Holotype: Mesozoic North America - How to Play Board Game

hi everyone it's Tyrant and Stella from people University today we'll be teaching you how to play holotype Mesozoic North America game designed by Brett Harrison and Lex terringen and published by brexworks games let's get to the game [Music] in holotype players are teams of paleontologists competing against each other to contribute the most to research of the Mesozoic era in North America players will send their team members out to conduct research excavate or trade for fossils and ultimately publish journals on their findings the player who earns the most points before the research track is complete or before and off Global objectives are full will win the game now take the holotype board and field advancement track board matching your Play account on the field advancement track take the holotype marker and place it on zero around the holotype board Shuffle the five decks and place them in these locations and deal face up Global objectives equal to one more than the number of players in the game in the museum collections area Place colored fossil cubes three green cubes representing the Cretaceous Period two blue cubes representing the Jurassic period and one purple Cube representing the Triassic period this reflects their relative value in the game purple is the most valuable then blue then green the remaining colored fossil cubes the colored fossil Dice and the white research cubes are kept nearby this area is called the supply each player takes a player board and all of their colored pieces the discs go on these five spaces in the global objectives contribution section and the advancement jets go beside the player board each player has three meeples the field assistant grad student and paleontologist the grad student starts the game locked up here and the other two begin in the lounge DLH player a hand of three specimen cards and then two personal objectives the player looks at all of these cards and then chooses one of the personal objectives to keep discarding the other and keeping this card face down choose a first player and you're now ready to play holotive is a continuous worker placement game which is played in turns starting from the first player and going clockwise around the table on your turn you will either move one of your available workers onto an action space and resolve the action of that location or you will retrieve all of your workers who are currently on the main board back to your lounge and then gain one white research queue from the supply to your research area there is no limit on the number of research tokens you may hold when you send a worker to take an action the strength of that action will depend on which worker you send field assistance will always resolve the weaker effect while grad students or paleontologists will always resolve the stronger when making a placement you can always place a worker into an empty action space without restriction you're also allowed to place a worker into an occupied space as long as all spaces at that location are full and the worker whose space you're taking is of equal or lower priority than the worker you're placing paleontologists outrank grad students who outrank field assistance the worker who is bumped off a space is returned to the lounge of its owner available to be placed again and you are allowed to bump your own worker As Long as You Follow all of these rules there are five different actions in the game first is the specimen lab which lets you take one of these three available actions you may draw three new specimen Cards into your hand or two if you place a field assistant then discard any one card from your complete new hand there is no hand limit your second option is to draw the top card from the discard pile into your hand and this works the same for any worker your third option is to discard any two cards from your hand or one card if you're using the field assistant specimen cards represent the hollow types that you're trying to publish papers on you'll need to collect resources to complete them and you'll be aiming to gain this many points for doing so you'll lose points for cards remaining in your hand at the end of the game which is why you may want to discard some the second action is the University Library place a worker and then take three research cubes into your supply or only two if you're using a field assistant this forms part of the cost of completing a specimen the Third location is field Expeditions and this is where you'll go to dig up fossils from the supply as with any paleontological Expedition there'll be some element of luck in what you may or may not find if you send a field assistant simply draw and resolve the top field Expedition card if you send a grad student or paleontologist draw the top two field Expeditions and then choose the one you wish to resolve for each trace fossil icon on your field Expedition card draw one trace fossil card into hand for each die symbol showing roll the matching colored die and then gain a number of fossils based on what you roll the bone symbol means gain that many fossil cubes of that color from the supply while the museum icon means take the matching fossil Cube from the museum if there's one available this icon here represents both a die and a re-roll so in this case you would roll three blue Dice and then have the opportunity for two total re-rolls that is one die twice or two dice once each fossil you gain is added to one of the eight spaces of your fossil storage if you gain above eight then you must discard down to eight from your entire collection putting any excess in the museum if you draw and choose to resolve the erosion event then instead of rolling Dice and getting fossils you can do the action at any one of the other four locations on the board taking the effect for the piece that you put at the field expeditions then if you drew this card whether you chose to resolve it or not reshuffle the discard pile back into the field Expedition deck the fourth location is the museum Collections and there are two actions