Games / Diggers

Playable now

Diggers

Outdig the camp next door.
Poach the bones you need. A shedding lane battler for 2–4 rival paleontologists, played from a hand you can never sort. Race to empty it, but only the dig sites you hold when someone does will score.

Players: 2–4
Genre: Shedding · Lane Battler
For fans of: Scout · Schotten Totten
Length: 15–20 minutes · 3 field seasons
Components: 45 fossil cards, 4 field guides, 4 punchboard dig-site boards
Box: Tuck box

Learn to play Play in your browser Sell sheet (PDF) Rules (PDF)

Diggers mockup on sandstone at a dig site: the tuck box, a field book, a whole Stegosaurus laid out as nine cards, the Como Bluff dig-site strip and a trowel. — Rendered mockups

Overview

Dig it up before they do

It's 1877 and the bone rush is on. Every pair of neighboring camps shares a dig site, a lane the two of you fight over, and it belongs to whoever laid the best find there last. You pick up your cards in the order they're dealt and never rearrange them, so the only finds you can play are the ones already sitting side by side. When the bone you need is on a rival's find, you take it. When anyone's hand runs out, the season ends and every site you hold scores.

Beat the find

A run

A set beats it

A suited run beats that

More cards always wins. Same count? A suited run, every bone from one skeleton, beats a set, and a set beats a run. Then the higher total.

Or poach

their side

your side

Take an end bone off a rival's find and slide it anywhere into your hand, then send them a card back. They keep it, or it's out for the season. A good gift can be poison.

Go out

Play your last card and the season ends on the spot. Every site you hold scores: 1 prestige in the first season, 2 in the second and 4 in the last.

Components

Five skeletons, nine bones each

Every card is a bone from one of five animals, each set in its own rock with its own symbol. Lay a species' nine cards out 1 2 3 / 4 5 6 / 7 8 9 and the whole skeleton comes out of the slab. Each game uses one more species than there are players.

The Tyrannosaurus 1 card: red sandstone with the skull, a 1 and a red fang symbol in each corner. — Tyrannosaurusred sandstone · the skull

The Triceratops 1 card: blue slate with the beak and horns, a 1 and a blue horned-frill symbol in each corner. — Triceratopsblue slate · the beak and horns

The Stegosaurus 3 card: green mudstone with the four tail spikes, a 3 and a green plates symbol in each corner. — Stegosaurusgreen mudstone · the tail spikes

The Brontosaurus 2 card: purple shale with the small head at the top of the arched neck, a 2 and a purple long-neck symbol in each corner. — Brontosauruspurple shale · the head and neck

The Pteranodon 5 card: golden limestone with the long beak, swept-back crest and small body between the wings, a 5 and a yellow crested-head symbol in each corner. — Pteranodongolden limestone · the skull and body

All five slabs assembled, each from nine cards: Tyrannosaurus in red sandstone, Triceratops in blue slate, Stegosaurus in green mudstone, Brontosaurus in purple shale and Pteranodon, wings spread, in golden limestone.

The dig sites

Four real quarries from the Bone Wars

Each site is a punchboard strip, the width of a card, laid between two camps. Your finds go on your side of it. The four boards are named for places where Cope's and Marsh's crews raced each other in the 1870s.

The Como Bluff dig-site board: a weathered wooden plank with COMO BLUFF burned into it, Wyoming Territory, 1877. — **Como Bluff** Wyoming Territory, 1877Railroad men spotted giant bones weathering out of this ridge and wrote to Marsh, who sent crews to dig for years.

The Garden Park dig-site board: a weathered wooden plank with GARDEN PARK burned into it, Colorado, 1877. — **Garden Park** Colorado, 1877Cope's and Marsh's crews both opened quarries in this one small valley.

The Morrison dig-site board: a weathered wooden plank with MORRISON burned into it, Colorado, 1877. — **Morrison** Colorado, 1877A schoolteacher, Arthur Lakes, found huge bones in the hills here and sent samples to both men.

The Smoky Hill dig-site board: a weathered wooden plank with SMOKY HILL burned into it, Kansas, 1870. — **Smoky Hill** Kansas, 1870Marsh's Yale party pulled the first American pterosaur bones out of this chalk.

The tuck box front: a Tyrannosaurus skeleton curled in red sandstone above a cream title plate reading The great bone rush of 1877, Diggers, Rival excavations in three field seasons, a game by Darren Don. — **The tuck box**The Tyrannosaurus slab on the front, with the five species symbols across the top

In the box

45Fossil cards, poker-sized: 1 to 9 in five species, number and symbol in all four corners
4Dig-site boards: punchboard strips 63 × 22 mm, the width of a card, so they pack with the deck
4Field guides with the turn and the season values

Mockups show a proposed production version in a poker-card tuck box, 66 × 92 × 32 mm.

Mockups

Rendered from the card, board and box art.

The box, a Stegosaurus slab and a dig site with a find. — The box

All 45 cards as five slabs, with the four field guides, the four named dig-site boards and the box. — What's in the box

Play

Pick a camp

The game runs below. No download or account needed.

A field lessonNew to it? A stacked two-minute first season walks you through every rule, then hands you a real game against Prof. Ashworth.

You against the botsTwo, three or four diggers. You take the bottom camp; Prof. Ashworth, Dr. Penrose and Mr. Hale take the rest.

The five skeletonsOpen the panel under the table to see every species assembled from its nine cards.

Runs right in your browser.

Start the field lesson Open in a new tab

Sell sheet

One page for your review meeting

The hook, the game on the table, a turn in three steps, what's new about it, the numbers and a QR code to the playable demo, on a single landscape page ready to print or forward.

Download PDF View

Three pages of the print-and-play kit: the two rules pages and the Tyrannosaurus card sheet.

Print and play · on request

Want it on your table?

A ten-page kit: two pages of rules, one sheet of nine cards per species with crop marks, optional card backs, the four field guides and the four dig-site boards. Nothing else needed. Email me and I’ll send it over.

Request the kit

Rules in brief

How it plays

The full rules, ready to read or print.

Download the rules (PDF)View

Setup

Each dig-site board is a lane between two camps. Use one more species than there are diggers. With two, play with three species and lay three dig-site boards between you; deal 12 cards each. With three, use four species; with four, all five. Lay one board between each pair of neighbors and deal 11 or 10. Pick your cards up in the order dealt and never rearrange them.

Finds

A find is one or more cards sitting next to each other in your hand: a single card, a run of consecutive numbers in order (3-4-5 or 5-4-3), or a set of one number, up to 4 cards. More cards beat fewer. At equal size, a suited run (every card one species) beats a set, and a set beats a run. Then the higher total wins.

Excavate

Lay a find at a site beside your camp. An empty site takes any find; a claimed site, yours or a rival's, needs a find that beats the one there, which is discarded. The site is now yours.

Poach

Take one end card of a find at a site beside you and insert it anywhere in your hand. Then send any card from your hand to the digger across that site. They insert it anywhere, or turn it away and it's out for the season.

Seasons

The moment any hand is empty, the season ends and each site you hold scores: 1 prestige in season one, 2 in season two, 4 in season three. Everything is cleared and fresh hands are dealt.