simultaneous group fight. Defenders deal the sum of their current Damage to the attacker. The attacking Zoowalker divides the attacker's current Damage among the defenders, with nonnegative allocations totaling that one Damage value. Damage is not multiplied by the number of defenders. There is no ordering requirement to deal lethal damage to one before assigning damage to another. Each defender marks only its allocated damage against its own remaining Defense; their Defense is never pooled. All Damage values are captured before any fight death, so a killed defender still contributes its Damage. Extra allocated damage stays on that defender, with no overflow to other defenders or the Zoowalker. Settle all fight deaths and triggers together before continuation or the next attack.

For example, a 5/7 attacker faces a 3/4 Seal and a 4/3 Tuna. Their combined 7 Damage kills the attacker. It may allocate 2 to Seal and 3 to Tuna: Tuna dies and Seal survives with 2 marked damage. In an ordinary block, both actual dead cards go to their owners’ discard with no score. If this is an Ambush group in a declared Hunt, each opposing Zoowalker collects its qualifying victims. Both defenders spent their allowances; a group is never one new scored animal.

One defense per turn. Each Animalia may defend against one attacker during each Zoowalker turn, using the same allowance for ordinary blocking and Ambush interception. Blocking once prevents a later Ambush that turn; Ambushing once prevents a later block or interception. Being ready is necessary but no longer sufficient. Readying does not restore this allowance. Only explicit card text allowing additional defenses overrides the limit; no current starter has that ability. Track a used-defense marker separately from exhausting and clear it when the next Zoowalker turn begins. This includes attacks created at End, before the turn passes.

Working Hunt interaction: the original Hunt target must still fight even if its allowance is spent, exhausted, or newly entered; exhaustion never makes it immune to Hunt. Fighting as the target uses its allowance for later voluntary defenses. Another Hunt can force it to fight again. A Swarm spends one unit's defense allowance, recorded for all current members. Splitting or regrouping cannot refresh a member's spent allowance. A returned physical card retains its used allowance for that turn, like other per-source limits.

Direct attacks — Ravage and capture: after an attack deals N damage to the opposing Zoowalker, Ravage N cards from that Zoo, using only the cards available. N is the nonnegative damage actually taken after modifiers and prevention. Move every Animalia Ravaged into the attacker’s Corpse Pile as an actual card at printed Corpse Value, including zero; retain ownership. Non-Animalia go to the defender’s discard. Create no duplicate tokens. These cards were neither consumed nor killed, so consumption and death abilities do not trigger. Each new collected card can trigger corpse-creation abilities such as Rats. Generic Ravage awards no collection unless stated. Check victory after the attack and all resulting effects finish.

Effects such as Alien Streets can create an Animalia already attacking outside Combat, including on the first global turn. Resolve the forced attack with the same blocking, damage, death and capture rules. This grants no extra Main actions or normal attack declarations.

In a fight, each Animalia deals its current Damage to the other simultaneously. Mark this damage. Defense minus marked damage is its remaining durability. Defense 0 or less, or damage at least Defense, makes it die. Damage persists between fights and through the rest of the turn, then clears after End triggers and any attacks they create. Both can die in the same fight. There is no overflow to the Zoowalker when a blocker dies.

Collection depends on the attack. During an ordinary blocked attack against a Zoowalker, fight deaths award no Corpse: actual cards go to their original owners’ discard and tokens cease to exist. They still count as fight deaths for abilities such as Humpback’s draw. During a declared Hunt, both sides collect their opposing fight victims at current Corpse Value, including hunter, Hunt target and Ambushers, subject to explicit award overrides. An actual card is the entry; a token victim instead creates a valued Corpse token. Explicit Kill always collects, even outside Hunt; Neurotoxin is a delayed Kill attributed to its fight. Never collect an already removed victim again. Destroy, consumption, sacrifice and ordinary stat-loss deaths collect nothing. Fungi and Taxidermy create only their explicitly specified tokens. Equipment goes to its owner’s discard when its host leaves play.

Kill — opposing Animalia, with gains. Kill is an action keyword. It removes an Animalia controlled by an opponent as a death and puts its actual card in the effect controller’s Corpse Pile at its current Corpse Value. Ownership does not change. If the victim is a token, it ceases to exist and the killer creates one Corpse token at that value instead. Never score both a card and a token for one victim. Each collected corpse or created token can trigger Rats once. An explicit Kill needs no fight and deals no damage. Killing a whole Swarm collects every member at its current individual Corpse Value, subject to explicit printed award overrides. A victim already removed cannot be killed again or award another corpse.

Destroy — opposing Animalia, without gains. Destroy removes an Animalia controlled by an opponent as a death. Its card goes to its original owner’s discard; a token ceases to exist. Destroy awards no Corpse entry, even when its effect resolves during a fight.

Sacrifice — your own, without gains. Sacrifice removes an Animalia or Resource you control, as specified by its cost or effect. Its card goes to its original owner’s discard; a token ceases to exist. Sacrifice awards no Corpse entry. “Your own” means under your control, even if the card belongs to another player. Fungi’s activation separately creates its explicitly printed value-1 token; the sacrificed animal itself is not collected. Consumption is a separate payment that also does not award a corpse. Removing a survivor from play, as Alien Streets does to a Car, is not a death, Kill, Destroy, or Sacrifice.

