Toskasi (2018)

Overview

Toskasi is a simple and dynamic family game portraying the biodiversity of the coastal regions of Chile. Through dice rolls you’ll move through four different ecosystems. Each one of the species in the game, represented by Biodiversity Cards, will play a role in the ecosystem, forming trophic hierarchies (food chains). The players will get to experience different ecosystems in a fun way while never fully controlling nature itself, given that each organism acts in unexpected and surprising ways.

– Description provided by the publisher.

In Toskasi players are racing to be the first to get to 50 points on the point track. They’ll win points by acquiring and combining different cards depicting organisms (Biodiversity Cards), either through building food chains according to their relationships within the different ecosystems or by possessing majorities on the different kinds of cards acquired.

The player board is divided into four quadrants, each one depicting an ecosystem. These quadrants are traversed by tracks with different symbols on them.

On their turn, each player will roll a die and move their Explorer into the track across one of the four ecosystems, advancing as many spaces as indicated by the roll. If later on any other player lands on the same space, they will share it.

Upon landing on a space, the player will immediately take a card depending on the symbol depicted on that space: Biodiversity Cards, depicting an organism and an ability; ‘Unknowns’ event cards, which might affect other player’s cards and are resolved immediately; and ‘Wisdom of Nature’ special power cards. The event cards will also toggle the Day-Night Cycle, which will affect the abilities on the Biodiversity Cards.

All Biodiversity Cards acquired are laid face up on the table, building rows. As soon as a row has been built up as a complete food chain, it must be scored. All the cards which were used to build it are then discarded into a discard pile.

After all actions for that player have been resolved, gameplay goes around the table in clockwise order and the first player to get to 50 points is the winner.