rulebook

The rules, the house rules, and which of them are actually real.

37 games · 203 rulings · mohitagw15856.github.io/rulebook · Code MIT, data CC BY 4.0. Game names and trademarks belong to their owners.

Contents

Azul

Draft tiles and place them on your wall in patterns, scoring for adjacency and for completed rows, columns and colours.

Take tiles, place them in rows, move them to your wall, score for what they touch. The whole game is about what you are forced to take, not what you want.

Setup

Fill each factory display with four tiles drawn blind from the bag. Every player gets a board with five pattern lines on the left, a five-by-five wall on the right, and a floor line underneath.

Drafting

On your turn you must do exactly one of two things:

• Take every tile of one colour from a single factory display, and push all remaining tiles from that display into the centre of the table.
• Take every tile of one colour from the centre. The first player to take from the centre in a round also takes the starting player marker and places it on their floor line, which costs a point.

You must take all of that colour. You do not get to choose how many.

Placing

Put the tiles you took into a single pattern line on your board. The lines hold one, two, three, four and five tiles respectively.

Three restrictions:

• A pattern line may only hold one colour.
• You may not place a colour in a line if that colour is already on your wall in the corresponding row.
• Any tiles that will not fit drop onto your floor line and cost you points.

Scoring the wall

When no tiles remain anywhere, every completed pattern line sends one tile onto the matching row of your wall. The rest of that line is discarded.

Score each tile as you place it by counting the unbroken horizontal and vertical chains it becomes part of. A tile touching nothing scores one. A tile completing a run of three horizontally and two vertically scores five.

Then subtract your floor penalties, refill the factories, and play another round.

Ending

The game ends after the round in which somebody completes a full horizontal row on their wall. Then add the bonuses: two points per completed row, seven per completed column, ten for each colour placed all five times.

The trap

Taking tiles you cannot use is not optional. Late in a round the centre often holds nothing but tiles that will land straight on your floor, and choosing which damage to take is the real decision the game is built around.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Most complete horizontal rows wins. Still tied, the tie stands — Azul has no further tiebreak and a shared win is a legitimate result.

When it is fair to stop

A player who has taken heavy floor penalties two rounds running is unlikely to recover, but rounds are short and the endgame bonuses are large enough that conceding early is usually premature. Finish the round at minimum.

Levelling it up

A first-timer — Ignore the floor line penalty for the first round only. It is the rule that punishes inexperience hardest.

If a piece is missing

The tiles are the game and cannot sensibly be improvised. Player boards are printable. The bag can be any opaque container.

Accessibility

The five tile colours are distinguished partly by pattern, which helps, but the blue and turquoise are close under warm light. The tiles are chunky and pleasant to handle, which makes this one of the more dexterity-friendly modern games. Scoring involves counting adjacency chains, which is the main arithmetic demand.

Backgammon

Move all fifteen of your checkers around the board into your home quarter, then bear them off before your opponent does.

A race in which both players run in opposite directions around the same twenty-four points, and can knock each other back to the start on the way.

The board

Twenty-four narrow triangles, called points, in two alternating colours. Each player moves their fifteen checkers in the opposite direction to their opponent, towards their own home board — the final quarter.

The standard start places two checkers on your twenty-four point, five on your thirteen, three on your eight and five on your six.

Moving

Roll two dice. You may move one checker by the first die and another by the second, or move a single checker by both numbers in sequence — in which case the intermediate point must also be legal to land on.

Rolling a double gives you four moves of that number rather than two.

You may only land on a point that is empty, holds your own checkers, or holds exactly one enemy checker. A point occupied by two or more enemy checkers is closed to you completely.

You must use both dice if any legal way exists to do so. If only one can be played, play the higher.

Hitting and the bar

Landing on a point with exactly one enemy checker sends that checker to the bar. Its owner must bring it back into their opponent's home board — starting the whole lap again — before making any other move at all. A player with a checker on the bar can be completely stuck.

Bearing off

Once all fifteen of your checkers are inside your home board, you may begin bearing off — removing them with exact rolls. If you roll a number higher than any occupied point, you may bear off from the highest point you still hold.