Polar Bear with Guns. “When this Animalia enters play, Kill a chosen opposing Animalia.” Its controller chooses a legal opposing target and collects the victim under Kill’s rules, without a fight. Working trigger details: entry succeeds without a kill if no target exists; an actual card reinvoked through Taxidermy and a generated Breeding copy each trigger when they enter. The copied entry ability remains, but copies still lack Apex Yield. Both Polar Bears have confirmed Dive; Hunt and their numeric values remain proposals.

If multiple animals die simultaneously, identify all of them first, remove them, award only the trophies their causes permit, then resolve applicable triggers using the survivors. Environment changes and stat effects immediately cause animals with lethal damage or Defense 0 or less to die; those non-fight deaths are not the Kill keyword and do not inherently collect corpses. A resolved action’s resulting deaths and triggers finish before victory is checked. Prototype choice: if mandatory death triggers keep generating lethal bodies, stop after 100 settlement waves and record a draw; this is a safeguard for sandbox Rat and Environment experiments.

Combat keywords

"Flight is a classification problem. Landing is the Animalia's problem." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Use Animalia consistently for a creature and Burrow for the keyword previously written “Borrow.” Use Fly consistently instead of “Flying.” Birds, Aquatic, and Insects are biological properties; Fly, Dive, and Burrow are abilities. Having Fly does not make an Animalia a Bird.

Titan is the owner-confirmed Insect size, with a design power band overlapping Small and Large. A Titan Insect prints Titan and Insect Yield. Titan itself implies no Small, Large, Huge, or Apex Yield; its power does not make it an eligible Large meal. Use printed Yield for Diet matching. Its separately printed Insect Yield permits ordinary Insect consumption and blocking Burrow. Titan grants no combat ability, and existing cards retain their classifications until explicitly revised.

Hunt. Choose an opposing Animalia instead of its Zoowalker. The target fights even if exhausted or newly invoked. Hunt has no built-in prey restriction; cards such as Petting Zoo can restrict targets. Animalia may Hunt on their entry turn, except that no normal Hunt may be declared on the first global turn. The declared Hunt determines collection for both sides, including interception fights.

Ambush. One or more ready Animalia with Ambush and available defense allowances may intercept a Hunt against another Animalia you control. Every interceptor must satisfy the attacker's evasion restrictions; the original target cannot join its own interception group. Interception spends each participant's allowance. Prototype Hunt continuation retained from the earlier draft: resolve one simultaneous fight against the whole interception group. If the hunter survives, it then fights the original target with its damage still marked, dealing its current Damage in that second fight. Resolve post-interception abilities, including each Platypus's venom, before continuing; reductions do not retroactively affect the first group fight. If the target has left play, the Hunt ends without hitting the Zoowalker. Interceptors do not exhaust merely for defending. The Hunt target needs no Ambush to fight back. Ambush grants no additional defense allowance.

Fly, Dive, and Burrow. These restrict the defending animals that can interfere, not the original Hunt target. A Bird qualifies by Bird Yield; similarly use Aquatic or Insect Yield. Identity alone does not supply these property types. A terrestrial Rabbit can still be the target of a Hunt by an Animalia with Dive.

Prototype choice: apply these restrictions to Ambush interception as well as ordinary blocking. If an attacker has more than one of these keywords, a defender must satisfy every restriction. An attacker with Fly and Dive can be blocked or intercepted by an Animalia with both keywords, or by a Bird that is also Aquatic. A plain Bird satisfies only Fly. Under Marsh, every Animalia has Dive, so every defender satisfies the Dive restriction.

Swarm

"One ant was unimpressive. The committee is proving more persuasive." — Dr. Theodore Grown

The front Animalia must have Swarm. Any Animalia you control from its family may stack behind it, even without Swarm. Family is a printed grouping, separate from species, keywords and Trophic Yield. Match the label exactly; two Insects are not automatically compatible. Cards without a family label cannot join a Swarm.

Stack, separate or change the front during your Main. A Swarm acts as one Animalia for combat, exhausting, blocking and targets; its members remain identifiable cards or tokens. If any member is exhausted, the unit is exhausted. Each member retains its entry turn and consumption restriction; the Swarm may act immediately. Separation and front changes neither invoke nor refresh an Animalia, create a corpse, or restore spent action or defense allowances. Separated members regain their individual properties and keep the unit’s exhausted status and restrictions. A remaining stack needs a front with Swarm; otherwise its members separate. A lone member resumes its individual properties.

The front keeps its own Damage, Defense and counter bonuses, with +1/+1 per additional member. Rear printed stats and counter bonuses do not add. A 1/2 Herring with three rear Herring is 4/5 before other modifiers. A Swarm takes marked damage as one unit: damage removes no individual members, and reaching its current Defense kills the entire stack. Five 1/1 Sardines form a 5/5 unit; 3 damage leaves it 5/5 with 3 marked, and another 2 kills all five. Surviving units clear damage at End. Continuous unit modifiers apply once. Changing the front preserves the unit’s marked damage and restrictions.

A whole-unit removal affects every member. Declared Hunt and explicit Kill collect each separately at its current Corpse Value: actual cards enter the appropriate collector’s pile, while token members create valued Corpse tokens. A five-member Swarm worth 2 per member awards 10 when killed in a Hunt. Ordinary blocked-attack deaths instead discard actual members to their owners and erase token members, awarding nothing. Human Hunting Team’s maximum award of 1 applies to each member separately, preserving zero. Destroy, sacrifice and ordinary Diet award no corpse. The front’s abilities follow normal timing; rear personal abilities are inactive. Outside abilities may react to each member’s fight death regardless of collection.

