Fossil Dig — Prototype

Dig Site

Your Hand

Your Tools

Curator's Crate

Your Museum

Experiment bot-vs-bot batches under the Config-tab rules · seats rotate every game

Seat 1

Seat 2

Seat 3

Seat 4

Seat 5

Games

Seed

Presets

Rule Knobsevery contested number from the design discussion — applies to new games and Lab batches

Variations to Playtestthe discussion list for game night — most are Config knobs or Lab experiments

Placement pays actions, not digs — implemented: switch "Placement reward type" above to free actions. Placing costs 1 action, so +3 actions nets +2 extra — and unlike 3 digs it can't push you over your hand limit. Bot A/B (600 games each): identical pace, identical placement usage, and the placement-hungry Opportunist gained ~2 points of win rate — a mild buff worth a live test.
Curator's Crate on watch — flagged. In 400 bot games the crate never came into play at all: it only fills when someone voluntarily evicts museum cards, and the bots never do. Its fate rests entirely on human eviction play. If your table is claiming from it in under ~5% of turns, simplify the rule: museum evictions just scatter face-up onto the dig site like normal discards, and "draw from the discards" stays Scavenger's job (or add more discard-hunting Action cards). The Lab's "Crate/g" column tracks claims per archetype.
Plaster as a one-shot Action card — current rule: Plaster is a Tool; casting later costs 1 action, completes an exhibit missing exactly one part, and the two bones stack beneath the cast (1 space, −2). Alternative: playing Plaster is the cast, one action total. Faster, but loses the hold-the-plaster-hunt-the-bones mini-game.
Help the patient builders — bot sims say rushing small sets beats hunting 4–5-card skeletons roughly 2:1. Levers to try live: consolation points for a set missing one part (say, half value), a FULL final round for everyone once a museum fills, or a per-museum cap on 1-point curios.
Teeth for secrecy — first tooth now in effect: closed exhibits score NOTHING unless opened by game end, so a secret collector must reveal on their own last turn at the latest — rivals still holding final turns get to see the hidden sets. Further ideas if secrecy still feels free: an Action card that peeks at (or raids) a closed exhibit, or a small bonus for revealing a completed set all at once.

Paleo Notes — Roster Realismcould this cast really share one dig? and who could — a period-accurate candidate list

The quick check you asked for: no, mostly not. Of the seven creatures in the game, only three actually lived side by side — the Hell Creek trio (T-Rex, Triceratops, Ankylosaurus): latest Cretaceous, ~68–66 million years ago, western North America, right up to the asteroid. The rest span roughly 90 million years and two-to-three continents — the classic toy-box mix. (Fun bit: that's also true of most dinosaur toy sets and half the movies.)

In the game now	Period	~Age (Ma)	Where	Really with T-Rex?
🦖 Tyrannosaurus	Late Cretaceous	68–66	W. North America	✓ the anchor
🦖 Triceratops	Late Cretaceous	68–66	W. North America	✓ yes
🛡️ Ankylosaurus	Late Cretaceous	68–66	W. North America	✓ yes
🪶 Velociraptor	Late Cretaceous	75–71	Mongolia	✗ wrong continent, a bit earlier
🦕 Brachiosaurus	Late Jurassic	154–150	W. North America	✗ ~85 My too early
◆ Stegosaurus	Late Jurassic	155–148	W. North America	✗ ~85 My too early
🦅 Pteranodon	Late Cretaceous	~86–81	the inland sea	✗ ~18 My early, marine, a pterosaur not a dino
🐚 Ammonite (curio)	Mesozoic seas	to 66	oceans worldwide	✓ died out with them at the K-Pg
🪲 Trilobite (curio)	Paleozoic	gone by 252	ancient oceans	✗✗ extinct 186 My before the first T-Rex

Recommended set — the Hell Creek "last day" fauna (~68–66 Ma, Montana & the Dakotas). Thematically perfect for your premise: this exact community was wiped out together by the K-Pg catastrophe — a real "mixed heap" of everything that died at once. It keeps 3 of your current species and only asks you to swap the four odd-period ones.

Dinosaur candidates (all genuinely Hell Creek / latest Maastrichtian)

Tyrannosaurus rex — apex predator, the 5-card marquee set. [keep]
Triceratops — three-horned face, 3-card. [keep]
Ankylosaurus — armored club-tail, 4-card. [keep]
Edmontosaurus — big duck-billed hadrosaur, wildly abundant — a natural 5-card herbivore. [replaces Brachiosaurus]
Dakotaraptor — a real ~5.5 m feathered dromaeosaur from Hell Creek — the honest North-American "raptor," 3-card. [replaces Velociraptor]
Pachycephalosaurus — domed bonehead, 3-card. [replaces Stegosaurus]
Quetzalcoatlus — giraffe-tall azhdarchid pterosaur, the flyer, 2-card. [replaces Pteranodon]
Anzu ("chicken from hell") — feathered oviraptorosaur; Ornithomimus — ostrich-mimic; Thescelosaurus — a small survivor. Good small sets / 1-point curios.

Non-dinosaur items that genuinely fit the same beds

🌿 Fossil fern / leaf — Hell Creek is full of plants; the "fern spike" right after the impact is famous.
🦟 Insect in amber — Cretaceous amber really does hold insects (a wink at the Jurassic Park mosquito; true mosquitoes go back ~90+ My).
🐚 Ammonite — keep it; marine, but it died out at the same K-Pg boundary. 🐢 turtle shell, 🦈 gar scale, or a tiny 🦦 mammal jaw (Didelphodon) also fit.
🥚 fossil egg nest and 🦷 giant tooth stay fine — both generic.

Alternative set — all-Jurassic (Morrison Formation, ~155–148 Ma)

If you'd rather build around the big sauropods: Brachiosaurus + Stegosaurus [keep], plus Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, Allosaurus (the apex predator here), Ceratosaurus, Camarasaurus, and small ones like Ornitholestes. Curios: fern, petrified wood, an Archaeopteryx feather, ammonite. The catch — no T-Rex or Triceratops in this world.

Either way, retire the Trilobite — it vanished ~186 million years before any dinosaur, so it can't share a dig. Swap it for the ammonite (already in) or a Cretaceous seashell. And of course… it's a game about paleontologists digging a jumbled flood-heap, so a little license is totally fair — this is just here for when you want the accurate version.

Card Design Mockupstwo print directions, same card — for game-night discussion