Rules for Bugspiel

The Rules for Bugspiel

OBJECT OF THE GAME

Score the most points by playing bugs and bonus cards.
The general flow of the game is that you purchase bug cards and bonus cards from the market, paying with victory points.
New cards start at high cost, and become cheaper over time if they are not purchased.
The value to play a card is some number of victory points.
The value to play a bonus card depends on matching the group and/or habitat of cards in the same uninterrupted line.

Components Bug Cards, each card represents a species of invertebrate. Bonus cards are associated with groups of species, diet, or flying ability. Hexagonal "Terrain" Tiles of 4 types: Aquatic, Soil, Grassland or Forest Victory Points are the only currency in the game. Buying cards costs victory points, and playing cards gain victory points. The market holds 8 bug and 8 bonus cards at increasing prices.

Set Up:

A few random categories of bugs are selected, enough to make a bug deck. All the bug cards from those categories are shuffled together to create the bug deck.
The bonus deck is created using proportional numbers of bonuses for each category of bug.
Each player gets 1 random low value bug and 1 random bonus card.
Board tiles are selected in a proportion appropriate for the habitats of the bugs in the deck, and arranged randomly to form a board.
The bug market and goal market are filled with random bugs, except that bugs that are too immediately profitable are shuffled back
into the deck - there are no "no brainer" cards in the initial offering. Note that in some randomly created decks, the lowest
value bug might be 2 or 3 points rather than 1 point.

Turns:
The game is played in a number of turns, each turn you can do one of the following things:

Purchase A Bug. Select one of the bugs from the market and add it to your hand, subject to a hand limit of 8 bugs
After a bug has been purchased, the cheapest card below the one purchased is discarded, then new cards are added to fill the market.
Purchase A Bonus. Select one of the bonus cards from the market and add it to your hand, subject to a hand limit of 8 bonus cards.
After a bonus has been purchased, the cheapest card below the one purchased is discarded, the remaining cards are slid down (becoming cheaper),
and new cards are added to fill the market.
Play a bug. Play a bug from your hand on a suitable space of the board.

Bugs have to be played in a suitable habitat - Water, Forest, Grassland or Soil. The bug card backgrounds are color coded.
Some bugs can live in multiple habitat types. There are three identical spaces to place a bug on each tile.
Non-predator bugs have to be played in a vacant space. Predator bugs have to be played in a space occupied
by a herbivore, detritivore, or non-eating bug. Predators and Parasites are immune to predation.

When you play a or move a bug, you can also re-orient the tile, breaking up old lines and creating new lines.

Move a bug. Move a bug that can fly from one space to another on the board, subject to the placement rules.
Moved bugs don't score again, but flying predators must eat. Vacated spaces can later be re-occupied.

Play a bonus. Play a bonus card from your hand on one of your bugs on the board. Bonus cards must score
for the bug they are placed on, and also score for all bugs in an unbroken line of occupied cells that are oriented
in the same direction. Wild card bugs score only if some non-wild bug is scoring.
Very important! all matching bugs for all players in the line score for their players.

Bonus Scoring Example

Green scores for 2 bees plus their wild card. The green bark louse (at the lower-right) doesn't score because it is oriented differently. Since green has no matches for barklice, the green wildcard is not scored a second time.

Yellow wildcard does not score, because there are no other yellow bugs that score.

Blue bark louse scores because it matches the bonus.

Pass. Do nothing and let the next player play. You will be able to play again next turn, except if all players pass sequentially the game ends with the current score.

End of Game:
The game ends when everyone passes sequentially, or when there are vacant slots in the bug or bonus market,
or when a the winning score is reached.

helps

Intended Strategy Considerations

There are 4 types of counter-play against your opponents
- orient the line directions to prevent formation of long lines
- place your own bugs in the same line, so you score when they score.
- use predator bugs to eliminate the opposition. Predators that can fly are especially dangerous.
- buy the bugs and/or bonus cards that they would want to play
When to cash in a bonus is matter of judgment. The value might increase or decrease later.
When to buy a bug or bonus as its price declines is also a matter of judgment.

Scientific Accuracy : the deck
The strict accuracy of the information implied by the card is desired, but not guaranteed. Starting with the
scientific name (Genus + species), ChatGPT, Google search, and other AI assistants were used to find the
common names, place the species in the proper place in the scientific taxonomy, generate the illustrations,
the descriptions, the acceptable habitats and so on. All of this information was curated and corrected
with ordinary scientific knowledge and human intelligence. I was unable to locate an entomologist who
wanted to spend hundreds of hours on a free project. There are a lot of gray areas, but if you spot
something that's obviously incorrect, please send suggestions to bugspiel@boardspace.net.

Design Notes:

As noted elsewhere, this game is inspired by Wingspan; but I wanted to make a game with a lot
more player interaction. Consequently, there are no secret goals, no hidden information, and
plenty of opportunity to play to thwart your opponents as well as build your own engine.

Also, because this is intended to be a digital-only game, there are features of the game that
would be hard to replicate in a physical version. For example, the cards have 4 different
styles of presentation, depending on where they are displayed and how large they are. For
another, the randomization of the setup is much more detailed than could reasonably be
done for a physical game. For another, the scoring of bonus cards would be tedious
and error prone if it were not completely automatic.

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