The printed Swarm 1/1 means each additional member gives the front +1/+1. Its short reminder leaves timing, rear abilities and whole-unit removal to these rules.

Use the front’s current Yield, identity, keywords and personal abilities for the unit. Rear properties do not grant them to the front. A Pacific Sardine front retains Dive with ordinary Sardines behind it; an ordinary Sardine front gains no Dive from rear Pacific Sardines. Rear personal abilities are inactive until separated or made the legal front. Each physical member retains its own properties for individual payments and Corpse Value. Camera’s food-only copies cannot join a combat Swarm; the Biomass label alone grants no such restriction.

Diet consumes individual members as separate bodies, using each member’s current Yield, including active grants such as Theory’s Aquatic property. If the front is paid, choose a remaining member with Swarm as front or separate the survivors. Rear consumption abilities are inactive unless the member was separated before payment; active front triggers are recorded normally. Ordinary Diet transfers the selected member’s own Fat. These payments award no fight corpse. Blood exhausts the whole ready unit and uses the front’s identity and Yield to exclude Insect or Plankton. Fungi may sacrifice a separated eligible member; only the selected Animalia is paid. Its entry sacrifice creates no trophy, while its activation creates exactly one value-1 Corpse token. Whales includes Sardine and Pacific Sardine in the Sardine family; Fish Day has Pacific Sardine, and Socialité includes Herring in its own family. These printed families are game groupings, not biological ranks.

Field cards and attachments

"A theory remains in force until someone removes the paperwork." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Field cards are lasting effects or structures. Environment and Habitat are confirmed categories. Proposed names for the other effects are Influence for an ongoing effect, Adaptation for an effect attached to an Animalia, and Tool for physical Equipment. Impulse is the proposed name for single-use Main actions. Instinct is the confirmed type for cards playable outside your Main as their text permits; Peer Review uses the working invocation-response window above. The complete proposed vocabulary and confirmed distinctions are in Card types.

A Habitat is a self-contained structure affecting its controller’s side. Under the working rules, multiple Habitats may coexist; they do not occupy the shared Environment slot. An Influence has the scope printed in its text and remains until removed. Removing a lasting source ends its granted effect, while other independent sources still apply.

Borrowed Burrow, a proposed Habitat — Shelter, attaches to an Animalia you control and grants Burrow. Exhaust the Habitat to attach it to another Animalia you control; the host is not exhausted by that cost. Prototype choice: it enters attached and ready. If its host leaves play, it remains unattached; a ready, unattached copy can exhaust to attach to an Animalia you control. Moving or removing it ends the former host’s grant of Burrow. Its resource requirement is unassigned.

Environments and Equipment

"The animals have noticed the change in conditions. Peer review is under way." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Only one Environment is active for both players. Pay its requirement and discard the former Environment to its owner’s discard. Its replacement takes effect immediately, unless the active Environment prohibits replacement. Zoo is such an exception. You cannot pay for an Environment replacement that the active Zoo forbids. Environment labels are text used for searches.

Changing Conditions — Event: [Bush] [Tree]. Invoke only while an Environment is active, then discard that Environment to its actual owner's ordinary discard. This removes it without replacing it, so it can remove Zoo. Continuous effects end immediately and ordinary state checks resolve any resulting lethal statistics; those deaths do not award Corpse Value. Removal does not heal damage, ready Animalia, restore combat allowances or return animals that already died. Peer Review may cancel the Event before it resolves, with its paid costs still spent.

Wood Frog's adaptation: when Wood Frog is successfully invoked, its controller may discard the active Environment under the same removal rules. This optional entry effect is separate from Frog's survival ability and requires no extra payment beyond its normal invocation. Mere creation of Breeding or Camera copies does not trigger an invocation ability. Actual reinvocation, including Advanced Taxidermy, triggers it after normal payments; a cancelled invocation does not. Peer Review can cancel Frog's invocation, but cannot cancel this ability after successful entry. With no active Environment there is no choice to make. Removing Zoo permits attacks again, subject to ordinary timing and remaining allowances. Both this additional Frog utility and Changing Conditions are provisional v0.56 test definitions, not balance conclusions.

Alien Streets — Environment — Urban Alien. At each Zoowalker’s End, create a 5/5 Car token with Alien identity and Corpse Value 1 attacking that Zoowalker. The other Zoowalker controls it, regardless of who invoked Streets. This explicitly created attack is allowed on the first global turn. The ending player may block with ready legal Animalia retaining defense allowances. An unchanged direct hit Ravages 5 and captures actual Animalia at printed Corpse Value for the Car controller. Ordinary blocking deaths, including Car’s, award no corpse. After the attack and fight effects, remove a surviving source Car without a death or reward; then clear End damage and effects. Streets is a Main Deck Environment requiring no Apex offering, with a working [Bush] [Tree] cost in Herbivore!, replacing its third Tundra. Car’s Yield remains unassigned. See Additional card drafts.

Tundra — Environment — Cold: [Bush] [Tree]. Large Animalia with Herbivore identity get +1/+1. This affects both Zoowalkers while Tundra occupies the shared Environment slot. Both properties are required: a Small Herbivore or a Large predator gets no bonus. It neither grants Herbivore identity nor changes Yield or Corpse Value. The bonus is continuous, not a counter, and ends immediately when Tundra leaves or is replaced; ordinary state checks can then remove Animalia whose marked damage is lethal. Eligible generated copies receive the bonus but still lack Apex. The requirement and +1/+1 value are working design choices. The Herbivore! starter uses this Environment; the original Bear and Whale lists do not gain it automatically.

