Fast Sloths is a game free from randomness that evolves only through the interaction between the players, doing so without any "take that" mechanisms - except for you snatching an Animal from under the other players' noses because you need to use it yourself.

Each race offers new challenges for you to get to the different trees faster than the other Sloths. Enjoy all 256 different combinations, each with countless starting positions of the Animals on the Game Board...

Components

• Double-sided giant Game Board
• 5 Sloth Boards
• 5 wooden Sloths
• 45 wooden Leaves
• 34 Animal Discs
• 120 Cards
• 1 sticker sheet
• 1 Overview Sheet
• Rules Booklet

Setup for the First Game

1. So you can start the race in Fast Sloths, against your lazy Sloth nature, you need to prepare some game components.

   As shown in the big picture, place the two-part Game Board onto the table, and place your Sloth Boards and Sloths in front of yourselves.

2. In your first game, you play with the following six Animal Species: The Donkeys (3 Discs), The Unicorn (1 Disc), The Crocodiles (2 Discs), The Elephants (2 Discs), The Eagle (1 Disc) and The Ants (10 Discs).

   As shown in the big picture, place the Animal Discs onto their given starting spaces of the Game Board.

   
   
   

   Do not worry about the other 6 Animal Species and different Game Board configurations.

   We will explain these details after you finish your first game of Fast Sloths.

3. Each of the 6 Animal Species has their own Card Stack with 10 Cards. Each Stack of Cards is placed face up with all Cards in ascending order from low to high.

   Example: The Cards of the Donkey are Stacked as follows:

   
   
   

   Not all Animal Species have these values, some of them prefer their own values. But they always have 10 Cards!

4. As Sloths, you are only interested in collecting your own Leaves. For each Sloth participating in the race, place one of their Leaves each on all of the 9 trees on the Game Board.

   
   
   

   The big picture shows the game preparation for 3 Sloths!

5. Determine the starting Sloth, who will start the race in a few moments. But first, you all choose your starting trees. Of course, you choose a tree to start, because you collect your first Leaf even before the race starts! Remember, you are all lazy, and trees are your homes.

   The last Sloth chooses their starting tree first (this is only fair, that the last Sloth starting in the race can pick the best starting tree). Then, the other Sloths choose another empty tree in reverse play order.

   Place your Sloth Token onto the chosen tree, and place your Leaf from that tree onto the leftmost space of your Sloth Board.

   You start with no Cards in your hand!

6. Before explaining the rule details on the next pages, we will give you some more basics.

   During the race, you will never move yourselves. You are lazy Sloths, barely motivated to collect the Leaves... on the space, you are hanging in a tree.

   Instead, you use the Animals to carry you around. To do so, you collect and play the Cards of the 6 Animal Species to move their Discs as far as possible across the Game Board.

   At the start you only get low valued Cards, so the Animals will be slow. As you take one Card after the other from the top of the Stacks, their values will increase, and the Animals will speed up.

   Unfortunately, after you take the first 10 Cards, the Animals will slow down again drastically. After playing Cards of an Animal Species, you place these Cards again face up by ascending value below the matching Stack.

   Thus, you never shuffle these Card Stacks, you only cycle through them during the game.

7. The Game Board shows seven different landscape types: 'J resort, forest, hill, plain, mountain, river, bridge. The different Animal Species only move across certain landscape types, as you can see on their Cards. The paths connecting the resorts are only for the Human, all other Animals ignore them!

   The most important spaces for you as Sloths are the tree spaces, which are on resorts, forests, and plains:

   
   
   

8. Your Sloth Boards give you an overview of your actions.

   In the column below the rightmost Leaf, you can check how many Cards you will draw, and how many Cards you can keep in hand at the end of your turn.

   Each time you pick up the next Leaf, these values will get "worse". You can draw less Cards, must discard one of them... and you can keep less and less Cards in your hand.

   Remember, getting Leaves is great, as you will win the race if you collect 8 of them before your opposing Sloths do it!

Game Play

Now, let us begin!

After choosing your personal starting trees, and collecting your first Leaf, you start the race.