Get hit at this stage and that checker returns to the bar and must travel the entire way round again, which is how apparently won games are lost.

The doubling cube

At the start of any turn, before rolling, you may offer to double the stake. Your opponent either declines and loses immediately at the current value, or accepts and takes ownership of the cube — after which only they may double next.

The cube is what makes backgammon a game of judgement rather than a dice race, and it is the part most casual players never use.

Scoring

A normal win scores the cube value. Winning before your opponent has borne off any checker is a gammon and scores double. Winning while they still have a checker on the bar or in your home board is a backgammon and scores triple.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

A single game cannot be tied. A match is played to an odd number of points precisely so that it cannot end level.

When it is fair to stop

Resigning is built into the game rather than being an act of grace. Declining a double is a formal resignation of that game at its current stake, and doing it early in a hopeless race is correct play rather than poor sportsmanship.

Levelling it up

A weaker player — Give them the doubling cube at 2 to start, or let them roll first every game.

If a piece is missing

Checkers can be coins or draughts pieces without any loss. The doubling cube can be a scrap of paper with a number written on it and a note of who owns it. A missing die genuinely stops play.

Accessibility

The two checker colours are frequently dark brown and black, which is a poor contrast pairing in low light; sets with a strong light-dark contrast are much easier. Counting pip totals is the main cognitive demand, and there is no shame in doing it aloud. Boards with recessed points make lifting checkers harder for anyone with limited dexterity.

Battleship

Find and sink all five of your opponent's hidden ships before they sink yours.

Two grids, ten by ten. Yours holds your fleet; the other tracks where you have shot. Neither player can see the other's board, and that is the whole game.

Placing your fleet

Each player secretly arranges five ships on their own grid:

• Carrier, five squares
• Battleship, four squares
• Cruiser, three squares
• Submarine, three squares
• Destroyer, two squares

Ships sit horizontally or vertically along the grid lines. They may not be placed diagonally, may not overlap, and may not run off the edge. Whether ships may touch each other is the one setup question worth agreeing before you start.

Firing

Players alternate. On your turn, name a single coordinate — a letter and a number. Your opponent must tell you truthfully whether it is a hit or a miss.

Mark it on your tracking grid: one symbol for hits, another for misses. Losing track of what you have already fired at is the most common way to lose.

Sinking

When every square of a ship has been hit, its owner must say so and name the ship. You are not required to volunteer anything before that point, and you must not lie about it afterwards.

Knowing which ship you have sunk is real information, because it tells you how many squares of each length remain to be found.

Winning

Sink all five enemy ships. Since players alternate and the game is otherwise symmetrical, the player who fires first genuinely has the advantage — flip for it, or play two games and swap.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Impossible. One fleet is sunk before the other, and the player who fired second cannot equalise.

When it is fair to stop

Once four of your five ships are sunk, conceding costs nothing and saves five minutes of being shot at. Nobody has ever come back from that position.

Levelling it up

A young child — The adult plays with four ships instead of five, and announces near-misses.

How people cheat

Claiming a miss on a square that was a hit, and moving the ship later in the game.
Spot it: Play on paper and swap sheets at the end. A fleet that never had a home square is obvious immediately.

If a piece is missing

This game does not need its box at all. Two sheets of squared paper per player and a pen reproduce it exactly, which is how most people first played it.

Accessibility

The plastic pegs are very small and a real dexterity barrier; the paper version avoids this completely and is in no way inferior. Calling and hearing coordinates accurately matters, so agree on a phonetic convention if the room is loud — B and D cause most of the disputes.

Blackjack

Beat the dealer's hand without going over 21.

You are not playing the other players. Every hand is you against the dealer, and the dealer has no choices to make.

Card values

| Card | Value | | --- | --- | | 2–10 | Face value | | Jack, Queen, King | 10 | | Ace | 11, or 1 if 11 would bust you |

A hand holding an Ace still counted as 11 is soft. Soft hands cannot bust on the next card.

Setup

Everyone places a bet. Each player receives two cards face up. The dealer takes one face up and one face down.

If your first two cards total 21 — an Ace with any ten-valued card — that is a blackjack, and it normally pays three to two.