Desert — Environment — Arid: “Dive is not applicable. Animalia with Burrow get +0/+1.” This global effect leaves Dive printed and present but disables its blocking and Ambush restriction. Hunt still works, and other evasion restrictions still apply. Aquatic identity and Yield are retained with no general Aquatic penalty. Burrow’s +0/+1 is a continuous bonus while Desert is active, not a counter. Its invocation requirements remain unassigned; it is outside both starters and the Python model. See Desert and Tumbleweeds.

Deep Sea: Animalia with Aquatic Yield or Dive are protected from its stat reduction. All other Animalia get minus 1 Damage and minus 1 Defense, to a minimum of 0 Damage and 1 Defense. Check each statistic separately: an affected 2/3 becomes 1/2, and a 5/5 Brown Bear becomes 4/4. Fly and Burrow are disabled for all Animalia, including those protected from the stat penalty. This suppresses their effective keywords from printed text, Borrowed Burrow, equipment and temporary grants while Deep Sea is active; it does not erase those sources. Both Zoowalkers and their tokens are affected. Winged, Bird, Giant and Insect Yield remain unchanged, as do Dive, Hunt, Ambush and Baby. A 4/4 Sniper Dragonfly becomes 3/3 with Hunt but no effective Fly; ordinary defenders can block it, and a Hunt against a target whose Fly is suppressed does not trigger its +2 Damage. Having Plankton Yield alone grants no protection: unmodified Krill becomes 0/1 unless another effect gives it Aquatic Yield or Dive. Plankton cards and tokens retain base 0/1, receive no Plankton bonus and remain 0/1 without another modifier because of the minimum. Camera’s food-only copies remain 0/0. Deep Sea changes no food Yield, Diet or consumption wait. The minimum limits this Environment’s stat reduction; it does not heal existing damage or prevent fight damage. Removing or replacing Deep Sea removes its penalty and suppression; still-applicable Fly and Burrow grants become effective again, without clearing wounds, readying Animalia or refreshing combat allowances. Current text in data/card-rule-overrides.json supersedes the earlier pool and digital draft. Marsh gives all Animalia Dive and makes Mosquito Corpse Value 0. Its new proposed effect lets each Zoowalker ready one Fungi after a successful Small Animalia invocation, once per turn while that physical Marsh is active; the effect review and timing rules define the limit. Mangrove gives Birds and Crustaceans plus 1 Defense. These apply while that Environment exists; a replacement removes the previous effect. Deaths caused solely by non-fight Environment stat modifiers grant no ordinary Corpse reward; an explicit Kill or an Environment-created fight follows its own collection rules.

To play Equipment, pay its requirement and choose one of your Animalia. Each Animalia may carry at most one Equipment in this draft. Equipment on a Swarm is unsupported; choose an individual animal. Prototype choice: an equipped Animalia cannot form or join a Swarm until its Equipment is removed. Equipment remains attached, provides its printed benefit, and cannot be moved. The starter’s Foraging Harness gives plus 1 Damage and Hunt.

Conditions such as Rabies are attached effects represented by their source card. The historical workshop’s Rabies is implemented as an Event with a permanent modifier until the target leaves play. Bird Flu remains a catalog Event outside the current starters; it was removed from Bears because its opposing targets were absent in this matchup and its own Penguins were exposed. Bird Flu: Kill all opposing Animalia with Bird Yield and sacrifice all Animalia you control with Bird Yield. Collect only the opposing victims at their current Corpse Values; token victims create valued Corpse tokens instead. Your own Birds go to their owners’ discard with no score. Working batch timing: remove all affected Birds before settling death and Rat triggers. Fly alone does not currently make an Animalia eligible; a broader anti-Fly card remains a separate design question.

The Alien Deck

"The Apex is present. My intervention is therefore scientifically justified." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Shuffle the three counted Alien cards before the game, then keep the resulting sequence face up, followed by the fixed Alien Deckend token. You can activate only the first remaining Alien during Main. Each [Apex] requires sacrificing one actual Animalia you control with Apex Yield. Put its physical card in its original owner’s discard. It is a non-fight sacrifice and creates no ordinary Corpse reward. An exhausted Animalia may pay after its entry turn. Tokens cannot have or gain Apex Yield. The printed Apex requirement is this one universal cost, not a second Apex sacrifice added on top.

Choose and validate the Apex sacrifice and all additional costs before moving any cards. Pay them, then resolve the effect. A single-use Alien moves to the used area; a lasting Alien remains in play as a used Field card. Either makes the next Alien available, and removing a used lasting Alien does not return it to the deck. There is no universal one-Alien-per-turn limit, but each activation needs another eligible Apex in play. Sacrificed Apex cannot be reused while in the discard; a legal effect could return and invoke the original again. Generated copies remain ineligible.

Human with Camera. Sacrifice an actual Animalia with Apex Yield. Establish a permanent Camera program. Once per your Main, choose a non-Biomass Animalia you control and create one food-only Biomass copy. It retains that card’s non-Apex Yield and textual identities, but has no combat statistics, keywords, or abilities. It cannot attack, block, activate abilities, or pay an Alien’s Apex requirement. It has the Biomass label and may pay ordinary Diet or Any immediately. It is a token and disappears at End if unused. Track each Camera program separately.

