Sanctuary Board Game Rules, Glossary and Solo Challenges – PDF

Sanctuary is a thinky zoo-building game for 1–4 players (14+, 90–150 minutes) set in the same world as Ark Nova, but focused on a tight tile-drafting puzzle. Each turn you’ll draft animal, building, and project tiles from a shared display, slide your four Action cards along a power track, and carefully place tiles into your personal zoo map. Smart tile adjacency, animal pairs, habitat clusters, and conservation objectives all combine into a satisfying engine where every hex matters.

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Key Features:

1. Four Sliding Action Cards: Each player has 4 Action cards – Projects plus three habitat-specific Animals (Rock, Forest, Water). The farther right a card sits, the stronger its effect. When you use an action, that card slides back to the far left at strength 1, and everything to its left shifts right and becomes stronger, creating a constant timing puzzle about which action to use when.
2. Two-Part Turn Structure: Every turn you must first draft 1 tile from the shared display “within range” of your Projects card, then use exactly one Action card. After that, you may optionally play 1 Building, support 1 Conservation objective, and/or upgrade Action cards if their conditions are met, before handling end-of-turn admin (tile limit, refill display, end-game check).
3. Three Tile Types, Shared Icon System: Animals (yellow) show habitat (Forest/Water/Rock/undefined), continent, and animal class icons; Buildings (blue) give one-time and ongoing effects plus placement or play conditions; Projects (purple) often score based on icons in your zoo or release animals “into the wild” for Conservation markers. All icons on face-up tiles count toward your scoring tiles and Conservation objectives.
4. Level & Habitat Driven Play: Animals and Projects have a level (2–5) that sets the minimum action strength required to play them. Each Animals card only plays animals of its matching habitat, while animals with the “undefined habitat” icon can be played with any Animals card, making them flexible glue pieces in your engine.
5. Open Areas & Tile Placement Puzzle: Many tiles require one or more adjacent Open Areas (face-down tiles) pointed to by arrows on their edges, representing large enclosures or special layouts. You’ll spend tiles from your hand to create these Open Areas, juggle adjacency requirements for Buildings, and snake tiles along the Zoo map’s River edges to set up powerful scoring combos.
6. Animal Pairs & Conservation Markers: Some species exist in male/female pairs. If you manage to place both copies of a species orthogonally adjacent, you immediately gain a valuable Conservation marker. These markers are worth points at game end or can be spent as “virtual icons” when supporting Conservation objectives.
7. Conservation Objectives & Achievements: At setup only 5 of 10 objective tiles are used, so each game highlights different icon collections (e.g. continents, animal classes, habitats). Each player has 4 Conservation Achievement markers (worth increasing points for 2/3/4/5+ icons) and can support each objective at most once, timing their support and marker spending for big scoring bursts.
8. Upgradeable Actions: Four Upgrade markers unlock stronger actions when you hit milestones (e.g. 3 connected tiles of a habitat, 4 different animal classes, 2 Projects in your zoo, first supported objective). Upgraded Animal cards can play two animals in a single action (if the total level fits), and the upgraded Projects card drafts more tiles at once.
9. Simple End Conditions, Rich Scoring: The game ends when someone has supported four objectives, completely filled their Zoo map, or the tile pile runs out. Final scoring adds up points from all tiles in your zoo (Animals, Buildings, Projects, Open Areas), supported objectives, remaining Conservation/Pouch markers, and any End-of-game bonus marker, with ties broken by who has more animals.
10. Solo Mode & World-Map Challenges: In solo play, a strip of face-down Solo markers simulates an opponent sniping tiles and acts as a turn timer – run out of markers before you trigger game end and you lose. Optional Solo Challenges add a campaign of milestones across a world map (e.g. “5 Petting Zoo animals,” “6 undefined habitat animals”), encouraging different zoo builds from game to game.

Gameplay Overview:

On each turn in Sanctuary, you follow a clear sequence printed along the bottom of your Zoo map. First, you draft one tile from the display “within range” of your Projects Action card – if that card’s arrow points to 3, you can only pick from positions 1–3. This happens before you touch your Action cards and is the main way new tiles enter your hand. Effects and placement bonuses that take tiles from the display ignore this range restriction.

Next, you choose one Action card, slide it slightly down to show it’s being used, and resolve one of the two actions printed on it at its current strength. Animals cards either play animals of the matching habitat (or undefined habitat) up to their level limit or draw two tiles from the pile. The Projects card either plays a Project tile (if its level requirement is met) or takes any tile(s) from the display. When you play Animals and Projects, you place them onto your Zoo map following the placement rules, creating required Open Areas, triggering one-off effects and ongoing abilities, and sometimes pairing animals for extra Conservation markers.

After resolving the chosen action, you slide that card into the far-left slot and shift all cards that were to its left one space to the right, increasing their strength. Then you may optionally play 1 Building from your hand (meeting its placement/playing condition), support 1 Conservation objective by placing one of your Conservation Achievement markers under a matching objective and optionally spending Conservation markers as extra icons, and/or flip any number of Action cards from side I to side II if their Upgrade marker conditions have just been met. Finally you check your hand against the tile limit of 6 (discarding extras), refill the display (sliding tiles down and revealing new ones from the pile), and see whether any end-game condition has been triggered.

Why it shines: Sanctuary feels like a concentrated Ark Nova puzzle – no cards, just tiles and icons, but with the same delicious action-row timing and conservation race. Every decision pulls double duty: tiles drafted now become either powerful effects, scoring linchpins, or “sacrifices” turned into Open Areas or statues. Balancing quick points from tile scoring with longer-term Conservation objectives, while trying not to feed your opponents perfect tiles from the display, makes each zoo feel distinct and rewards clever planning and spatial intuition.