Your options

• Hit — take another card. You may keep hitting until you stand or bust.
• Stand — take no more cards.
• Double down — double your bet and take exactly one more card.
• Split — if your two cards are the same rank, separate them into two hands with a second bet equal to the first.

Going over 21 is a bust and loses immediately, before the dealer plays.

The dealer's turn

The dealer reveals the face-down card and then follows a fixed rule with no discretion: draw while the total is 16 or less, stand on 17 or more. Whether the dealer hits a soft 17 varies and is printed on the table.

Settling

• Dealer busts and you did not — you win.
• Your total is higher than the dealer's — you win.
• Equal totals — a push; your bet is returned.
• Dealer's total is higher — you lose.

Playing at home

Rotate the dealer every round. The dealer has a mathematical edge, so leaving one person as the house for a whole evening is not a game, it is a slow transfer of matchsticks.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

A hand tied with the dealer is a push — your stake is returned and nobody wins. It is not a loss, whatever the table mutters.

When it is fair to stop

Anyone may leave between hands. That is the whole appeal — the game has no arc to interrupt, so walking away after a round costs nobody anything.

Levelling it up

A beginner — Play with a printed basic strategy card face up on the table for everyone. It is not cheating, it is the correct play.

How people cheat

Capping a bet — adding a chip after seeing the cards.
Spot it: Bets are settled before the deal and not touched afterwards. Say it once at the start of a home game.

If a piece is missing

Any deck and any counters work — coins, matches, dried beans. The dealer role can rotate each round so that nobody is stuck as the house all evening.

Accessibility

Card values are numeric and colour is irrelevant, so colour vision is not needed. Betting and payout arithmetic is the real barrier; a printed payout card helps enormously.

Catan

Be first to ten victory points, earned from settlements, cities, the longest road, the largest army and some development cards.

Build settlements on a board that pays out on dice rolls, and trade for the resources you are short of. The trading is the game; the building is the scoreboard.

The board

Nineteen hexes, each a terrain type producing one resource, each with a number token from 2 to 12 (the desert has none and starts with the robber).

| Terrain | Produces | | --- | --- | | Forest | Lumber | | Hills | Brick | | Fields | Grain | | Pasture | Wool | | Mountains | Ore | | Desert | Nothing |

Setup

In turn order, each player places a settlement and a road. Then, in reverse order, each places a second settlement and road.

Collect starting resources from your second settlement only — one card for each adjacent terrain hex.

A turn

1. Roll two dice. Every player with a settlement touching a hex showing that number collects one resource from it; a city collects two. 2. Trade — with other players, or with the bank at 4:1, or at a port you have built on. 3. Build — spend resources:

| Build | Cost | | --- | --- | | Road | Lumber + Brick | | Settlement | Lumber + Brick + Grain + Wool | | City (upgrades a settlement) | 3 Ore + 2 Grain | | Development card | Ore + Grain + Wool |

Rolling a 7

No resources are produced. Instead:

• Every player holding more than seven resource cards discards half, rounded down.
• The roller moves the robber to any other hex, blocking its production, and steals one random card from a player with a settlement touching it.

Victory points

| Source | Points | | --- | --- | | Settlement | 1 | | City | 2 | | Longest Road (5+ segments, most) | 2 | | Largest Army (3+ knights, most) | 2 | | Victory point development card | 1 each |

First to ten wins. You announce it on your own turn — development card points stay hidden until then, which is why games often end a turn before everyone expects.

Placement restrictions

Settlements must be at least two intersections apart, and roads must connect to your own network.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Ties cannot happen. Victory points are checked only on your own turn, so the first player to reach ten ends it before anyone else can match.

When it is fair to stop

Do not concede Catan. A trailing player still controls who gets the wheat, and quitting hands the game to whoever they were blocking. If you must stop, agree to end at a lower points target instead.

Levelling it up

A first-time player — Let them place last and first in the snake, and allow them to take back a placement in the first two turns.

A much stronger player — Set their target to eleven victory points while everyone else plays to ten.

How people cheat

Taking two resources when one was earned, during a busy collection phase.
Spot it: Collect one hex at a time, out loud, when the table is large. Slower, and it ends the problem.