Breeding Program. Sacrifice an actual Animalia with Apex Yield and two Resources. Record the animal’s printed characteristics before sacrificing it. Create two actual token copies with those characteristics except Apex Yield. They are combat-capable and follow new-animal restrictions, but neither can activate an Alien or final win token. Their names do not confer Apex.

Paper Rewrite — Dr. Theodore Grown. Alien — Impulse (working effect-type name), requiring one Apex sacrifice and no additional Resource sacrifice. Return up to five cards from your ordinary discard to your hand, then move Paper Rewrite to the used Alien area. It may recover food, Fungi sacrifices, and the actual Apex just sacrificed to activate it. Returning is not invoking: pay normal requirements to invoke a recovered card. An actual recovered original retains Apex Yield. Corpse Pile cards, Archive and used Aliens cannot be selected. The owner confirms its Alien classification and five-card recovery; its flavor is unchanged.

The proposed starter lineups are Whales: Camera · Advanced Taxidermy · Breeding, and Bears: Paper Rewrite · Hunting Team · Breeding. Shuffle each lineup at setup; the listed membership does not prescribe its sequence. Each includes a Grown Alien, and only Breeding is shared. The final marker remains fourth and outside deck counts. Advanced Taxidermy's successful invocations and cancellation follow the rules above; its lasting duration remains a working proposal.

Human Hunting Team. Sacrifice an actual Animalia with Apex Yield and one Resource. Kill all opposing Animalia with current Defense 3 or less; a Swarm uses its front’s Defense plus rear-member bonuses and current modifiers. The sacrificed Apex goes to its owner’s discard. Each victim is collected at a maximum of 1 Corpse Value: use the lesser of 1 and its current value, so zero-value victims stay at 0. Non-token cards enter your Corpse Pile with that capped award marked; token victims create one token at that value each. Apply the cap separately to each remaining member of a whole Swarm. This does not change their printed Corpse Values. The Apex and Resource sacrifices themselves award nothing.

Research Program. This Main Deck Event costs three Any. Reverse only the unused Alien cards. The Alien Deckend token always stays last and cannot be moved forward by reordering.

Alien Deckend. Once all three Alien cards have been used, the final token becomes available. During Main, sacrifice one more actual Animalia with Apex Yield to activate it and win. The token does not occupy a Main or Alien Deck card slot. The route requires four Apex sacrifices: three for the cards, then one for the token. Breeding and other copies cannot supply these offerings.

New card interactions

"These were not discarded. They were temporarily misfiled." — Dr. Theodore Grown

The complete printed drafts for Grown Conjecture, Grown’s Theory of Evolution, Advanced Taxidermy, Paper Rewrite, Peer Review, Zoo, CAWP — California Wolf Project, Petting Zoo, Invasive Species, Black Widow, Borrowed Burrow, Pufferfish, and Alien Streets are in Additional card drafts. Advanced Taxidermy, Paper Rewrite, and Peer Review now appear in the counted starters; the others remain catalog additions for separate testing.

Grown Conjecture makes Reptiles you control Birds with Bird Yield and Fly. Grown’s Theory of Evolution makes non-Insect Animalia you control Fish with Aquatic Yield and Dive. Both are lasting Main Deck Field cards, proposed type Influence — Research, with no Apex requirement and resource requirements still unassigned. They continuously affect eligible Animalia you control including later invocations and do not occupy the Environment slot. Insect identity or Insect Yield excludes an Animalia from Theory. Eligible tokens qualify, including Plankton tokens.

These identities and Yield properties are added to the Animalia’s existing properties. A Reptile remains a Reptile; a Large animal remains Large. Working grant rule: the listed Yield property is available if absent, without adding a repeated unit to an Animalia already carrying that property. Multiple copies do not multiply keywords or Yield units. Leaving your control or ceasing to qualify ends that source’s grants. Removing the source ends only its contributions; printed properties and other independent sources remain. Fish is a textual Animalia trait, rather than an Environment label or a new Trophic symbol. Research as a subtype does not restore the withdrawn generic draw action.

Theory can explicitly add Aquatic to Krill and Plankton tokens; it does not add Small, so they still cannot fill a Small Aquatic column. Under Theory, Brown Bear’s Large + Apex Yield gains Aquatic and can fill Grizzly Bear’s Large Aquatic Diet column; two Aquatic Yield units from other bodies are still required. Three Plankton tokens can fill Brown Bear’s three-unit Aquatic Diet total. Those tokens gain no Small Yield and cannot fill Salmon’s Small Aquatic column. Active grants apply to bodies in play when selected to pay a Diet; they do not modify cards in a deck, hand, discard pile, or Corpse pile. Oarweed’s deck search still checks the cards’ own Aquatic Yield. Theory’s Aquatic and Dive grants satisfy Deep Sea’s existing exceptions. Conjecture’s Bird grant can enable Mangrove’s Bird bonus. Corpse Values and printed Diet requirements do not change.

Advanced Taxidermy — Dr. Theodore Grown permits invoking actual Animalia cards from your Corpse Pile under your control. Sacrifice Apex once to establish this lasting Alien Influence and advance the sequence. During Main, pay each collected card’s normal requirements, and replace it on successful invocation with one Corpse token of its scored value. Each Resource symbol you cannot fulfill becomes two normal Any payments; use matching ready Resources first. Missing two symbols therefore costs four Any. Existing Any, Animalia, Blood, Corpse and Apex payments are unchanged. The selected corpse and its future replacement cannot pay this invocation. Any-consumed bodies trigger generic consumption abilities, but transfer no Fat or Diet-only effects. Original ownership and entry restrictions remain. Ordinary discard, Archive and generic Corpse tokens are ineligible. No extra Apex offering is required beyond the invoked card’s own requirements.

