Map 10 : can you release a digged animal

[ChrisTao_0]

First time playing map 10, as the digged animals count as in your zoo, can you release them for conservation release projects ?

[SpajderDzerusalem]

No

[xXxbanana420xXx]

Bizarre ruling given you can flock off of dug animals, and you can breeding program off of them. Stands to reason you should also be able to release them by the same logic.

What was the game designer even thinking with these rulings? The map is incredibly broken.

[GTSchemer]

Animals that have been rescued and are injured should obviously not be released into the wild. You are caring for them.

[Tisaac]

Bizarre ruling given you can flock off of dug animals, and you can breeding program off of them. Stands to reason you should also be able to release them by the same logic.

What was the game designer even thinking with these rulings? The map is incredibly broken.

Thematically it's questionnable. Gameplay wise it's 100% consistent : ALL the icons of the animals are considered in your zoo, so it makes sense that flocking works because it only cares about Icons (and not about enclosures on the Map as soooo many players are misunderstanding). But theses animals are not among the other animals (the display in BGA is not helping toward that, in the physical version it's really more obvious), so you can't select them for any effect that target an "animal you played", which releasing is about.

[xXxbanana420xXx]

Thematically it's questionnable. Gameplay wise it's 100% consistent : ALL the icons of the animals are considered in your zoo, so it makes sense that flocking works because it only cares about Icons (and not about enclosures on the Map as soooo many players are misunderstanding). But theses animals are not among the other animals (the display in BGA is not helping toward that, in the physical version it's really more obvious), so you can't select them for any effect that target an "animal you played", which releasing is about.

It's not at all consistent - if the dug animals are really in your zoo you should be able to release them as well. The rulebook for releasing says "you must discard 1 Animal card with a specific icon from your zoo", and the map clearly says the animal counts as "in your zoo". Where do you see the wording "animal you played"?

Also, breeding program cards do not say you eg, need 1 primate icon and a partner zoo. They say you need 1 primate, which I think should be interpreted as you need to have played a primate, and if the dug cards do not count as an "animal you played", they should not count for breeding programs either.

I'm aware that the game doesn't track which animals go into which enclosures (so you can, eg release a flocked animal, have no remaining occupied enclosures, and flock another animal), but the dug animals are not placed with your other animals, they're placed under the zoo map. We know for a fact that they never went into any enclosure and so the game does track that they're not in an enclosure - unlike other animals. Flocking explicitly says "may share the existing enclosure" and since the game does indeed track that the animal never was in an enclosure, flocking should not be allowed.

[SpajderDzerusalem]

Map Pack rules explicitly states that they cannot be released.

[xXxbanana420xXx]

Yes, I understand that the rules explicitly state that they cannot be released. I'm saying consistency would mean also disallowing flocking and breeding programs.

Even without allowing flocking and breeding programs, Rescue Station is already a top tier map alongside silver lake. With those it's completely busted.

To further annoy me the designer also explicitly disallowed flocking to count for the Continental Zoo - I understand why from a consistency standpoint, but that map is already bottom tier and even weaker given that ruling. The starting maps are so completely unbalanced that I refuse to play modes where players are assigned different random maps.