La Isla

La Isla - Explore the Tropical Island of Mystery. Discover animal species long thought extinct - like the Dodo or Golden Toad. An amazingly clever, tactical game full of unpredictable challenges.

Are you ready to explore a previously uncharted island? Excellent! You and your fellow players, each command a team of five scientists. Your goal is to capture animal species so you can study them ? and, of course, score points.

La Isla's game board consists of a set of oddly-shaped tiles that are placed in a circular arrangement around a central polygon tile. Thirty-five animal tokens (seven each of five different types) are placed at random on the spaces numbered 2, 3 and 4 on the game board; these numbers equal the number of camps that surround these spaces.

On your turn, draw 3 cards from the face down draw piles of your choice and add them to your hand. Each card has 3 possible uses: perform an action, receive a resource or advance a marker. Place the three cards face down below the A, B and D spaces on your cardholder to identify which card you'll use to perform a special fuction (A), which you'll use to acquire a resource (B), and which to advance a marker (D).

All players reveal their A cards at the same time, then place them in one of the three slots at the top of their cardholder, leaving only the top half visible; the image depicted on the top of this card shows the special power that the owner of this card has available - until it is covered by another card. Players now reveal and discard their B-slot card simultaneously, collecting the goods depicted in its lower-left corner.

Each player in turn then places one of his scientists on a camp, first paying two resources of the type matching that camp. (If all of your scientists are on the board, you may move one of them.) If you now have a scientist on all of the tiles surrounding a jungle region, take that animal tile and score the victory points for it as noted on the board (4, 3 or 2 points).

Finally, players simultaneously reveal and discard their D-slot cards, advancing the value marker of the corresponding animal. You (and only you!) immediately score one point for each animal you have of that type. If you don't have an animal of that type you don't get any points. Each animal has a points threshold so that if you move an animal up, say, four times, each animal of this type is worth an extra point at the end of the game. The scale goes up to five, so that every animal can be worth up to five points at game end.?

When the sum of the five animal marker positions reaches or exceeds a certain number (7 in a 2-player game, 9 for 3 players, or 11 in a 4-player game), the game ends. Players tally their final scores to see who wins:

• Score 10 points for each complete set of 5 different animals.
• For each animal you possess, score points equal to its marker's position.
• Score 1 vp for every 2 remaining resources.