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Sanctuary FAQ (Rules & Tricky Details)

• Do I always have to take a tile from the display at the start of my turn?
  Yes. Step 1 (“Take 1 tile within range from the display”) is mandatory. You must draft exactly one tile from among the positions allowed by your Projects Action card’s arrow, even if you’re already holding a lot of tiles. If you exceed the hand limit, you’ll discard back down to 6 tiles in step 6 at the end of your turn.
• What does “within range” actually mean?
  Your Projects Action card has a white arrow pointing to a number (1–4). You may draft your step-1 tile from any occupied display slot with a number equal to or lower than that value. If your arrow is at 2, you can only take from slots 1–2, even if there are juicy tiles in slots 3–6. Effects from tiles and placement bonuses that say “take any 1 tile from the display” ignore this restriction.
• How does action strength interact with tile levels?
  For Animals and Projects, you compare the card’s current strength to the tile’s level (2–5). You may play a tile if the action strength is at least that level. With upgraded Animal actions you can play 2 animals at once, but the strength must be at least the sum of both levels. Buildings don’t use action strength at all – they use their own placement/playing conditions in the optional Building step.
• What’s the difference between printed Open Areas and face-down Open Area tiles?
  Your Zoo map starts with two printed Open Areas; they are not tiles and can’t be covered. When an Animal or Building requires Open Areas, you must either use existing Open Areas (printed or from earlier tiles) or place tiles from your hand face down to create them. Face-down Open Areas are real tiles that occupy spaces, count for adjacency and some placement rules, and each is worth 1 point at game end, but they don’t show any icons.
• How exactly do animal pairs work?
  Certain species appear twice in the tile stack, with identical names but different art (male/female). If you place the second copy orthogonally adjacent to the first (sharing a side, not just a corner), you immediately gain 1 Conservation marker. The pair still scores normally, but you can later spend that Conservation marker as +1 icon when supporting objectives or keep it for 2 VP.
• What does the “undefined habitat” icon do?
  Animals with the special “undefined habitat” icon don’t count as Forest, Rock, or Water for effects that look for those habitats, but they can be played using any Animals Action card. This makes them flexible for double-animal turns with upgraded actions and for objectives or tiles that care about animal classes or continents rather than habitats.
• When do ongoing effects start working – and do they affect the tile they’re on?
  As soon as you place a tile with a green, infinity-symbol effect, that effect is active. If it refers to icons that are on the tile itself (e.g. an expert that triggers whenever you play a reptile and the card itself has a reptile icon), it immediately triggers once for its own placement. Ongoing effects continue to apply for the rest of the game unless the tile is covered (e.g. by a Release project).
• How does “Release into the wild” work?
  When you play a Release Project, you place it on top of a matching Animal in your zoo (often matching continent or icon). That animal is removed from your zoo for all purposes: its icons no longer count, and its points are lost. In exchange, you immediately gain Conservation markers (typically 2 for a small animal, 3 for a large animal). You can’t stack a Release project on top of another Project or Building tile.
• Can I move tiles later in the game?
  Some effects allow you to relocate a tile already in your zoo. The new space must follow normal placement rules (orthogonally adjacent to another tile or the entrance and on an empty, non-printed space), and Buildings with a placement condition must still satisfy that condition in their new spot. You can trigger any placement bonus on the new space, but you don’t re-trigger the tile’s own effects. The old space is simply left empty, even if this means some other tile’s adjacency condition is no longer true.
• How do Conservation objectives and Achievement markers interact?
  Each objective shows an icon type (e.g. birds, reptiles, continents). When you support it, you choose one of your unused Conservation Achievement markers (2/3/4/5+ icons) and must have at least that many matching icons in your zoo. You may boost your count by returning Conservation markers to the supply, each counting as +1 icon. You can support each objective only once, but the same tiles can help you meet multiple different objectives.
• Can I upgrade multiple Action cards in a single turn?
  Yes. Each Upgrade marker has its own condition (first supported objective, 2+ projects, 3 connected tiles of one habitat, 4 different animal classes). As soon as you meet a condition, you may flip that Upgrade marker and immediately upgrade one Action card. If you fulfill several conditions in the same turn, you can upgrade several different cards back-to-back during step 5.
• How does the solo mode work with Solo markers, and when do I lose?
  In solo play you set up as normal, then also shuffle a set of Solo markers (18 by default). At the end of each turn, before refilling the display, you flip one marker and discard the tile in the indicated display position (or the lowest-numbered tile if that slot is empty). This simulates an opponent taking tiles and also counts down your turns. If you reveal the last Solo marker and do not trigger an end-game condition that same turn, you immediately lose. If you win, you add 5 points for each unrevealed marker still face down; Solo Challenge sheets then ask you to hit extra icon-based milestones in those winning games.

Final Thoughts on Sanctuary

Sanctuary sits in a lovely sweet spot: it’s crunchy and strategic enough for heavy gamers, but turns are quick and focused thanks to the simple “take a tile, use one action” structure. If you enjoy planning several turns ahead, squeezing value out of every adjacency, and finding clever ways to chain abilities and objectives together, Sanctuary really rewards repeat plays. The shared display keeps everyone engaged in what others are doing, but the real magic happens in your own little zoo puzzle as it slowly takes shape.

Whether you’re racing friends to support that last Conservation objective, puzzling through the solo challenges, or just trying to build the most satisfying, thematically coherent zoo you can, Sanctuary delivers a very replayable experience. The mix of action timing, spatial planning, and long-term scoring gives you lots of different paths to explore – and once you’ve played a couple of times, you’ll start seeing new synergies and build ideas everywhere. If you love the conservation theme and want a thinky, tile-based sandbox to lose yourself in for a couple of hours, Sanctuary is absolutely worth getting to the table.