The full Critters rulebook

Complete Work Orders to earn Reward cards. The first player with 5 Reward cards wins.

Getting there is a loop you'll repeat every turn: grow crops, buy better cards, pack Crates into your Work Orders. Each Reward also gives your Farm a permanent bonus, so every one you earn makes the next one easier.

Critters is a deck-building game with a focus on resource management.

Everyone begins with the same small Starter deck. Over the game you'll buy cards from the Market straight into your deck, and every loop through your deck gets a little more efficient than the last.

You'll never run out of cards. When your draw pile is empty, your discard pile is shuffled into a fresh one. Pay attention to what your deck contains, because your deck is your farm.

There are 4 decks in a game of Critters: Farm, Favour, Work Order and Reward, each with its own coloured, labelled card back.

Remove all Starter cards from the Farm deck, then shuffle each of the 4 decks separately and place them in the centre of your playing area.

There are 6 kinds of counters in Critters:

• Apple, Berry and Carrot counters are the game's resources: your Crops. The crops in front of you are your Stash.
• Sleepy counters mark the Energy a Critter has spent.
• Sunlight counters mark how far a planted Seed has grown.
• Crate counters mark packing progress on your Work Orders.

Game Counters.

Players take turns one at a time, passing clockwise. Decide who goes first however you like. With 2 players, we recommend rock-paper-scissors.

Going later is a small disadvantage, so later players start with crops in their Stash (rolled on the crop dice):

• 2nd player: 2 random crops
• 3rd player: 3 random crops
• 4th player: 4 random crops

The whole setup, in order:

1. Pull the Starter cards out of the Farm deck and deal each player their 9-card starter deck.
2. Shuffle the 4 Market decks and stack them in a column.
3. Deal 4 face-up cards beside each deck. This is the Market.
4. Put the counters and 3 crop dice within everyone's reach.
5. Shuffle your starter deck and draw a hand of 3.
6. Pick a first player; later players roll their compensation crops.

That's it. First player begins.

Farm cards are the cards you buy into your own deck. There are 3 sub-types: Critters, Items and Seeds.

Every Farm card has a Price-tag: the crops you must spend from your Stash to Buy it, and the crops you'd get back if you ever Sell it.

A bought Farm card goes to your Discard pile. After your next deck Reset, it's part of your rotation.

Every Favour costs "Any 2 crops": spend any combination of 2 crops from your Stash to Buy one from the Market.

A Favour's effect happens immediately when bought. It then goes to the Favour discard pile (next to the Favour deck in the Market): it never enters your deck.

The Favour deck holds a wide variety of effects; some Favours appear twice, others only once.

Examples of a few Favour cards.

When you Buy a Work Order, place it face-up in your Play Area. You may have up to 3 at a time.

Work Orders are how you win: each completed order earns a Reward card, and 5 Rewards ends the game.

To complete one, pack the required number of Crates into it, usually over several turns. The card shows which crops each Crate requires, and how many Crates finish the job.

Work Order breakdown.

Each completed Work Order lets you choose one of the 4 face-up Reward cards in the Market.

A Reward is worth 1 Victory Point and grants a permanent bonus to your Farm for the rest of the game.

Usually nothing happens here, but some Reward effects trigger at the start of your turn. Resolve those before doing anything else.

Take any of the following actions, in any order, as many times as you can afford. End your turn whenever you like.

End-of-turn steps happen in this order:

Remove the card from your deck entirely, with no payout: place it in the Farm discard pile in the Market.

• If the card has a Recycle effect, it triggers after the card is removed.
• Then any "After you Trash..." effects trigger.

Roll the Yellow Die, then place a crop counter matching the rolled crop onto every Farm card in the Market.

Each counter on a Market card reduces its price by 1 of that crop. A card can never be discounted below a cost of 0 in any crop:

• Base cost 1 Apple, 2 Carrots, 0 Berries…
• …allows at most 1 Apple discount and 2 Carrot discounts, and never a Berry discount.

Discounts example.

Shuffle your Discard pile face-down into a new Draw pile. This happens automatically whenever you must draw from an empty pile, and some effects instruct it directly.

Some Reward effects trigger whenever your deck is Reset.

A card section marked with a $ icon is its Exchange effect. It triggers when the card is Bought or Sold:

• On Buy: the effect resolves before the card reaches your discard pile.
• On Sell: the effect resolves before the card leaves your deck.

A card section marked with a recycle icon is its Recycle effect. It triggers when the card is Discarded during your turn, or Trashed:

• On Discard: the effect resolves before the card reaches your discard pile.
• On Trash: the effect resolves before the card leaves your deck.

The most common beginner mistake is buying Work Orders too early. Spend your first turns buying Farm cards that grow crops. A farm that produces 6 crops a turn completes orders twice as fast as one producing 3. Start packing once your engine hums.

Every card you add dilutes every card you already have. Sell or Trash your Starter cards as better ones arrive. A small deck of strong cards loops faster and draws its best cards more often.

The Market is shared. If a card is perfect for a Rival's strategy, buying it first, or Refreshing it away, can hurt them more than it helps you. And keep an eye on Rival Reward counts: at 4, every unfinished Work Order of yours is on the clock.

Five Rewards takes a while. Seeds that need three turns to grow, Tools that Skewer a big next turn, Reward bonuses that compound. The patient plays usually beat the flashy ones. Plan a turn ahead, and spend your crops like a farmer, not a gambler.