Miscounting a trade — handing over two of something when three was agreed.
Spot it: Complete trades in the middle of the table rather than hand to hand.

If a piece is missing

Lost number tokens can be replaced by writing numbers on card. A missing robber can be any distinctive object. Resource cards are the one component that genuinely cannot be improvised at reasonable effort.

Accessibility

Player colours are the main barrier, and red versus green appears in every set — use shape markers or distinct piece sets. The number tokens are small; the dots beneath each number indicate probability and are frequently too small to read, so a printed probability reference helps.

Charades

Act out a title or phrase without speaking, while your team tries to guess it before time runs out.

One person acts. Nobody speaks. Everybody shouts. It has survived for two centuries because it needs nothing but people and paper.

Preparing the bowl

Everyone writes two or three titles or phrases on separate slips — films, books, songs, television programmes, well-known sayings. Fold them and put them all in one container.

Agree what is fair before anybody writes. A group that has never established this will produce at least one clue nobody present has heard of, and the resulting argument is more predictable than the game.

Performing

Draw a slip and read it silently. Set the timer, usually to a minute or two.

Before acting, it is conventional to indicate the category and the structure: how many words, which word you are tackling, and how many syllables it has. There is a traditional vocabulary of gestures for this, and every group's version differs slightly.

While acting you may not speak, mouth words, make any sound, or point at an object in the room to indicate the word. Miming the idea of an object is the game; pointing at the actual thing is not.

Guessing

Your team calls out guesses freely, as many as they like. There is no penalty for a wrong guess and no turn order — it is meant to be a scramble.

If they get it before the timer, the team scores. If not, most groups reveal the answer, which is usually the funniest moment of the round.

Scoring

One point per successful guess, and play alternates between teams. Keep score if you want to. Most groups start doing so and quietly stop, which is fine — the game does not depend on it.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Play one more round each. Nobody has ever been satisfied by a drawn game of charades.

When it is fair to stop

It ends when the room's energy drops, not at a score. Somebody should say "last round each" out loud rather than letting it fizzle, because charades that stops cleanly is remembered far better than charades that trails off.

If a piece is missing

There is nothing to substitute. Paper, a bowl and a phone timer are the whole requirement, and any of the three can be improvised.

Accessibility

It is a physical game and excludes anyone who cannot perform standing movement, though seated charades works perfectly well if the group agrees to it. It is also loud and fast, which can be genuinely difficult for players who need time to process speech. Allowing a player to pass without penalty removes most of the social pressure.

Chess

Attack the opposing king so that no legal move escapes the attack.

No hidden information and no dice. Everything either player needs to know is on the board.

Setup

Rooks in the corners, then knights, then bishops, then queen and king. Pawns fill the second rank.

Two checks that catch people out: the queen goes on her own colour (white queen on a light square), and the near-right corner square is light for both players.

White moves first.

How the pieces move

| Piece | Movement | | --- | --- | | King | One square in any direction | | Queen | Any distance, straight or diagonal | | Rook | Any distance, straight | | Bishop | Any distance, diagonal | | Knight | An L: two squares one way, one the other. The only piece that jumps over others | | Pawn | One square forward, or two on its first move. Captures diagonally only |

Every piece except the knight is blocked by pieces in the way. You capture by moving onto an occupied square; you may never capture your own pieces.

The three special moves

Castling — the king moves two squares toward a rook, and that rook jumps to the far side of the king. Requires: neither piece has moved, the squares between are empty, the king is not in check, and the king does not cross or land on an attacked square. The rook may be attacked; that does not matter.

En passant — if an enemy pawn advances two squares and lands directly beside your pawn, you may capture it as if it had moved only one. Only on the very next move.

Promotion — a pawn reaching the far rank becomes a queen, rook, bishop or knight. Your choice, and you may have more than one queen.

Check and checkmate

Your king is in check when it is attacked. You must respond immediately by moving the king, blocking, or capturing the attacker. You may never make a move that leaves your own king in check.

Checkmate is check with no legal escape. That ends the game.

