Rolling Bears is a dice-drafting game full of player interaction and high tension! Rounds are quick to play! Try to outscore your opponents by collecting the high-scoring dice and also by ending the round with the "Best Animal Set". Rolling Bears is two games in one, the two variants being called "Wuppertal Rules" and "Hollandica Rules". Players take turns to roll dice into the "Pool" (i.e. the centre of the table), and then take selected dice back out. The sets taken out must form either a "matching set" or a "running set". Dice extracted in this way are then placed on the player's special 'Enchanted Forest' scoreboard. This scoreboard is cleverly designed to work a bit like an abacus and it constantly keeps track of the player's score. The value of a die depends on its colour, and there are dedicated columns on the scoreboards for each colour to be placed on. Animal dice (Fish, Hedgehogs, Ravens, Wolves and Bears) are all stored in Animal pens, instead of the 'number' columns used for the rest of the dice. At the end of each round, the player with the Best Animal Set (ie the largest number of a particular type of animal) will move these animals to the Best Animal Set column, where they will score bonus points for that player. There is always huge rivalry and player interaction involved in the battle to have the Best Animal Set! At the end of each round, each player reads the scores indicated on their scoreboard and these are recorded and a total is kept across all rounds played. Rolling Bears comprises thirty 16mm D6 'logo' dice. The 'logo' side of each die contains the engraved image of an animal and the full set consists of six 'Fish' dice (green), six 'Hedgehog' dice (ivory white), six 'Raven' dice (sky blue), six 'Wolf' dice' (Grey) and six 'Bear' dice (black). Each scoreboard is double-sided, one side for each of the two rulesets (Wuppertal Rules and Hollandica Rules). Please note that exactly the same set of 30 dice is used for both versions of the game, but in an altogether different way for each. Wuppertal Rules: When using Wuppertal Rules, the first five rolls of the dice involve players rolling the dice into the Pool, by colour, six at a time. The first player will roll in all six green dice, and then create a set using these green dice only. Then the next player will roll in all the white dice and create a set from the Pool, using white and green dice. Then the next player will roll in the blue dice and create a set. Then the next player will do the same with the grey dice and the following player will do the same with the black dice. Now all the dice will either be in the Pool, or taken out and placed on players' boards. Now we move into a new phase of the game. The next player (after the one who rolled the black dice) now has the opportunity to re-roll a number (up to six) of the dice that currently remain in the Pool and to make a set after re-rolling. At this point, the real tactics start to enter the game. Players have to make difficult, and crucially important, decisions about which dice to re-roll. These can involve giving that player the best probability of obtaining a valuable 'set' to be extracted, while at the same time ruining potential opportunities for that player's opponents. One such tactic is to re-roll an animal which would have been useful or valuable to an opponent. But there are many more ways to be tactical with your re-rolling. Wuppertal is essentially the 'basic' game, where "matching sets" consist of dice whose numbers AND colours match, while "running sets" are dice which form an ascending sequence of numbers, while all of these dice MUST be a different colour. An "animal set" is a special case of a "matching set" where ALL the dice in the set are identical animals. Animal dice are always placed in the Animal Pen and will remain there until the end of the round. If they form the Best Animal Set at the end of the round, they will be moved to the Best Animal Set column and will score 8 p

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