Rob the Cemetery, stitch creatures out of what you find, and race your rival for the last of the Revenge and Science tokens.
Players will draft cards and build creatures in the hopes that those creatures will help them toward their goals of exacting revenge on the villagers or furthering their knowledge of life over death.
Unspent tokens are green, spent tokens are red. Spending a token never costs you the point — both sides count at the end.
Each turn has six phases.
A phase with nothing you could legally do in it is skipped.
Each turn a player gets 5 cards. These cards can either be drafted from the Cemetery or from the tops of either card pile.
Core cards are required to construct a creature and are the base to which Parts are attached. Creatures are constructed as 3×3 grids of Parts with a Core at the center — eight Part positions around it. The Core itself is never counted as a Part.
Each Part can only fit on a certain area of a creature — a head goes where a head goes. The board only ever offers you positions the Part is allowed to occupy.
During this phase unspent Revenge tokens can be placed on dual-type Parts to temporarily have them count toward the activation of Behaviors during the next phase. Tokens can be placed on either type on the Part, or in the center to mark both types.
A dual-type Part contributes nothing until it is marked. Unmarked, it forms no pair, stabilises nothing and earns nothing — it counts only toward the four-Part threshold and gives you something to stitch through.
Dual-type Parts never contribute at Scoring, in any circumstance. A mark buys a dual its place in a pair for the Behaviors phase only. Marked or unmarked, a dual cannot earn a token — only single-type Parts do that.
So a Revenge token is spent to make something happen, never to make something count. The mark is gone before Scoring begins.
Only active creatures will perform actions and suffer from reactions during a player's turn. A creature is considered active if it has 4 or more Parts attached to its Core.
Each type leans more toward one of the two player goals of Science and Revenge.
A creature can be composed of several types based on which Parts are attached to it. Some of these types react well with each other and serve to stabilize the creature's behavior. Types that differ too much from the Core of the creature's nature will serve to make the creature unstable.
A type is considered stable in one of two ways:
The Core does not stand in for a pair. It stabilises its own type, but it never counts as one of the two Parts an affinity needs.
Each of these is one creature, laid out the way the board draws it — the Core at the centre, Parts around it.
Core flesh
Stable Flesh
Scores 3 Revenge — 1 for the Core, 1 for each Flesh pair
A Core stabilizes its own type for free, and it does so for every pair of that type at once — four Flesh Parts on a Flesh Core is two Flesh pairs, and both score. Six would be three. Nothing else has to be on the creature.
Core plant
Stable Plant, Flesh and Beast
Scores 1 Science for the Core, 1 Revenge for the Flesh pair, 1 Revenge for the Beast pair
A pair of each Revenge type stabilises the whole affinity, even though the Core is Science. Plant is stable too — but there is no Plant pair, so nothing collects on it.
Core beast
Stable Beast only
Scores 1 Revenge, for the Core alone
Flesh has a pair but no Beast pair beside it; Monster has a pair but no Plant pair. Neither affinity is complete, so both pairs are unstable — they still act, and they each fire their Reaction at you.
Core flesh
Stable Flesh
Scores 2 Revenge — 1 for the Core, 1 for the single-type Flesh pair
The two dual Parts count toward being active, and a Revenge mark can make them act during Behaviors. They can never earn a token, marked or not.
A split cell is a dual-type Part. A creature needs four Parts before any of this applies — an inactive creature is neither stable nor unstable, it simply does nothing.
Stable types will trigger only that type's Action. Unstable types will trigger that type's Action and Reaction.
Action: Steal — Attach an unstacked Part from the Cemetery to one of the player's Cores.
Reaction: Clumsy — After the Part is attached, it is flipped over. It still counts as a Part for creatures being active, but has no type — and it stays that way for the rest of the game.
Action: Maim — Opponent must remove a Part of their choosing from one of their creatures.
Reaction: Mindless — The player must remove a Part from one of their creatures as well.
Action: Fertilize — Blind draft 2 Parts and stack them face up in any order. This is called the Pet Cemetery. During the player’s next turn these cards can be used for Part stitching; any left unused after that are lost.
Reaction: Organic — The Parts are added face down instead. A face-down Part is only revealed when it reaches the top of the Pet Cemetery.
Action: Binding — Blind draft a Part and peek at it, then stack it face down on a Part in the Cemetery. Any player who wants that Cemetery Part must draft the whole stack. Parts with stacks cannot be stolen.
Reaction: Insane — The Part goes on face up instead, where everyone can see it. If possible it must be stacked on a Part sharing a type with it; otherwise any Part in the Cemetery will do. At most 5 Parts can be stacked together, counting the Cemetery Part underneath.
During this phase players earn unspent tokens based on the structure of their creatures. Creatures are scored from the left to the right. Only creatures that are active during this phase will earn tokens.
During this phase Science tokens can be used to rearrange the Parts connected to a player's creatures. For each Science token spent, the player can either:
This is the last phase, so a rearrangement can only ever pay off on a later turn — and your rival has a turn in between.
The end of the game is signaled when either or both groups of tokens are depleted. The second player always plays the final turn.
Once the game is over, each player adds up all of their spent and unspent tokens. Whichever player has the most tokens wins. Players can draw if they have the same number of tokens.