Draws

• Stalemate — the player to move has no legal move and is not in check.
• Agreement — both players accept a draw.
• Threefold repetition — the same position occurs three times.
• Fifty-move rule — fifty moves each with no capture and no pawn move.
• Insufficient material — neither side can possibly checkmate.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

A drawn game is a genuine result, not a failure to finish. In a tournament, tiebreaks run on head-to-head, then most games won with black, then a blitz playoff.

When it is fair to stop

Resigning is normal and, at any level of seriousness, polite. Playing on two pawns down against someone who obviously has it is a way of asking them to prove it, which is fine between friends and tiresome otherwise.

Levelling it up

A much stronger player — Remove material — a knight, then a rook, then the queen. Odds chess is a centuries-old tradition and there is no shame in it.

A large gap in thinking time — Give the weaker player twice the clock. It levels far more precisely than material does.

How people cheat

Taking back a move after seeing the reply, framed as 'I hadn't let go'.
Spot it: Touch-move is the rule and it is unambiguous. Agree at the start whether you are playing it, and then play it.

Nudging the clock, or hitting it before completing the move.
Spot it: The move ends when the clock is pressed. Anyone can call it.

If a piece is missing

A missing piece can be stood in for by a coin or an upturned pawn, agreed before the game. A missing queen is traditionally represented by an upturned rook.

Accessibility

Piece shape carries the information, not colour, so colour vision is rarely a barrier — but light-versus-dark squares can be. Tactile sets with pegged pieces and raised dark squares exist and are the standard accommodation for blind players, who typically use algebraic notation spoken aloud.

Cluedo

Work out which suspect, weapon and room are hidden in the case envelope, and say so before anybody else does.

Somebody has been murdered. One suspect card, one weapon card and one room card are sealed in an envelope before anybody looks at anything, and the whole game is a race to work out which three.

Setup

Separate the twenty-one cards into three piles by type. Shuffle each pile separately and, without looking, take the top card of each into the case envelope. Shuffle the remaining eighteen together and deal them out as evenly as possible, face down, to the players.

The cards in your hand are, by definition, not in the envelope. That is your starting information, and it is different for everybody.

Your turn

Roll and move that many spaces along the corridors. You may not move diagonally, and you cannot pass through another player. Four rooms sit at the corners and are joined in pairs by secret passages, which move you across the board for free.

Once you are in a room, you may make a suggestion: name a suspect, a weapon, and the room you are standing in. Move that suspect's token and that weapon into the room with you — which is not decoration, since it drags other players around the board against their will.

Disproving

Beginning with the player on your left, each player in turn checks whether they hold any of the three cards you named. If they hold one, they must show you exactly one of them, privately. If they hold several, they choose which. As soon as one player shows you a card, the process stops — everybody else is skipped.

If nobody can disprove your suggestion, that is enormous. It does not prove you are right, because you may be holding one of the cards yourself, but everybody at the table now knows something.

Accusing

At any point on your turn, you may make an accusation instead. Name all three cards, then look inside the envelope privately.

If you are right, show the cards and win.

If you are wrong, you are out. You take no further turns and can never win — but you keep your cards and must continue to disprove other players' suggestions. This is not optional and it is the reason a wrong accusation is so expensive.

You may only make one accusation in the whole game.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Not possible. Exactly one player makes a correct accusation and the game stops there.

When it is fair to stop

Never concede Cluedo. A player who has been eliminated by a wrong accusation still holds cards and must keep answering suggestions, so leaving the table breaks the game for everyone else.

How people cheat

Glancing at another player's cards when they show them to a third player.
Spot it: Cards are shown low and close, to one person. Sit so this is physically possible before you deal.

If a piece is missing

Weapon tokens are decoration and can be anything, including scraps of paper with names on. Losing a card from the deck ruins the game outright — the twenty-one cards are the puzzle. The notepads are trivially replaced.

Accessibility

Tracking shown cards on a small printed grid is the main barrier; larger hand-ruled grids on plain paper work far better than the supplied pads. The weapon miniatures are small and easily lost, and the character colours include a green and a red that are difficult to tell apart.

Codenames

Guide your team to identify all of your agents from a grid of words, using one-word clues, without hitting the assassin.

