In Chimère, each player plays a magician in the court of a King who has decided to give his Kingdom to the best Court Magician. Each magician now has the task of convincing the King that they are the best Court Magician. To do this, they organize a grand tournament of magic with various competitions. For each contest, players must make a fabulous creature composed of a blend of three real animals. These chimeras then compete in various events to determine the best magician. The three-ingredient creatures are created simultaneously by all players drawing from the three decks of creatures before them, placing the cards facedown on one of the four contest areas before them. (Each player possesses a large square representing each of the four contests in their personal play area.) Once players have chosen their three ingredient creatures for each of the four contests (twelve in total), they may switch ingredient creature pieces between their four different contest tiles. Contests may include mud-wrestling, funniest creature, battle to first blood, potato bag race, and the prettiest creature. Only four are chosen from the deck of available contests, and only the players in first and second place in each contest receive points. The first player to complete their selections for all four contests may declare they are finished, putting a time limit of 30 seconds for all other players to complete their choices. Voting takes place between players to see who has the best creature featured in each contest. Three rounds are played with the aforementioned steps, with creature and contest cards being reshuffled and redrawn. Each round is roughly 10-15 minutes, totaling to 30-45 minutes per game.