Quick How to Play Planet Board Game Rules for those who hate rulebooks
I hate reading rulebooks and wrote these essential instructions to help you learn how to play and understand Planet Board Game Rules easy and fast.
Players: 2 to 4 | Game duration from: 30 mins | Game Complexity: LOW
What is the goal?
You have the opportunity to build your own planet. Plan where to place your mountain ranges, deserts, forests, oceans and glaciers. Position your continents to form hospitable environments for animal life to develop and try to create the most populated Planet!
- The game is played out in 12 turns
- Players use the continent tiles to build their own 3D Planet
- Position your continent tiles on your Planet\’s core to form hospitable environments for animal life to flourish
Game setup
- Every player starts with an empty Planet core (without any Continent tiles on its surface)
- Shuffle and place all the Continent tiles in a line of 10 piles
- Each pile contains 5 tiles, in the centre of the table, face down.
- Shuffle all Animal Cards and randomly draw 20 cards. Place the 20 cards face up and follow layout below
- It is very important that the cards are set out in rows with the piles of tiles arranged exactly as shown above.
- Each player receives a “Natural Habitat” objective card and secretly takes note of it before placing it face down in front of them.
- Natural Habitat cards can give you points at the end of the game. The cards indicate the total Areas of “Natural Habitat” that you need on your planet to gain the additional points
- Youngest player takes first player token and begins game.
Gameplay
- Gameplay involves 2 parts:
- Adding continents
- The origin of life (from 3rd turn onwards)
Adding Continents
- Take the first pile of 5 Continent tiles and spread these out across the centre of the table, face up.
- The first player chooses one tile from these 5 and adds this to a free space on their Planet’s core.
- The other players take turns doing the same, moving in a clockwise direction.
- Once every player has selected a tile, place all the remaining tiles face down in the 11th spot in the Continent row.
- Once this pile has 5 tiles, place the remaining tiles from your rounds in the 12th spot. When this pile has 5 tiles, any additionnal tiles are discarded and placed in the box.
The Origin of Life
- From the third turn onwards, life starts to emerge on the Planets.
- All players try to win the laid out Animal cards from the 3rd turn onwards
- they check if their Planet meets the requirements to host the Animal cards which can be won with each turn.
There are 3 types of requirements for welcoming animals onto a Planet.
To understand these requirements, you will need to know the difference between an area and a region
Having the most of one Kind of Region
- Count number of distinct regions of the same Natural Habitat across your planet
Biggest Region of one kind which touches a specified Habitat
- Count the number of Areas of the same type of Natural Habitat which create the biggest Region.
- The Region needs to be touching at least one Area of another type of Natural Habitat.
Biggest Region which is not in contact with a specified Habitat
- Count the number of Areas of the same type of Natural Habitat which create the biggest Region
- This Region CANNOT be in contact with the specified Natural Habitat.
One player keeps the animal card
- The player who has the most habitable planet takes the animal card and keeps it in front of them
If there is a draw:
- The player with first player token hands to the person on the left
- Game continues with the next new turn
How do you win?
- The game ends after :
- the 12th turn (when the player’s Planets are fully covered) and
- after the last Animal cards have been won.
- Each player reveals their objective card and checks whether or not they have met their objectives, winning points if they have succeeded
- Each player then scores:
- 1 point per Animal card whose Natural Habitat is the same as on their objective card, and
- 2 points per Animal card whose Natural Habitat is not the same as that on their objective card (see color codes on the edge of the Animal cards)
Note: Players score points with animals regardless if they have met the minimum “Areas” requirement on their Natural Habitat objective card. The player with the most points wins the game.
In case of a draw, players with the most Animals cards win the game. If there is still a tie, each player remaining in the tie wins.
