Animals on Board

Each player starts with one ark board and one food token. The animal tiles are shuffled and placed face-down to form a draw pile. Three animal tiles are drawn from the pile. Each player then secretly chooses one animal tile to place on their ark, and the remaining two tiles are placed face-up in the center of the playing area. The center is then refilled with animal tiles until there are 12 face-up tiles. The oldest player receives the first player marker.

The main objective is to collect the highest total score by gathering animals in groups of three or more on your ark and accumulating food tokens, while avoiding having single animals on your ark at the end of the game.

On your turn, you have two action choices. The first is to split an animal group in the center into two smaller groups (each with at least one animal) and take one food token. The second option is to take one animal group from the center and place it on your ark. When taking an animal group, you must pay food tokens equal to the number of animals in that group. After taking an animal group, you place a 'stop' flag on your ark, ending your participation in the current round.

Scoring occurs at the end of the game. For each type of animal on your ark, if you have a set of three or more, each animal in that set is worth 5 points. If you have only one animal of a specific type, its printed number value is counted as negative points. If you have exactly two animals of a type, they are considered 'Noah's pairs' and are removed from your ark, yielding no points (positive or negative). Each remaining food token is worth 1 point.

A round ends when all players have placed their 'stop' flag on their ark. If, at the end of a round, any player has 10 or more animals on their ark, the game immediately ends. Otherwise, a new round begins, the center is refilled with animal tiles, and the first player marker passes to the player who was the first to place their 'stop' flag in the previous round.