available here you can exchange colored fossil cubes for other colored fossil cubes or you can exchange colored fossil cubes for white research cubes if you send a field assistant you may do one of these two actions if you send a grad student or paleontologist you can do both when you make fossil exchanges you can make any number of fossil exchanges between your fossil storage and the museum at the ratios shown here one purple is equal to two blue is equal to three green exchanges may be done in any combination or Direction between these three colors here for example the player could trade three greens for one purple and two blues for one purple to load up on purple your fossil storage limit resolves the same way as before so if this player exchanged two purple for six green one of the excess even the one just traded for would have to go back to the museum when you exchange fossils for research you can spend any number of fossils from your storage into the museum to get the required amount of research tokens two green fossils will give you one research one blue fossil is worth one research and a purple fossil is worth two research these are one-way trades you can't exchange research for fossils the final action is publishing a journal and this may only be done by grad students or paleontologists field assistance cannot take the action here you can take one of two options either publish research on a specimen card from your hand or contribute a disk to one of the global objectives to publish on a specimen play a specimen card from your hand face up above your board spend the number and color of fossils shown in the top left corner and spend the number of research cubes these all go back to the supply not the museum if you have at least one trace fossil in hand you may choose to add that to the holotype that you just published to do this slide it underneath the card and pay one extra fossil which matches the type you just played so here it would have to be one extra green this still counts as a single Hollow type but it's now worth extra points the exception to this is you're never allowed to add a trace fossil to a marine type holotype Advance the common marker One Step along the field advancement track if it enters a special space showing one of these two icons resolve it now the star allows all players to gain a milestone everyone moves one of their six colored Milestone advancements to their player board and then gets the ongoing ability from that tile this icon resets the museum Sweep All cubes out of the museum and replenish it with the usual starting quantities three green two blue and a purple finally if this was your third published holotype then you're a good enough paleontologist to be assigned a grad student so move your grad student from the locked box into your Lounge the other option is to contribute one of your disks to one of the global objectives these objectives require a certain number of a certain type of hollow type to have been published this could simply be based on the era or color of the holotype matching either the icon or the color and icon at the bottom of the cards or it may look for a general or specific type of trace fossil if by yourself you've published enough Hollow types to match one of the global objectives take this action by simply taking your left most Global objective disk and covering that objective if an objective is met across all players published holotypes combined then any player even one who didn't contribute can contribute to that Global objective by taking the action placing the disk and paying a total of five research cubes to reference the other player's work this cost does not change from five regardless of the number of other players work you need to reference to fulfill the objective at the end of the game you'll score points equal to the rightmost number you uncover we mentioned before the six different Milestone achievement cards and you'll gain four of these through the game for different bonuses with this tile you get to draw and discard one extra card when taking the leftmost specimen action with this tile when you take the middle specimen action you get to look through the entire discard pile and choose the card you want rather than being limited to the top card this tile grants you an extra research Cube at the library this one grants you an extra fossil of the same color after you've rolled for an expedition this one grants you a bonus at the Museum once you're finished taking your actions there whatever actions you choose to take you now gain one fossil or research Cube from the supply as an additional bonus finally this tile expands your fossil storage from 8 cubes to 12.

the game end can be triggered in one of two ways either when the field advancement track reaches the end or when a number of global objective cards matching the number of players is full finish the action which triggered the end of the game and then the game is over no one takes any more turns players count up the points on all of their published holotypes and trace fossils and add points for the rightmost uncovered number on the global objectives track plays then reveal and score their personal objectives this may give a different number of points depending on how many of a certain objective you've met among your published holotypes or could be as simple All or Nothing objective finally deduct from your score the research Cube cost that is the number in the white square on any remaining specimen cards in your hand the player with the highest score wins if tired Whoever has the most leftover research cubes wins and if still tied Victory is shared and that's how to play holotype Mesozoic North America we hope you enjoyed this video If you find this video useful please help us by hitting the like button subscribe to us you can also hit the meeple in the corner to do that and hit the Bell icon so you'll know when we have new videos you can also follow me on Instagram for my board games Journey questions comments and feedback are all welcome in the comments section below thanks for watching see you next time