Tiny Epic Dinosaurs - How To Play

hi and welcome to watch it played my name is rodney smith and in this video we're going to learn the one to four player game tiny epic dinosaurs designed by scott alms and published by gamelan games who helped sponsor this video [Music] well we did it again we brought back the dinosaurs it doesn't matter what they eat or who they eat we just can't seem to get enough of these little terrors and here they really are very little but no less dangerous you and the other players will be competing dino ranchers trying to breed and sell dinosaurs to the highest bidders but only one of you will have the most successful dinosaur farm and win so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up place the four action mats in a row on the table in alphabetical order from a to d now these are double-sided so make sure you have the side face up for your number of players as indicated here in the top left hand corners in this video we'll be setting up a game for two players to the left of this row add the round mat and place this round marker onto the first space of its track here now put this contract mat above the actions area and find the public and private contracts which you can identify by their backs and then shuffle them individually and place them each into the spots for them here you'll then deal a number of public contracts into a face-up row to the right equal to the number of players plus one each person is then dealt two private contracts which they privately examine ensuring not to show the other player you'll pick one to keep and then each player returns the other unchosen one back to the deck to be shuffled back in we'll learn more about contracts a little bit later this is the research mat which you'll put below the actions shuffling these research cards which you can identify by their backs into a face down deck here then you'll deal three of these face up into a row but unlike contracts this is not based on the number of players you always just deal three in a nearby area also sort the five colors of dinosaurs and these barrier tokens i'm using some game trays that i have and if you'd like to get some of your own you'll find links in the description each person now takes a player mat in the color of their choosing along with the matching colored ranchers you'll have five in total four regular sized and a larger lead rancher put three of your regular sized ranchers into this area of your mat along with your lead rancher and then set your remaining rancher onto the fourth space of the round track now each player gets a double-sided ranch map randomly and decides which side they want to play on setting it in front of themselves each person now takes one plant meet and supply marker to set to this side of their resource track which represents having zero of each resource then give this first player a token to the last player to visit a natural history museum or you can just pick them randomly in clockwise order each other player now gets a bonus player 2 will start with one plant moving their marker here to show this and if you had a third player they'd start with one meet and a fourth player would get one supply we just have two players so this is all we have to worry about you'll also set the dye nearby and that's the setup in tiny epic dinosaurs you'll be collecting resources gathering dinosaurs and researching new technologies to try and make money on the dinosaur market but be careful because your dinos might escape or eat each other the game is played over six rounds and each round is broken into seven phases as shown on this map starting with collecting resources which everyone does at the same time here you collect one resource for each space showing one in your ranch that does not also contain a dinosaur at the beginning of the game you have no dinosaurs so you'll get five plants three meat and one supply time you gain resources you move the related marker up that number of spaces on the track here but you can never have more than 13 of each any you might gain beyond that you just ignore now it's time for the next phase of the round assigning ranchers starting with the first player and going clockwise around and around the table players will take turns assigning ranchers to an action space normally you'll only be assigning one rancher at a time but in some cases you might assign more as we'll see but either way players keep taking turns until they run out of ranchers to place skipping over players who run out of ranchers early so let's see how taking actions works this area of the board has all the various actions and an action is normally taken by either placing a regular or a lead rancher into an empty circular action space and then performing the related action there and we'll talk more about what all of these actions do in just a moment if a space already has an opponent's rancher in it you can still take the action as well by assigning one more rancher into that space than the player who has the most there so blue can also take this action by adding two of their regular ranchers here now your lead rancher is special because it's worth two regular ranchers so blue could have placed their lead rancher here instead if we had a third player then they'd have to add three ranchers to go here however you can never place ranchers into a space where you already have ranchers so blue could not try to go here and take this action again some spots will also have a cost represented by a dark circle border that shows what needs to be paid beside it for example to take this action you'd need to return any one dinosaur you have from anywhere back to the supply whereas here you need to pay one plant and one meat resource anytime you have to pay a resource move its related token down on this track now if you ever run out of a resource let's say for example later we had to pay one supply well we only have one supply so that means we'd be reduced to zero and to show that just move the token off the track when taking an action after placing your rancher you must immediately pay any costs it has and then perform some part of the action if you can't pay the cost or can't perform any part of the action then you can't take that action but with that understood let's see how each of the actions work all of the actions here are very straightforward you just gain the related number of resources that are shown these spaces let you gain dinosaurs in a couple of different ways the dino market here at the bottom is the easiest but it costs you one supply resource then you take a single dinosaur of either of these types the types are also shown on your mat here so if i took a green dino which is this one i've gained a velociraptor and we'll see the importance of the different types later you then place your new dinosaur into your holding area here you can instead get one of these free range dinosaurs in a similar way by going to one of their spaces they won't cost you any resources instead before putting your collected dinosaur in your holding area you have to roll the wrangler die if you get a net there's no additional effect if you get an egg you gain an additional dinosaur of the related type so in this case i'd get two red dinosaurs in either