Beginning with the starting Sloth, you always take turns in clockwise order. There are 8 more Leaves for every Sloth on the Game Board. In this race, you only need to pick up 7 more of your Leaves, thus you can ignore one of them and still win the race! Try to find your personal best route from tree to tree, to visit "nearly" all the areas on the Game Board.

As you are carried around by the Animals, it is very important to keep their positions in mind. As the other Sloths use the same Animals to carry themselves around, these "stupid" Animals tend to move, and are not always exactly there, where you need them... or where you originally planned them to kindly be.

On your turn, you always play the following three steps:

1. Draw new cards from different animal stacks (obligatory)

   "YES, Ronald, you MUST do this. As it is always good to have more Cards, there is also no reason at all to pass on this".

2. Let an animal carry you around (optional)

   "YES, Ronald, you CAN pass on this. Still, as this is the only way to win the race, you usually want to do this during most turns".

3. Check your hand limit (obligatory)

   "YES, Ronald, you MUST do this. Even if you do not like being required to discard Cards, as more Cards are better, you still need to follow our rules".

When one of you collect your 8th Leaf, finish the round, so all Sloths have the same number of turns. Then, you determine the winner, and take a well deserved break from all this racing!

Your Turn

Your Sloth Board always shows how many Cards you must draw, that an Animal can carry you, and how many Cards you can keep in hand. The column showing the current values is always directly below the rightmost Leaf.

1. Draw new cards from the different animal stacks

As you start your first turn with a Leaf, you check the first column of your Sloth Board A . The first row shows the number of Cards you must draw. At the start of the game, this is 3 Cards B.

Draw the topmost Card of 3 of the 6 different Animal Stacks. Take these Cards in your hand.

You cannot draw 2 (or more) Cards from a single Animal Stack. And you are not allowed to check the Stacks of Cards. You always only see the topmost Card of each Stack.

After collecting the second Leaf C and later in the game after collecting more Leaves), after taking the Cards in your hand, you must discard 1 Card of your choice from your hand D . Place this discarded Card face up below the matching Animal Stack, so you will draw it later again.

2. Let an animal carry you around

Now, you can choose to let an Animal carry you toward the other trees to collect the delicious Leaves. The second row on your Sloth Board reminds you of this A. Remember that this step is voluntary, so you can pass. If you do so, please continue with step 3!

If you do not pass, play as many Cards of 1 Animal Species, adding up all their movement points. Move 1 Animal Disc of that Species by using the total sum of movement points.

As you add up the movement points, sometimes you have 10 or more points at hand. Thus, an Animal Disc may run across 10 or more spaces during your turn. Ultimately. this is a race game, so if the Animals run around like crazy, we Sloths are OK with this.

Basically, use the following rules for moving an Animal Disc:

1. a) You can move any Animal Disc, there are no personal Animals for you!

   "NO, Ronald, even if you always play with Elephants, in this race the other Sloths can move them, too".

2. For 1 point, you can move the Animal to the next adjacent space in any of the 6 possible directions, but only onto the landscape types listed on its Cards.

   Animals using the bridges, can only move on or off a bridge from the two directly adjacent land spaces! And only the Human follows the paths connecting resorts!

   
   
   

   Example: The Unicorn moves on resorts, hills, plains, mountains, and across bridges.

3. You can move the Animal back and forth on the same spaces, as long as you spend the movement points. You can also move the Animal through a space occupied by another Animal Disc (you still spend that movement point), but it cannot stop there. The Animal can stop on a tree space with Leaves.

   At the end of the movement, there cannot be 2 Animals on the same space. As a Sloth, you ignore such a restriction. On each space, there is always room for 1 Animal and any number of Sloths.

4. once during the movement, the Animal can pick you up on its space or an adjacent space. The adjacent space can be a landscape type the Animal does not normally move through! Picking you up is free, it does not cost any movement points! If an Animal only crosses the river on the bridges, it can only pick you up there from the bridge or the two directly adjacent land spaces!

5. After picking you up, the Animal will carry you around until you either decide to stop early or use all movement points. Either will end the movement of the Animal!