For example, [Fungi] [Large + Aquatic] becomes [Any] [Any] [Large + Aquatic] if no ready Fungi can supply that symbol; the Large Aquatic meal remains. Invoking a card scored at 4 replaces it with a value-4 token, preserving those points. A later Hunt death or explicit Kill collects the body again; ordinary blocking sends it to its owner’s discard without score. Sacrificing it to Fungi likewise discards it and creates only Fungi’s value-1 token. The existing replacement stays until spent. Taxidermy adds no departure reward. Corpse entries spent for this invocation enter Archive if actual cards, or cease if tokens. Validate costs before replacement and finish triggers before checking victory.

Paper Rewrite — Dr. Theodore Grown returns up to five distinct cards from your ordinary discard to your hand, of any type. Corpse Piles, Archive and used Aliens are ineligible. Returning is neither drawing nor invocation and creates no trophies. This Alien Impulse costs one Apex offering and no Resource payment, resolves, then becomes used. It cannot return itself, but may return its just-sacrificed actual Apex. Its Zoowalker label identifies the character.

Zoo is an Environment with the Human label. While active, no player may declare an attack against a Zoowalker or an Animalia. This prohibits Hunts too, but permits invocation, resource abilities, and non-attack effects that kill. It cannot be replaced while active. Its confirmed countdown advances only at the end of the invoking Zoowalker’s turns, including the turn it entered. Put three turn counters on it and remove one at each such End; discard Zoo when the third is removed. Opposing turns do not count. If A invokes it on A’s first turn, it expires at the end of A’s third turn. An effect that explicitly discards an Environment can still remove it; “cannot be replaced” is not protection from every removal effect.

CAWP requires Apex and invokes three separate printed 3/3 Experimental Wolf tokens, each with Wolf family and Pack Tactics: one with Fly, one with Dive and one with Burrow. With only this trio in play they are 5/5 each; two survivors are 4/4 each and one survivor is 3/3. Other friendly Wolf-family Animalia also contribute; each variant retains only its own evasion keyword. They enter under normal restrictions and are non-Apex mutant Wolves yielding only Large. Their printed Corpse Value remains 4. Losing all three in Hunt fights or explicit Kill creates three value-4 entries, totaling 12 toward the 40 target; ordinary blocking creates none. Value 4 retains the earlier doubled printed scale. Token status prevents Fungi’s Animalia sacrifice payment.

Petting Zoo protects every Animalia with current Damage 2 or less from being chosen as a Hunt target. Such animals can still block, Ambush, attack, and be killed by other effects. Whenever such an Animalia is invoked, its controller draws a card. Prototype choice: test Damage immediately after it enters and active stat effects apply; later changes do not create a new trigger. An invocation includes tokens explicitly invoked by an effect. Merely creating a token is not an invocation in this draft, so the existing “create Plankton” ability does not trigger it. Environment replacement itself invokes no Animalia.

Invasive Species is a separate, single-use Main Deck Ability card costing Fungi and Any. During Main, invoke an Animalia from your hand while ignoring one occurrence of one symbol in its Diet. Pay its other invocation costs normally, in addition to the Ability’s cost; no payment source can pay twice in this combined action. If ignoring a column’s only symbol leaves it empty, that column requires no body. Ignoring Aquatic in a Large plus Aquatic column still requires one Large body. Ignoring Blood avoids that exhaust payment; ignoring one Corpse symbol lowers the total Corpse Value required by 1. It cannot waive a resource requirement or Apex.

Discard Invasive Species after resolving it and mark the invoked Animalia as invasive. At the start of every player’s turn, if it is still in play, its controller must either sacrifice it or sacrifice a Resource card they control. An exhausted Resource is eligible. Basic and non-basic Resource cards qualify, while Corpse victory counters do not qualify as a sacrificed card. With no Resource card available, sacrifice the invasive Animalia. The obligation ends when that Animalia leaves play; a copy does not inherit it. Neither sacrifice awards an ordinary fight trophy, and Invasive Species does not explicitly create one. Fungi’s explicit trophy creation is not inherited by other sacrifice effects. Timing inside a Swarm remains a separate draft interaction; test Invasive Species on individual Animalia first.

Neurotoxin, Black Widow, and Pufferfish

"The spider has died. Her contribution to the experiment has not." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Black Widow is a 3/2 Animalia with Hunt, Ambush, and Burrow. Its Diet consumes Animalia supplying at least four Insect Yield units in total, and its Yield is Insect + Apex. Its low Damage and Defense do not prevent the actual card from paying an Alien’s Apex sacrifice. Generated copies retain Insect Yield but lose Apex. Resource requirements and Corpse Value remain unassigned. No Small or Large Yield is inferred from its statistics.

Neurotoxin — After combat, Kill each opposing Animalia that fought this Animalia, even if this Animalia died. Deaths caused this way count as fight deaths.

Pufferfish also has Neurotoxin and does not have Apex Yield, as confirmed by the owner. It is a Whale-deck candidate; its invocation requirements, combat statistics, remaining Yield, other keywords, and Corpse Value remain unassigned. Neurotoxin is a named ability shared by both cards, rather than an Apex-specific ability.