of those cases you put your collected dinosaurs into your holding area as usual but if you get claw marks you were injured during the process and now both the rancher and the dinosaur you collected are sent to your matching colored medical leave area here on the round tracker card you'll gain the dinosaur back along with the rancher a little later but now the space that you went into is open for another player to go into and this can be bad because often when you take a space you want it to be harder for the other players to be able to use it next are the actions in the barriers group these two here gain you a certain number of these barrier tokens for free you can collect one from the supply or you can spend a supply resource and gain two at once barriers like dinosaurs you collect go to your holding area this action here lets you take the first player token from whoever has it and if you already have it then you just keep it the symbol here means you also get to move as many barriers as you like from your ranch mat to your holding area at the start of the game you won't have any barriers in your ranch yet but later you will and barriers once placed can't just be moved around so this is a chance to take them back so they can be placed in new positions later which you'll often want to do this action also lets you take back any number of your barriers in the same way and it lets you move any one dinosaur in your holding area to any open space in your ranch in later phases it's going to be important where your dinosaurs are located but right now you can have them in any open space at all also anytime you're performing an action that lets you do two things like this last action did you can do them in any order or just do one of them both of these spaces will let you complete any single public contract from the ones face up in the row here at the start of the game you won't have any dinosaurs yet but let's pretend it's later in the game and our ranch looked something like this to complete a contract you return the dinosaurs shown on the public contract you've chosen back to the supply but these dinosaurs cannot come from your holding area so i could complete this contract by removing these three dinosaurs here but i couldn't complete this one because it requires a red dinosaur and although i have one it's still in my holding area now i should mention if you see this symbol it represents a purple dinosaur unlike other dinosaurs each of these ones have their own unique shape and are gained by collecting research cards as we'll see later and each of these will show the specific dinosaur that they allow you to collect any one of these purple dinosaurs will do no matter their shape when you need to fulfill a contract that requires a purple dinosaur but in addition to spending the dinosaur itself you must also discard the related research card putting it into its discard pile here on the research mat and we'll learn more about this map a little bit later so with that understood let's just show this fully if i did want to satisfy this contract i would return each of these dinosaurs to the supply then i would collect this contract and put it face up in front of myself the important thing to know is you do not replace the contract you took you'll leave this space empty after you fulfill a public contract if you have a private contract and enough extra dinosaurs in your ranch to fulfill it then you can fulfill it now in fact the only way to fulfill a private contract is after you've fulfilled a public one as part of the same action you can't just go to a contract action space and then fulfill a private contract these must always be fulfilled as part of fulfilling a public one and these once fulfilled will go face up in front of you as well okay the final action area is for research and both of these actions work the exact same way they just have different costs and after you pay the cost you then either take one of the face up research cards adding it to your play area or you draw three from the top of the deck pick one to keep and then put the other two at the end of the research row where they can be taken in a future action there are two types of research cards if they show this science symbol then they provide some kind of ongoing ability to you which is printed here if they show this genetic symbol then in addition to giving you an ongoing benefit you collect the pictured purple dinosaur and then put that in your holding area however the ability here is only active as long as that dinosaur is in your ranch while it's in your holding area you ignore the effect and those are all the different types of actions and once players have finished using all their ranchers it's time for the next phase retrieving ranchers here everyone returns all of their ranchers back to their player map along with any ranchers and dinosaurs in the medical leave area putting dinosaurs in your holding area and ranchers with your others now it's time for the arrange ranch phase here players simultaneously move every barrier and dinosaur in their holding area over to their ranch mat any barrier pieces you already have on your mat cannot be moved but ones brought from your holding area can be placed on any open row of dotted lines in order to create enclosures for your dinosaurs now your ranch already has some natural enclosures this space for example is already fully enclosed by these pictured walls and water and mountains and even this river here will create natural barriers to help keep your dinosaurs from escaping these three edges of this particular ranch are really the only openings through which dinosaurs could escape so if you wanted to create one big enclosure you could just place your barriers like this the only problem is that you cannot have dinosaurs of different colors sharing the same enclosure that means this wouldn't work instead you'll want to break your ranch into smaller enclosures to separate the different types of dinosaurs so let's pretend instead i had placed my barriers like this unlike barriers all of your dinosaurs even ones already in your ranch can be rearranged at this time just remember you can never have more than one dinosaur per space so here we have a better example of a ranch that works we've got this red dinosaur isolated within its own enclosure and these blue dinosaurs isolated within their own enclosure and we created another open enclosure here for other dinosaurs later also keep in mind each resource that you cover up with a dinosaur is one less that you'll get to collect at the start of the next round now if you had any purple dinosaurs these are special they don't need to go into an enclosure so i could put this here and not have to worry about it escaping however purple dinosaurs cannot share enclosures with other types of dinosaurs so this would not be allowed any non-purple dinosaur that you do not put into an enclosure will escape and is returned to the supply and there are other penalties for escaping dinosaurs but we'll discuss those a little bit later with your ranches arranged it's now time to move to the next phase feeding dinosaurs players perform this step at the same time spending resources based on the food each of the dinosaurs in their ranch