Keystone North America Standard Edition Game

Explore the ecosystems of North America including wildlife and plant species as well as learning about where they live, grow and thrive.  This game is both educational and a nice introduction to strategic card drafting and placement. It can be shared as a family experience or solo for a deeper learning experience.

There are two ways to play Keystone North America. In competitive mode, 2-4 players work to earn points for building the best ecosystems.  There is also a rich narrative adventure using an illustrated field journal book for either a cooperative or a solo campaign.  This mode is a deeper experience where players solve puzzles, learn more about animals and explore different ecosystems in North America.

In Competitive Mode: Players enhance their knowledge of both animals and plants that are native to the North American continent as they place beautifully illustrated cards on their 4x4 grid player boards. 

Game Setup:  Each player receives a player board for placing species cards and starting synergy tokens based on turn order. Synergy tokens are used to purchase species cards.

Six species cards are placed face up to create a field display and the deck is placed to its left. Five skill tokens are randomly chosen and placed above the card display. These are used as one of two possible turn actions in the game and provide opportunities to place research tokens on player grids, move species card positions on player grids, draw additional cards, or gain synergy tokens. Sort and place wild habitat cards in a display. Deal a secret objective card to each player.  Place the time track board marker on a designated space based on player count.  This board serves as a game-end tracker.

Overview:  Each turn; choose one of the following actions:

1. Introduce a card to your player board: Take a species card from the field display and pay its required cost in synergy tokens. Place the card on your player board based on its most advantageous position for scoring.  Slide display cards to the right and refill cards to bring the total back to six.
2. Use a skill action: Resolve one of the skill tokens on its active side and flip it over to its exhausted side. Alternatively, resolve the effects of all tokens that are on their exhausted side and advance the time/round marker down one level. 

The game ends when either one player has filled their player board grid, or the time tracker marker is at 0.  Once the round is complete, end game scoring begins.

End game points are earned in several ways during the game and the player with the most points wins!

1. Adjacent, sequential cards that are in the same habitat: The cards are numbered 1-5, and they create ecosystems when a player places two to five cards that share the same habitat sequentially in a column or row of their board. The largest ecosystem in each column and row in the player board grid is scored.
2. Keystones and Research Tokens: Some cards have Keystone icons on them. They are used as a multiplier for the number of cards scored in each ecosystem. One point for each research token on any scored ecosystem card is added.
3. Secret Objectives: At the beginning of the game, each player receives one of these cards with four different goals. Players earn points based on how many objectives they meet.

Solo Mode or solo co-op variant: Set up for the solo mode is the same as the multi-player competition but there are more instructions for setup and rules provided in the field journal included with this game. The co-op variant is designed for players who want to enjoy the extra challenges and learning experiences provided with the solo mode but with a partner!