Prototype choice: resolve Neurotoxin after the entire current attack completes, rather than between an Ambush fight and its subsequent Hunt fight, or at the end of the whole Combat phase. Track the opposing Animalia that actually fight the Neurotoxin Animalia in that attack. A Hunt target that never reaches its fight is not included. Ordinary lethal damage still removes an animal immediately; Neurotoxin then Kills any surviving affected opponent. It has no “must deal damage” condition.

Neurotoxin uses Kill, because it collects the opposing victim; Destroy would award nothing. It deals no additional damage and resolves even if its source died earlier in the attack. Its Kill counts as a fight death and collects the victim for the Zoowalker who controlled its source in that fight, at the victim’s current Corpse Value. The new Corpse entry can trigger Rats. A victim already removed by damage is not Killed again and awards no duplicate corpse. Killing an opposing Swarm collects every member as a fight death at its current Corpse Value, subject to explicit printed award overrides.

For example, an opposing 6/6 may survive Black Widow’s 3 damage and kill her. Neurotoxin still Kills the surviving opponent after the attack, collecting it for Black Widow’s controller. Black Widow is collected by the opponent if her death occurred in a declared Hunt; an ordinary blocking death instead discards her without score.

Prowl

Prowl — Attacking does not exhaust this Animalia.

Prowl applies to ordinary attacks and declared Hunts. The attacker must still be ready, have an unused attack allowance, and obey normal attack timing. Declaring the attack spends its normal allowance; Prowl grants no extra attacks and does not ready an exhausted Animalia. A surviving attacker remains ready unless another effect exhausts it, so it can later block or Ambush subject to its available defense allowance and normal eligibility. Prowl itself grants neither Ambush nor extra defenses.

The owner approved Prowl for the planned Siberian Tiger Apex. It must be printed or explicitly granted; Apex Yield alone does not grant it. Tiger's remaining values and counted deck are still open. This is an agreed paper ability, not yet implemented in the browser or Python model.

Pack Tactics

This Animalia gets +1/+1 for each other Animalia you control that shares its family.

Muskox, Grey Wolf and all three Experimental Wolf variants have this named personal ability. Use the nonempty printed family, not identical name alone. Companions need not have Pack Tactics; a different card name with that family qualifies. Opposing Animalia do not. Family membership itself grants no ability.

The bonus is continuous, not a counter. It changes neither Yield nor Corpse Value, does not transfer when eaten, and immediately decreases when companions leave. Apply ordinary state checks if reduced Defense exposes lethal marked damage; that stat-loss death is not automatically a scored fight death. Tundra applies separately: two Muskox are 3/6 each, or 4/7 each under Tundra. A lone Wolf is 5/5, two are 6/6 each, and three are 7/7 each.

Controlled copies count as companions, but never regain Apex Yield. Each physical member of a controlled same-family Swarm counts. A legal front may use its own Pack Tactics; rear sources cannot. Food-only biomass counts as a family companion but cannot use its own personal ability. Pack Tactics does not provide extra attacks, defense allowances, or Swarm permission.

This replaces Muskox’s former +0/+1 per other named Muskox and Grey Wolf’s wounded-target Hunt bonus. Retaining pack members competes with sacrificing them for Aliens or consuming them as meals.

Herbivore! Leopard Seal guards

Two Leopard Seals replace two Mountain Goats in the additional Herbivore! list. The working card is 3/5, Corpse Value 3, Large/Aquatic Yield, Mammal/Seal identity, Ambush and Dive, with [Any] [Any] [Small] [Small]. Pay two Any requirements and two Small meals; Aquatic is not required. Any may consume additional eligible animals, but no source pays twice. This removes the former one-meal shortcut without imposing a hard turn floor. No Herbivore identity or Tundra bonus is granted.

Arctic Rabbit’s Burrow restricts ordinary blockers, not which hunters can target Rabbit. Leopard Seal can spend its available defense allowance to intercept a Hunt against another friendly Animalia. Dive lets it meet a Dive hunter’s restriction; other restrictions must still be satisfied independently. An interceptor does not guarantee the original target survives, because a surviving hunter continues. Using the interception also spends the allowance needed for a later voluntary block, including an Alien Streets Car attack before End cleanup.

Socialité colony interactions

The Socialité starter is additional paper design, separate from the existing Bear/Whale experiments. Its six named Penguins and Penguin Chick have explicit Penguin identity and the working Penguin family. Rockhopper may lead a Swarm of your Penguins. The front must itself have Swarm: a rear Rockhopper does not let Emperor or Chinstrap lead. Rockhopper keeps its own properties and abilities; each rear Penguin adds +1/+1 with its personal text inactive.

Rookery gives your Penguins +0/+1 as a local continuous Habitat effect. Emperor Penguin gives your other Small Penguins +0/+1 while its personal ability is active. These bonuses stack from separate eligible sources, end with their sources, and are not transferable Fat. A Swarm uses its front’s identity and Yield and receives each eligible unit bonus once. Rear Emperors grant no personal source bonus.

Crèche may activate once per its physical card per your Main: exhaust two distinct ready Penguins you control, then create one 0/1 Penguin Chick with Small, Bird, and Aquatic Yield, Dive, and Corpse Value 1. Separate Swarm members before using them individually, retaining their restrictions. Food-only biomass cannot pay exhaust costs. Creation is not invocation. Readying a Penguin does not restore its defense allowance.

