Survivalist - How to Play. Complete, Concise, Clear Board Game Tutorial

Survive the harsh wilderness in 10 [music] nights, scraping for resources to battle all threats and be the one who survived in Survivalist. And today we'll be teaching you how to play Survivalist, game designed by Robert Hewitt and published by Homestead Games New Zealand. >> [music] >> And check out the link to the project page in the video description below.

And hi everyone, it's Stella. And Tarrant, welcome to Mibo University. And hey, if you enjoyed this video after watching, like, comment, and subscribe. You know what to do. Now let's get to the classroom. In Survivalist, players find themselves lost in the wilderness and must now do what they can to survive multiple days avoiding the grim specter of death.

A cooperative game this is not as players compete to obtain the scarce resources and bonuses the wilderness has to offer and to craft the items they need to survive. All the while trying to stay safe from the cold and from different types of wounds. Over eight standard rounds, players will make their preparations before the final act.

One at a time they'll face thirst, storms, hunger, and more using their crafted equipment to survive or drawing into the bag to face the consequences. Succumb to your wounds or to the cold and you're eliminated. And the last one alive will be the winner. In this video, we'll be covering the core three to six player rules for the game.

The game can also be played at two with these rules and in the deluxe box there are further rules which will change the way the two player game plays. But we won't be covering that in this video. To set up, lay out the board. Set the round marker on the snowflake. This will give you eight standard rounds.

You may also choose to start on the lightning bolt or the rain cloud for a more or less brutal game. Place reapers on the board next to the threats. One on the lower four and one or two on the upper three depending on your player count. Likewise, place the depicted reapers above the fate track. Shuffle a set of seven different fate tokens each depicting one of the threats and randomly arrange them face down below those reapers.

On this empty slot, place the big haul token for your player count. Separate and shuffle the basic and expert bushcraft cards and deal them out into the slots that match your player count. Mark any to leave empty with a fire. Gather the various gainable components into piles or draw stacks as you see fit.

This will include the fires, the meds, lucky breaks, seven different types of resource tokens which you'll shuffle face down and the drop tiles. These have a wide range of different effects on them. Flip one resource face up. This is considered the start of the resource discard. See the main board with tokens from these stacks.

At the ridge, place four or five resources face up depending on the player count. In the valley, place three tokens face down and in the drop zone, first place five drop tiles face down in any order before simultaneously flipping them all face up. Gather all of the discs. Yellow discs are sun. These are the only discs you want to see.

Blue discs, which come in the highest number, are freeze and the other four types are wounds to the head, chest, left arm and right arm respectively. Mix all discs in the bag. Give each player a player board and a meeple. Shuffle and deal each player one secret skills card. Look at your card, but keep it secret from your opponents.

It shows one of the seven resources which you are more skilled at using. Gain your various starting resources. This will be one fire, one med, one reaper, one wound disc in each of the four colors, and four freeze tokens. Choose a first player, then stack your freeze tokens on two exposure hexes according to your position in turn order.

Each storage slot shows the maximum number of tokens which can be kept on it throughout play. You're now ready to play. The core of Survivalist plays over eight standard rounds, during which you'll gather resources and craft the survival tools you'll need. There will then be a ninth round in which you use the secret skills before the 10th round in which you face the threats of the Reapers.

They look pretty grim, Taran. And see who survived the longest. We'll take you through how to play the standard rounds first. A round plays in two main phases. First, selecting actions, then resolving actions. In selecting actions, players take it in turns, starting from the first player and going clockwise, to choose their action for the round by placing their meeple on it.

There are 11 possible spaces. Nine in the back country column, and then two down the bottom, the clearing and the campfire. Only one player may occupy each action space in the back country. So, once selected, another player cannot also choose that space, but any number of players may choose the clearing or the campfire.

Once everyone has chosen, you'll move to resolving actions. And here, you'll resolve the actions in order from top to bottom down the backcountry column, followed by the clearing and then the campfire. To resolve your action, resolve each of its steps left to right. In the backcountry actions, you'll begin by drawing discs from the bag, risking wounds and exposure, but you'll find some fairly decent rewards.

The higher you trek into the backcountry, the more dangerous your action is likely to be, and the higher your bag draw. You'll be safer lower down the mountain and safest of all in the campfire or clearing where you do not draw discs. You may forego any beneficial part of your action when resolving, but you can never forego the draw of discs.

Hmm. Sounds like it's pretty dangerous out there in the backcountry. No, Terrance. It's just like a walk in the park. Ha. Sure it is. So, let's now learn what happens when you draw those dreadful discs from the bag. Check the number of discs you have to draw, and draw that many from the bag all at once.

What you want to see are the yellow discs. They are sunshine and they have no ill effect. Return this token to the box. It never returns to the bag. For a wound, stack it on the appropriate wound stack, and for freeze, stack on the exposure hexes in any combination you wish. Once placed, freeze cannot be moved.

If and only if you can't accommodate all of the discs you've drawn within the limits of the stacks, then you may use meds. Discard one med to return one disc to the bag and draw again. Do this any number of times in a row as long as you have meds to do so. If you're able to successfully accommodate all drawn discs within the capacities on your player board, you may now proceed with the rest of the actions.

But, if you get a fourth wound of a single type, or an 11th freeze, then you are knocked out. Place any discs that you are able to accommodate, and return any that you can't back to the bag. You'll now skip the rest of your chosen action. There are four main effects that you'll find on actions in the back country.

