Dinosaur Island Market and Specialists

The Market Phase gives each player only two actions a round, one at a time in turn order. With so few, every action has to earn its place. This lesson covers how prices move, what is worth buying, and the quiet trick of buying DNA to take things away from other players.

How the market moves

The marketplace has four rows, priced $2, $3, $4, and $5. Each row holds one attraction, one lab upgrade, and one specialist.

• A specialist or lab upgrade costs the row price.
• An attraction costs its printed price plus the row price. A $5 attraction in the $3 row costs $8.

In Cleanup, anything left in the $2 row is discarded. Everything else slides up toward the cheaper rows, and new items fill the empty slots from the stacks. Only setup sorts attractions by price; after that, a new attraction lands in whatever slot is open.

Because the $2 row empties every round, every item left in the market gets at least $1 cheaper each round it is not bought, until it falls off. That creates a simple question for every item you want: will it survive another round?

The special upgrades

Two lab upgrades sit in their own stacks, always available until they run out:

• Dino Research II, $3. An upgraded version of the action that creates dinosaurs. It must cover your Dino Research I.
• DNA Refinement II, $5. An upgraded version of the action that refines basic DNA into advanced DNA. It must cover your DNA Refinement I.

There are 4 of each, one per player in a 4 player game. These are among the most common early buys because they improve actions you use every round.

Specialists: the worker supply

The rulebook calls hiring specialists the primary way to gain more workers. Many come with a worker when hired, and most have an ongoing ability. You may have three at most. Hiring a fourth fires one, and you lose everything it gave you, extra workers included.

A few from the rulebook’s examples show the range:

• Union Boss: gain a worker from the supply, and hire your next specialist at no cost, once.
• Security Guard: return up to 3 hooligans to the bag each round and draw that many new visitors.
• PR Guy: draw 3 extra visitors each round, then return any 2 to the bag.
• Chef: once each round, place 1 patron at a food attraction even if it is full, to score 1 VP.
• Insider: once per game, search a market stack for any face-down item and put it into play for $4, plus the attraction’s own cost if it is one.

With only three slots, ask what each specialist does every round for the rest of the game. A specialist bought in round two works for the whole game; one bought in the last round barely works at all.

Lab upgrades: more and better slots

Your lab has six spaces. Two start Under Construction, and new upgrades go there first. Once those are full, a new upgrade must cover an old one, which stops working.

Good upgrades either add a slot you use every round or make one cheaper. Two rulebook examples: the Better Tool Bench has a slot that takes $2 off a security raise, and the Renovation Committee upgrades a paddock’s capacity by 1 at no cost.

Think of each upgrade as one more worker action per round. Then ask whether you have the workers to use it.

Buying DNA is also a discard

Buying DNA costs $2 to $5 and gives:

• $2: any 2 basic DNA.
• $3: any 3 basic DNA.
• $4: any 1 advanced DNA.
• $5: any 2 advanced DNA.

Then you discard one item, but not one of the special upgrades, from the row you paid for. The rulebook’s own example uses this to remove a specialist another player was eyeing. When a rival needs a particular item and you need DNA anyway, buy from that row.

When to pass

A pass pays $2. That is not nothing: at the end, $5 is worth 1 VP, and $2 early can be a security level later. Pass when the market holds nothing that helps you and nothing worth denying.

A market checklist

1. Which item does my lab need this round?
2. Which item does a rival need, and can I buy or discard it?
3. Will what I want still be here next round, $1 cheaper?

Our article on engine building covers the bigger idea behind this: early purchases pay out every round, so buy the engine first and the points later.