6. At the end of its movement, the Animal drops you on a space of your choice, either onto the space of the Animal or an adjacent space. Same as picking you up, dropping you is free, it does not cost any movement points!

   Thus, you can never stay on the Animal to block it for the other Sloths. If an Animal only crosses the river on the bridges, it can only drop you there on the bridge or the two directly adjacent land spaces!

7. 

   As shown on your Sloth Board, as a Sloth you sit on resorts, forests, hills, plains, and on bridges. You never want to be dropped on mountains or in the river. Animals can carry you across these landscape types, but cannot drop you there!

   "NO, Ronald, even if you can swim or breath in thin air, as a Sloth you do not want to be dropped into the river or on a mountain".

   
   
   

   Example: The purple Sloth plays 3 points for the Unicorn. The Unicorn moves 1 space 1 and picks up the Sloth 2. It carries the Sloth onto the bridge 3.

   For the last point, the Unicorn cannot leave the bridge, as that space is occupied by an Ant. Thus, the Unicorn ends its movement on the bridge, and drops the Sloth onto the space with the Ant 4, adjacent to the exit of the bridge.

8. When the Animal picks you up on a tree space, or walks on a space with a tree while carrying you, you collect your Leaf "on the go", even if the Animal continues to carry you to more spaces. If the Animal drops you on a space with a tree, of course you also collect your Leaf.

   Immediately place the Leaf onto the leftmost empty space of your Sloth Board.

9. As soon as you are dropped, both you and the Animal stop to move, even if you still have movement points to spend. These points are lost.

10. At the end of this step, place all played Cards in ascending order face up below the matching Animal Stack. Then, the next Sloth takes it turn!

Those are the basics you need to know for the race.

For your first game, please check the special abilities for the 6 Animal Species of this race in the chapter "The 12 Animal Species".

3. Check Your Hand Limit

This step is really easy. You need to check if you have too many Cards in your hand.

Check the column directly below your rightmost Leaf. The third row of the column shows your hand limit.

During the first few turns, as long as you only have one or two Leaves, you can keep 7 Cards in your hand A.

If you have more Cards in your hand than allowed by the hand limit, you must discard excess Cards from your hand. Choose the Cards you need to discard, and place them face up below the matching Animal Stacks.

If you discard several Cards of the same Animal Species, place them in ascending order face up below the matching Animal Stack.

If you collect Leaves during the second step of your turn, your hand limit can change!

Winning the Race

When you collect your 8th Leaf, finish your turn. In very rare cases, you may be able to collect all 9 Leaves, overachieving the goal of the race like an Animal (not as lazy as a Sloth).

The other Sloths, in clockwise order, continue the round, until all Sloths have played the same number of turns.

Now, the Sloth among yourselves with the most Leaves wins the race.

If there is a tie regarding most Leaves, the tied Sloth among yourselves with the highest total sum of movement points in hand wins the race. Simply add up all the points from all Animal Species on the Cards in your hand.

If there is still a tie, you are all far too lazy to care. Take a break and enjoy your collected Leaves!

Setup of all following games

After finishing your first game, you learned all basics of Fast Sloths.

For all following games, please use these easy changes during preparation:

• Different Game Board: Choose 1 of the 4 different Game Board configurations by flipping the two parts of the Game Board.

• Different Animal Species: Choose 1 Animal Species of each of the following 6 pairs (this guarantees 64 different combinations of 6 Animal Species):

Of course, after several games, you can also choose any 6 Animal Species.

Different starting spaces for the Animal Discs: Place all Animal Discs as a supply next to their matching Card Stacks. When choosing your starting trees for the Sloth Tokens in reverse order, also place the Animal Discs in several rounds on the Game Board.

In the first round, choose your starting trees and place one Animal Disc on the Game Board. As from the second round, each of you place another Animal, until you placed them all.

It is quite common, that all of you do not place the same number of Discs. Remember, that the Animal Species do not stand on all landscape types (check the Cards of the different Animal Species).

Afterward, the race starts, and the starting Sloth takes its first turn!

Continue Reading