eats which is shown on your player mat here and on your research cards if you have any purple dinosaurs in this case i have two blue ones and these each eat two plants that's a total of four so i'll reduce my plant resource from five down to one my red dinosaur here eats two meat and then the purple dinosaur shows that it's an omnivore this means i can choose to either feed it a meat or plant resource you can feed your dinosaurs in any order but it's recommended that you lay each of them down as you do to keep track of which ones still need to be fed now if you run out of food for all of your dinosaurs unfed ones escape and are returned to the supply again there's a further penalty for escaping dinosaurs but it's not quite time to talk about that yet instead let's move on to the next phase breeding dinosaurs each pair of same colored dinosaurs in an enclosure will breed which means you gain a single dinosaur of their color that you must add directly to your ranch those new dinosaurs must go into an enclosure but they don't have to go into the same enclosure as the one that breeded them now this enclosure also has another pair so it breeds again but i should mention that these new dinosaurs won't cause any breeding themselves this round we also have a pair of red dinosaurs here so they'll breed but the purple dinosaurs won't purple dinosaurs are the exception they never breed regardless of their arrangement because although they share the same color they are considered to be all different species of dinosaurs if you have no space in your enclosures for any of your newborn dinosaurs they escape and are returned to the supply and again there is an additional penalty for dinosaurs that escape so let's finally talk about that now let's pretend we just finished the arrange ranch phase and now we have these two dinosaurs that are going to escape no matter what causes a dinosaur to escape after returning it to the supply you then suffer a penalty based on its type if it's an herbivore that is one that eats plants then you must also return any one of your barriers to the supply you can think of this as if the dinosaur has knocked down one of your barriers before it goes and if this creates an opening in an enclosure the other dinosaurs there don't escape you do get to keep them but they won't breed during the breeding phase if a carnivore escapes that is a dinosaur that eats meat it won't cost you a barrier instead you must pick one other dinosaur anywhere in your ranch to discard basically the escaping dinosaur just ate the other dinosaur on the way out now let me just reset that and explain a special situation keep in mind that you can resolve the escaping dinosaurs in any order so if i had resolved the carnivore first when it escaped i could have had it eat this dinosaur instead i won't have to suffer that herbivore's escape penalty anymore it didn't escape it got eaten instead the other really important thing to understand is that you can only suffer both the herbivore and carnivore penalties once each per round you might have dinosaurs escape after arranging your ranch and after feeding and after breeding but no matter how many dinos escape during all of those phases although you will have to remove each escaping dinosaur from your ranch you only suffer the related herbivore and or carnivore penalties once per round in other words if during a round i lost four carnivores i'd still only suffer the carnivore penalty once if it's an omnivore that's escaping that is a dinosaur that eats either meat or plants you immediately lose access to its special ability and then you pick whether it will suffer the herbivore or carnivore penalty then as usual you remove that dinosaur and return it to the supply and you discard the related research card as you can see throughout the game you'll be gaining and losing dinosaurs but if a type of dinosaur ever runs out because they're all in play it means that no more of that dinosaur can be taken again until some are returned now there is one special case where you have to pay a little extra attention if it's during the breeding phase and you know for example collectively the players are going to need three new blue dinosaurs but there's only two in the supply then in a case like that players would collect the dinos they are owed one at a time starting with the first player and then going clockwise around and around the table until the supply is empty okay with that understood it's now time to move on to the final phase refreshing for the next round first draw public contracts from the deck into the contract row until there are contracts equal to the number of players plus one then you discard all of the research cards in this row to the discard pile and then draw three new ones that you'll place face up if this deck ever runs out just reshuffle the discard pile into a new one and keep drawing as necessary then finally you advance the round marker one space forward and begin a new round once you advance to round four all the players take their ranchers from here and add them to the ranchers area of their mat to use during that and all future rounds this also instructs each player to gain one more of these private contracts which they'll add to their hand once you've finished the sixth round the game is over and it's time for players to calculate their final scores by flipping this mat over where it will remind you of all the ways to score points and each person can use one of their ranchers to track those points victory points are shown inside of a star so first gain the ones showing on each of your completed public and private contracts each research card you still have will also gain you their victory points as shown in their bottom corner and each dinosaur in your ranch will give you a certain number of points based on their type as shown here on your mat dinosaurs in your holding area however will score you no points the player who now has the most total points wins and in the case of a tie the tie is broken in favor of the player earliest in the turn order based on who currently has the first player token the game also has rules for solo play which you'll find at the back of the rule book and those i'll leave for you to discover on your own but otherwise that's how you play tiny epic dinosaurs if you have any questions about anything you saw here feel free to put them in the comments below and i'll gladly answer them as soon as i get a chance you'll also find forums for discussion pictures other videos and lots more over on the game's page at board game geek and i'll put a link to that in the description below and if you found this video helpful please consider giving it a like subscribing and clicking that little bell icon so you get notification anytime we post a new video but until next time thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 31,227

Rating: 4.9455166 out of 5

Keywords: Watch It Played, Rules, Card Games, Learn How To Play, Tabletop, How To Play, Miniatures, Tiny Epic Dinosaurs, Instructions, Board Game, Scott Almes, Board Games, Play Throughs, Learn, Game Rules, Instructional, Gamelyn Games, Tutorials, Tutorial

Id: JgVuVgzYQZ8

Length: 22min 52sec (1372 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020