Three of them are the main actions: forage, craft, and gather. And there's also the bonus of gaining drop tiles. The first action is forage. Choose one face-down resource from the valley, and add it face-up to one of your backpack slots. Second is gather. Take the indicated number of face-up resources tiles from the ridge, and add those to your backpack.

You can hold at most five resources. If gathering or foraging would take you above that limit, you must still take your full allotment of resources, depleting the field for other players, before then discarding down to five in any combination. Discards going to the central resource discard pile. This action is craft.

Choose any one among the face-up items, pay the resource cost along its left, and take the card. Basic cards cost three resources in any combination, and protect you against a single survival threat. Expert items cost three specific resources, and protect you against two. Keep crafted items face-up beside your board.

When making payment, you may exchange two fire to represent any single other resource. So, this fire substituting for stone would be enough to craft this card. The last action is to take a drop tile. To begin each round, there'll be five tiles arranged on spaces A through E. And you only have the ability to choose a drop tile from a slot which is completely empty on the exposure section of your board.

This player could choose only among tiles A, B, and C. Take the tile, resolve its effect immediately, and then discard it. It's never placed on your player board. Drop tiles may let you heal wounds or clear freeze. Remove the discs from your board and return them to the bag. They may let you collect fire from the supply or steal one from an opponent.

They may let you salvage. Collect the resource of your choice from among all those which have been discarded. They may let you peek. For each peek, have a look at all of the resource tiles currently in the valley. Or learn which threat is on a single one of the face-down fate tiles. There is trap cards.

Take that many cards from the tops of either of the bushcraft decks. Look at it and keep it face down beside your player board. You can use a future craft action to craft this item without fear that someone else will have crafted it first. Finally, you can summon reapers. For each summon, either take one reaper from the threat track, not the fate track, and add it to your board.

Or take a reaper from your board and add it to any threat on the threat track. This is all about manipulating the final round so that the threats that you're protected against are more deadly for players who aren't, and so the threats you are vulnerable against are safer. Do not worry about carrying Reapers on your player board.

They do not hurt you while they're there. Their sole effect is to make these final threats more deadly. The final actions are the clearing and the campfire, and these are all about recovery. In the clearing, you can heal two wounds and one freeze. While around the campfire, clear three freeze and one wound.

Like for a drop tile heal, return those discs to the bag. At the end of each round, it's the bed down phase, during which you'll reset for the next round. You'll learn some more about the horrors that awaits in the final survival. Follow these nine steps in order. First, advance the round marker. Hand the first player marker one player clockwise.

If there's still one available, flip the next fate token. Then, take the Reapers from that slot and add them beside the matching threat on the threat track. Add one meds cube to each uncrafted item. These can accumulate over many rounds, meaning an item may have many meds on it. Those meds are collected by whoever ultimately crafts the item, and this is the main way to gain meds.

Now, reset the board. Fill any empty bushcraft spaces from their relevant decks, leaving them empty if the draw deck is expired. Discard unclaimed resources from the ridge and unclaimed drop tiles from the drop zone, but leave any unclaimed valley tiles present. Now, refill all three areas, in this case shuffling the discard pile if needed.

All players retrieve their meeples and it's time to proceed to the next round. Once the eighth round is complete, you're almost at the end and you go to the special ninth round, which is the secret skills round. In turn order, players reveal their secret skills and may resolve each of the exchanges on it at most once.

All cards have the same options just with a different resource that you'll be spending. And note that you can still exchange two fire as one of your preferred resource. You can spend one resource to heal a wound, two of your resource to do a total of three summon actions, four of your resource to gain a lucky break token, and a single fire to heal a freeze.

Once everyone is done, it's time for the final decisive round. Oh, this is it. The big finale. Threat by threat, players will either use their equipment or face the elements in a battle to be the last one standing. Or at least die trying. Firstly, you can clear off all the leftover tokens and cards.

All that matters now is the positions of the Reapers on the threat track. You'll always evaluate from bottom to top. So, place each player's meeple at thirst. Any players holding equipment which protects against thirst have passed this threat and advance to the next level. Once all players have taken that option, anyone holding a lucky break may choose to discard that lucky break to also pass this threat.

Anyone who's left must draw two discs per Reaper. So, in this instance, it would be eight discs. Handle this exactly as you would for a disc draw on a standard turn. You want to see sunlight and you set that aside when drawn. You may spend meds to return a disc to the bag and draw another. Doing this any number of times until you're happy with the draw.

If you can accommodate all of these discs on your board, then place them and advance to the next threat. But if you're out of meds and you can't hold everything you've drawn, then I'm afraid your journey is at its end. You are dead and out of the game. Once everyone has survived or died of thirst, progress to the next threat.

Storms resolved in the same way. Continue going until only one player is left alive. That player is the winner, even if they later fail to survive some of the threats that follow. If all remaining players die on the same threat, then you'll determine the winner by tiebreak. To do this, after placing all discs that you drew in the final draw, including hanging on to any that you weren't able to accommodate, determine your score by adding up the starred numbers on everything you've crafted and deducting one point for every disc you have.

Highest score wins and if still tied, whoever played latest in the first round turn order breaks the tie. [music] Thanks for watching. We're using prototype version of the game, so things are not final. And if you like this video, maybe you'd like to watch this next one. Have a great day. Bye.