Chinstrap gets +1/+0 for the interception or block fight if another friendly Penguin unit participates in the same defending group. Check this before simultaneous Damage; deaths do not erase damage already assigned. Another member of the same Swarm is not another defending unit. The ability is inactive for a rear Chinstrap and does not trigger when merely attacked as a Hunt target.

Orca has Large, Aquatic, and Apex Yield, Hunt, and Dive. Its working requirement is [Kelp] [Kelp] [Aquatic + Bird] [Aquatic]: one Aquatic Bird and a separate Aquatic body. Penguins and their Chicks may fill either column; ordinary Fish may fill the second. No Small property is required, and one body cannot pay both columns. Another controlled Orca at Hunt declaration grants +1 Damage through that Hunt; this is one bonus regardless of how many other Orcas exist, persists if that other Orca leaves, and then expires. Qualifying copies can support the Hunt but never supply Apex.

Four original Orcas are the only Apex cards in this list. Offering three to the shuffled Alien sequence and a fourth to Alien Deckend remains subject to actual card access and ordinary recovery rules; printed copy count alone guarantees no win. Exact new card values and effects are playtest proposals, not measured matchup conclusions.

Species abilities

"The Rats have reproduced the result. Several times." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Male Seahorse: exhaust it to create a 1/1 Seahorse token with Small and Aquatic Yield and Corpse Value 0. It is a Fish with no exhaust ability. New tokens may act immediately but cannot be consumed on their entry turn.

Rabbit: exhaust two eligible Rabbits to create a 1/1 Rabbit with the same ability, Small Yield and Corpse Value 0. Ready Rabbits, including newly created tokens, may participate immediately.

Rat: whenever a new Corpse entry is created, if you control at least two Rats with this ability, create one 1/1 Rat token with the same ability. Each new entry triggers your species ability once regardless of how many Rats you have; both players may qualify. Declared Hunt, explicit Kill, actual direct-hit capture, Fungi and Taxidermy replacement qualify. Ordinary blocking and generic Ravage do not. A collected value-5 card is one event; a collected value-0 card also qualifies. A qualifying token victim creates one valued Corpse token instead. A killed Swarm produces one entry per qualifying member. Determine eligibility using surviving Rats before resolving the batch. Merely spending, moving or recounting entries triggers nothing; new Rats create no trophies just by entering.

Prototype choice retained: for a batch of Corpse entries created together, determine eligibility using surviving Rats before resolving that batch’s triggers. Rats created by those triggers do not retroactively enable other triggers from the same batch. If you begin with two eligible Rats and Fungi creates one trophy worth 1, you create one Rat and end with three. Both players may do so if both qualified before the batch.

Mosquito: when invoked, exhaust a chosen opposing Animalia. This does not prevent that Animalia being hunted or consumed. Mosquitoes have no implicit Swarm.

Giant Anteater: whenever it kills an Insect in combat and survives, give it a permanent plus 1 Damage / plus 1 Defense for each such Insect. It does not gain this bonus from consumption.

Zombie Beetle: when it would die, you may instead consume one other Insect you control. Return the Beetle ready, with damage cleared and the normal restriction for an animal entering this turn. It does not become a Corpse; its opponent gains no points for it. With no Insect consumed, it dies normally. Resolve replacement choices in active-player order when both sides would lose a Beetle. Zombie Beetle is excluded from starter decks while that optional replacement remains a design experiment.

Alien victory

"The final stage is victory. The preceding stages are awaiting funding." — Dr. Theodore Grown

After using your three Alien cards, activate the final Alien Deckend token by sacrificing one actual Animalia with Apex Yield. You win when its effect resolves. The token stays at the end of the sequence, outside the counted 70 Main + 3 Alien cards, and is not moved by Research Program. The three counted Aliens use their shuffled setup sequence, except when an effect reorders unused cards. A lasting Alien counts as used when first activated, even while its effect remains in play.

This route needs four Apex offerings in total. Copies from Breeding, Camera, or any other generator have no Apex Yield and cannot provide them. Ocean contains four original Apex cards; Bear contains five: one Brown Bear, two Grizzlies, and two Polar Bears, one armed. Each current original Bear definition has Apex Yield; generated Bear copies still omit it. Legal recovery can let an original card be invoked again. Normal invocation costs still apply, and sacrifices create no ordinary Corpse rewards. See Win conditions and Alien Deckend for the full sequence and Starter animal variations for the proposed Polar Bears.

First playtest

"A contrary result is a request for a second experiment." — Dr. Theodore Grown

Use the current lists before modifying them. Record turns to first Large and Apex, victory route, score from Hunt, explicit Kill, Fungi and direct-hit captures, Zoo cards Ravaged, remaining Zoo size, unplayable hands, Resource shortages and food-body recovery. Separate ordinary blocking deaths from collected victims. Record archived cards and the food production needed for each Whale. The v0.48 changes are balance proposals, not a measured matchup conclusion.

Watch especially the six- and sixteen-unit Plankton Diets, Humpback’s two Small Aquatic meals, one-resource-per-turn pacing, Fungi’s non-token sacrifice economy, the draw economy without universal Research, and the first-player advantage. Record deliberate absurd meals separately: those are a design feature.

The earlier digital prototype and printed starter PDFs belong to v0.1 and are set aside. They do not implement these updates. The current five-deck browser sandbox uses this v0.56 draft, including the experimental Dragonfly/Wood Frog list. Preserved reports retain the definitions and rules recorded when they were run; their results do not measure this revision.