Gameplay

Bone Wars rounds and turns, loyalty and patrons, paying for an action slot, the three kinds of cards and the prize bonus.

Overview

The game lasts 4 rounds. A round has no fixed number of turns: in player order, each player either performs an action by playing a card into an action slot, or passes and gets ready for the next round. When everybody has passed the round ends.

• After round 2 there is a mid-game scoring, after round 4 the final scoring (Mid-game and final scoring).
• The most reputation points (RP) wins. Ties: most species cards in your archive, then the largest cranial circumference — 19th-century science equated a bigger brain with a smarter scientist.

Loyalty

You always work for one patron, shown by the patron tile in your locket: Othniel Marsh or Edward Cope.

• Each player has a loyalty marker on both loyalty tracks, Marsh’s left of the bookshelf and Cope’s right of it. Loyalty you gain goes on the track of your current patron.
• At each scoring you earn RP on both tracks: your loyalty value × that patron’s credibility (the shelves with papers on his side of the bookshelf).
• Everybody publishes and debunks papers for one side or the other, so the bookshelf belongs to all players. The game is about backing a patron, then switching at the right time so your loyalty is high where the shelves are full.
• You change patron when you pass (by the university you return to) and with the “flip your patron tile” dig site action or a bonus that allows it.

Playing a card

On your turn, play one card from your hand into the leftmost empty action slot at the bottom of your player board, then pay the activation cost: the slot’s cost ($0 to $3, rising to the right) plus the card’s own cost ($0 to $3; species and paleontologist cards have none). Then perform the action.

Five slots means at most five actions a round — more with upgraded action slot tiles (Upgrade an action slot).

The three kinds of cards

Card	What it does
Team card	Gives a number of action points and a digging depth for team actions. Basic cards show 3 team members, advanced 6; a torn photo means a specialist can join it. You may upgrade a card already in an action slot, but the slot remains spent for this round (FAQ).
Paleontologist card	One paleontologist action. Its lower half names a bonus you get if you perform the matching action; when publishing several papers, that bonus applies only once (list, FAQ).
Species card	Either one paleontologist action (no bonus), or team actions with the action points and depth printed above the slot you played it into. In Theodore’s game, matching species cards are discarded even if their prize has no effect (FAQ).

A species card shows the bones its skeleton needs, a prize bonus, its category ( reptile, mammal, bird, amphibian), its discoverer (Marsh, Cope or Leidy) and a minor find icon ( bug, footprint, fossil, hammer or plant). The discoverer is only for awards — it has nothing to do with your patron.

Prize bonus

Every action slot shows a minor find icon. When you play a species card into a slot whose icon matches the card’s minor find, you also get the card’s prize bonus, before or after your actions (prize bonuses).

Reading the icons