Tales & Games: The Hare & the Tortoise

On your turn you must place 1–4 cards that all show the same animal, but on later turns you may place cards for a different animal — it's legal to change animals between turns (pages 3, 7).

The racing phase is triggered at the end of your turn if either the players have placed exactly 8 cards in total, or exactly 4 cards of the same animal have been placed in total; you may never exceed these totals (page 3).

Each animal has its own movement rule: the hare normally advances 2 tiles if 1–4 Hare cards were played but if 4 Hare cards were played while the hare is already in first (even tied) he doesn’t advance (nap); the tortoise moves 1 tile (2 if 4 Tortoise cards); the wolf moves 1 for 1–2 Wolf cards or (x−1) for x=3–4 and if a Howl card was played only the wolf moves that phase (page 4).

The lamb moves X+1 tiles (where X is the number of Lamb cards played) but must stop as soon as it reaches a Track tile depicting a stream — it cannot move past that stream tile (page 5).

Yes — you are allowed to play Racing cards for animals that are already on the podium; doing so is often useful to cycle your hand (pages 3, 7).

When an animal crosses the finish line immediately put its pawn on the highest still-available podium rank; the game ends when three animals occupy the podium, players reveal bets, scoring is 1st=5 / 2nd=3 / 3rd=2 points, ties are broken by which animal is higher on the podium and, if still tied between players, you replay (page 6).