Paleo

Paleo is fully co-operative. Every player runs their own small group of people from their own deck of cards, but you all win together or lose together. Each round has a day phase, where everyone plays cards simultaneously, and a night phase, where you feed your people and pay for your missions.

The tribe is racing to complete a cave painting — five victory tokens — before it accumulates five skulls.

Setup

Paleo is built from a base deck plus module cards that change the scenario. Pick a scenario first and collect its modules; the rules supplement tells you which. The setup below uses scenario 1, with modules A and B.

1. Place the three boards: Base Camp, Wilderness and Night.
2. Put the resources to one side, and 5 food into the base camp.
3. Put out the workbench with 5 each of the three basic tools — torches, stone axes and spears. The remaining tool tokens go in front of it.
4. Put the graveyard next to the workbench.
5. Shuffle the people, dreams and ideas decks separately and place them on the Base Camp board.
6. Put the skull and victory tokens next to the Night board.
7. Shuffle the base deck together with your chosen scenario’s module cards, then deal the entire deck out to all players. Some players will end up with more cards than others — that is fine and expected. You are all one tribe.
8. Each player draws 2 people cards, placing them face up in front of them along with the starting tools shown on those cards.

For scenario 1 specifically: place mission cards A and B face up at the bottom of the Night board, and put secret cards 1 and 2 plus the tent idea card into the workbench with the tool tokens.

How a Round Works

Every round is a day phase followed by a night phase, repeated until you win or lose.

The day phase

All players act simultaneously:

1. Look at the backs of the top three cards of your own deck.
2. Choose one. Put the other two back on top of your deck.
3. Everyone reveals their chosen card at the same time.

Talk to each other before you choose — the tribe should discuss what it needs — but the final choice on your own card is yours.

The card backs tell you roughly what you are getting into:

Card back	Usually contains
Forest	Wood and food
River	Food and pelts
Mountain	Stone and pelts
Red	Hazards
People, dreams, ideas	Always something helpful

After revealing, each player picks one option on their card to resolve. The tribe decides what order to resolve everyone’s cards in, which matters more than it sounds — resolving in the right order lets one player’s rewards pay for another’s costs.

Keep going until every card has been played and your group falls asleep. You may also go to sleep early by discarding the rest of your deck face up onto the Wilderness board — without looking at it.

Once everyone is asleep, night begins.

The night phase

1. Feed everyone. Each player must feed every person in their group from the base camp supply. The supply is shared, so this is a group problem, not an individual one. For every person you cannot feed, add a skull to the Night board.
2. Resolve the mission cards. Choose one of the actions under the moon symbol on each mission. A mission might demand three meat and a pelt, or a tent — and if you cannot pay, you add a skull instead.
3. Start a new day. Shuffle together all the face-up and face-down cards on the Wilderness board and deal them out to all players again.

This is why gathering during the day matters: you need enough to both feed your people and satisfy the missions.

Cards and Symbols

Action cards

An action card usually lists several options, and you resolve exactly one of them. You may also help another player instead, or simply ignore the card. Either way, the card is discarded face up onto the Wilderness board afterwards.

Costs are paid with resources, tools or cards from the top of your deck. If you discard a red-backed card to pay a cost, your group suffers a wound for each one.

Hazard cards

Hazard cards always carry at least one negative action. Some let you escape by paying a cost. You cannot ignore a hazard — if you cannot or will not pay the escape cost, you must take the negative action.

Most red-backed cards are hazards, but hazards can turn up elsewhere too.

People cards

Each person shows a title, a set number used in setup, a one-time tool they bring with them, abilities that help resolve actions, and health.

When a person is wounded, cover an empty heart. When there are no hearts left, cover the skull space instead: that person dies, goes to the graveyard, and adds a skull to the Night board.

If every person in your group dies, immediately draw a new person card and add them, with their starting tools, as your new group.

Helping another player

Where a card shows the help symbol, you can help someone else resolve their action instead of resolving your own. Helping lets you:

• apply your people’s abilities toward their requirements,
• suffer the damage on their behalf,
• and split the rewards — even if they never needed help and just wanted to hand you the reward.

Two limits: you cannot discard from your deck to help someone else, and while you can spend your own tool tokens to help, you cannot trade tools between players. Several players may help the same card at once.

If the help symbol appears inside a grey action box, it is not an option — it is a requirement. Someone must take a help action for that card to be resolved at all. Once resolved, that card stays in play rather than being discarded. And if the card sits in a player’s own group, that player must be involved in resolving it.

Symbols worth knowing

Symbol	Meaning
Ability icons	A requirement — you need that many matching symbols across your group.
Payment arrow	You must pay resources, tools or cards. A tool spent as payment cannot also use its effect.
Remove card	The card goes to the graveyard and will not be reshuffled for the next day. It is gone.
Dice	Roll for a random requirement. Decide whether you want help before you roll.
Crafting	Craft up to that many tools from the workbench, paying each tool’s cost.

If you roll the dice and fail, and the card carries a negative action, you must resolve that negative action. Otherwise you may ignore the card as normal.

Every game starts with three basic tools — torch, stone axe and spear — and idea cards unlock more as you go.

Rewards

Rewards are received immediately on resolving an action. Resources go to the base camp for everyone to use, not to you personally. Tool tokens can be discarded to use their ability, and some grant a constant ability instead. Other rewards remove wounds or skulls, or grant victory tokens.

Secret cards are a special case: find the numbered secret on the Night board, read it aloud to everyone, resolve it if you can, then discard it face up to the Wilderness unless it says otherwise. If you helped reveal a secret, you may help resolve it too.

How to Win

The tribe wins the moment it has collected five victory tokens, completing the cave painting on the Night board.

The tribe loses the moment a fifth skull lands on the Night board. That ends the game immediately.

One edge case worth knowing: if you gain the fifth victory token and the fifth skull in the same action, you win.

Common Mistakes

• Gathering food without counting mouths. You must feed every person and pay the missions in the same night phase. Work backwards from that.
• Forgetting resources are shared. Anything you gather goes to the base camp for the whole tribe, so the player who gathers is not necessarily the player who spends.
• Paying costs with red-backed cards. Every red card you discard as payment wounds your group. Sometimes it is worth it — know that you are choosing it.
• Trying to ignore a hazard. You can ignore an ordinary action card. You can never ignore a hazard.
• Deciding on help after rolling. For dice actions, help must be agreed before the roll.
• Resolving cards in the order they were revealed. The tribe chooses the order — use it to let one player’s rewards fund another’s costs.
• Trading tools. You can spend your own tools to help someone, but tools never change hands.