Codex Naturalis

30th May 2021

It's a Sunday and I'm logged on to Board Game Arena on my PC, time for the first game of the night.

Monk Tybor Kwelein had spent his life cataloguing the 4 kingdoms of plants, fungi, insects and animals in the pages of the titular Codex Naturalis. Now he is no longer with us, will one-to-four other people take up the mantle and carry on his work in the form of a neat little card game.

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What's in a game?
Codex Naturalis is a card game and unsurprisingly, has a lot of cards. All the cards are about half the size of normal playing cards which is sensible, as otherwise the game would have a massive footprint, most of the cards share some similar features.

• Starter cards: These cards are double-sided, each side will have 1-4 'visible corners', which is to say these are corners which are 'colourless', 'hidden corners' are corners where the card's art fills the corner.
  Each side will also contain symbols which represent 1-4 of the 4 kingdoms, which may be on the visible corners or in the 'middle' of the card.
• Resource cards: Also double sided; on the 'front' side there will be 2-3 visible corners which may or may not contain kingdom symbols, they may or may not also contain 'objective' symbols. These are a quill, inkpot & manuscript, more on them later. Occasionally, resource cards will score a point.
  The 'back' side of resource cards always have 4 visible corners and a kingdom symbol in the middle of the card.
• Gold cards: As the name suggests, these cards are actually decorated with gold foil and again, they are double sided. On the front they will also have 2-3 visible corners, generally there are no kingdom symbols in the corners, although there may well be objective symbols.
  All gold cards have a requirement in kingdom symbols before they can be played, thus if a gold card displays 3 plant symbols, then the active player must have 3 symbols visible in their playing area before the card can be put down.
  Additionally, all gold cards score points and there are a variety of ways to score.
  Finally, identical to resource cards, the backs of gold cards have 4 visible corners and a kingdom symbol in the middle.
• Objective cards: These are the only cards which are not double sided, the front will show objectives that score extra points at the end of the game if the conditions are met.
  ​There's 2 varieties of objective, some require players having certain resource or objective symbols displayed in their area at the end of the game. The other type requires cards to be placed in specific order and colour, these can be quite tricky to achieve.
• Scoring board: A standard board for tracking player scores.
• Tokens: Standard wooden discs used with the board.

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Scoring board

Resource & gold cards

Starting card with all kingdom symbols in the 4 visible corners

Common objectives: collect scroll objective symbols and place blue cards in diagonal lines

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The scoring board and tokens are pretty standard quality game components and perfectly acceptable.
The cards feel very thick and sturdy (Maybe because of the smaller size?) and seem to be made to a high standard, all the gold cards and numerous resource cards are embossed in actual gold foil, which is a really nice touch and despite their small size, most of the cards all have charming, highly detailed monochrome illustrations themed by their colour. Finally, all the cards are coated in a glossy finish.
The only criticism I have is of the small symbols at the bottom of the gold cards, they are quite small and some players have complaint that it can be hard to discern between the symbols, particularly the blue and the green.
Otherwise, these are some of the highest quality card components I've seen and it all comes wrapped up in a compact tin.

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Monochrome art is used to great effect on cards in Code Naturalis

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How's it play?
Setup

• Shuffle the resource cards and deal 2 into the centre of the play area, the remaining resource cards should be placed adjacent in a face-down deck.
• Shuffle the gold cards and deal 2 into the centre of the play area, the remaining resource cards should be placed adjacent in a face-down deck.
• Deal a starter card to all players, each player can choose which side to use as their starting card.
• Each player now draws 2 resource cards and 1 gold cards from the respective decks.
• Shuffle the objective cards into a face-down deck.
  2 objective cards should be drawn and placed into the playing area face-up, these are common objectives, all players can earn points by completing their requirements.
  2 objective cards should then be dealt to all players, these are secret objectives, each player should select one to keep and discard the other to the bottom objective deck. These cards should be hidden from other players, the owning player can earn points by meeting their requirements.
• Determine a starting player.

On to play
The objective in Codex Naturalis is to create an expanding spread of overlapping cards in their playing area. The basic process of actions to achieve this in Codex Naturalis is simple, a player plays a card, then draws a card, of course there's more to it than that. 

• ​Play card: The active player must play a card from their hand, all cards must be played in the landscape orientation and at least one of  the played card's corner must overlap on top of another card's visible corner. No cards can overlap over a hidden corner. A card can be played over the corner of multiple cards, but never multiple corners on the same card.
  A player can choose to flip a card to

A hidden corner may overlap a visible corner

4 corners are overlapped, scoring 8 points

it's other side with 4 visible corners and a resource symbol in the centre.
​Score card: When a card is played, it's immediately scored, there are a variety of ways a card can be scored.
Some cards will score 1-5 straight points.
Some will score 1 point per respective objective symbols that the active player currently has displayed in their playing area.
Finally, some cards will score points for each corner that they overlap, scoring 2-8

points, this card probably scores the most if you can manage to fill the doughnut hole!​

• Draw card: Once a card has been played, the active player must draw a card, this can be any of the 4 face-up cards or drawn blindly from either the resource of gold face-down decks. A player can never have more than 3 cards in their hand.
  If a face-up card is taken, it's immediately replaced by a card from its respective deck.

The player to the left then becomes the active player.
Play continues one player's score reaches 20 or more, then the endgame is triggered.

Endgame
After the endgame is triggered, the current round is completed, then one final round is played.
After this, players count the score from the cards they've played and then calculates the score they get from completing both common objectives and their secret objective.
Score are tallied and highest score wins!

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The secret objective in the bottom right scores 2 points for each 3 blue resources displayed in the playing area. Thus, 4 resources scores 2 points.

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Overall
Codex Naturalis has simple rules, but also a fairly deep level of gameplay. Despite only having a hand of 3 cards, players are given a wide variety of choices and strategies to pursue when placing cards.

A lot of this comes from the objectives, you'll obviously need to play gold cards to score but it's important not to ignore objectives, scoring from the gold cards will generally put your score into the low-to-mid 20s, but objectives which are scored after the end and can push your score higher, especially since they can be scored multiple times. That everyone has a secret objectives means that the final outcome is not known until the final scoring and keeps the stakes high.
Players must also learn to manage their hands and objectives, there are 4 colours of card, but only 2 of each type of card is ever displayed face-up, it's likely that player's won't always see the cards they need.
Codex Naturalis can also give players agonizing choices because they'll frequently be given the option to cover up a resource or objective symbol with the corner of another card. When that symbol is covered up, it's gone for the rest of the game, forcing players to choose which to prioritise. Only symbols that appear in the middle in of a card cannot be covered.
Finally, because face-up cards never have more than 3 visible corners, players will need to think how to place cards with future placement in mind, the visible corner of a card can be 'locked' by placing another card with a hidden corner adjacent to it. This essentially ends that line of expansion, which can limit options later on.

Codex Naturalis is a little too long for a filler and perhaps a little too short for a main game, which is only a minor quibble really. Otherwise, I found it to be a solid, easy-to-learn, mid-to-light game with good replay value and high production values.
Definitely worth a try.