Two teams, one grid of words, and two people who know which words belong to whom and are allowed to say almost nothing.

Setup

Lay out twenty-five word cards in a five-by-five grid.

Each team picks a clue-giver. Both clue-givers — and only they — look at the same key card, which shows:

• 9 words belonging to the starting team
• 8 words belonging to the other team
• 7 innocent bystanders
• 1 assassin

The starting team is shown on the key card and has one extra word to find.

Giving a clue

On your team's turn, the clue-giver says one word and one number.

The word relates to the words on the grid you want your team to guess. The number says how many.

You may not use any word currently visible in the grid, and you may not use a form of one. Tone, emphasis and gestures are all forbidden — the clue is the whole communication.

Guessing

The team discusses and then guesses one word at a time by touching it. The clue-giver covers the word with a card revealing who it belonged to:

• Your agent — correct. Guess again if you want.
• A bystander — turn ends.
• The other team's agent — turn ends, and you have helped them.
• The assassin — you lose immediately.

You may make one more guess than the number given, as long as every guess so far has been correct. This lets you pick up words you missed from earlier clues.

Ending

The first team to reveal all of their agents wins. Revealing the assassin loses instantly, whatever the score.

Clue numbers you can give

Zero is legal, and means none of the grid words relate to your clue; the team may then guess as many as they like. "Unlimited" is also legal and is used when several known words are outstanding.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Play a decider round with the roles swapped. Most groups instead simply play best of three from the start.

When it is fair to stop

Rounds are short enough that finishing is easier than quitting. If the room has lost interest, play the current round out and stop there.

Levelling it up

A group with one very strong clue-giver — Cap their clues at two words maximum, or make them give clues for exactly one card.

If a piece is missing

Missing word cards barely matter — the grid only needs twenty-five words, and any twenty-five from the set work. A lost key card can be replaced by dealing agent cards face down into a grid and peeking.

Accessibility

Agent cards are red and blue, the classic problematic pair; the key card is also colour-coded. Mark team cards with shapes, or say the team aloud each turn. The game is entirely verbal otherwise and works well for players with limited mobility.

Codenames Duet

Find all fifteen agents between you, giving each other one-word clues, before you run out of turns or hit the assassin.

The cooperative version of Codenames. You are both clue-givers and both guessers, and neither of you can see the whole picture.

Setup

Deal twenty-five words into a square, five along each edge. Slide a key card into the holder and place it between you so that each player sees only their own side.

The two sides are different. Each shows nine of your agents, three assassins, and the rest bystanders. Crucially, some words are agents on both sides — and there are fifteen agents to find in total, not eighteen.

Take nine turn tokens.

Playing

Give your partner a one-word clue and a number, exactly as in standard Codenames. The clue must relate to the meaning of the words, and it must not be any word visible on the table.

Your partner guesses. For each guess:

• Agent on your key — place a green agent card. They may guess again.
• Bystander — the turn ends.
• Assassin on your key — the mission ends immediately in failure.

Your partner may make one more guess than the number you said, and may stop early at any point.

Then you swap roles and they give you a clue.

The critical difference from Codenames

A word that is an assassin on your key may be a perfectly good agent on your partner's. You cannot see their assassins and they cannot see yours. Steering your partner away from something you cannot warn them about is the entire emotional experience of the game.

Turn tokens

Each round costs a token. Run out and the mission fails. Finding an agent that was already found from the other side returns a token, which is how a good pair buys itself time.

Winning

Find all fifteen agents before the tokens are gone. Because both players contribute, some agents count for both of you and the total is fifteen rather than eighteen.

The campaign

The box includes a map of missions with varying numbers of tokens and allowed mistakes. It is worth using — the escalating difficulty is genuinely well designed and gives a pair something to work through over weeks.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Cooperative, so there is nothing to tie. A mission either succeeds or it does not.

When it is fair to stop

A failed mission takes fifteen minutes and the campaign map lets you retry the same node, so there is no reason to abandon one. If you hit the assassin, the mission is simply over and you start another.

If a piece is missing

The key card holder is essential and cannot be improvised easily, since it must show each player a different pattern. The word cards can be replaced with any twenty-five nouns written on paper.

Accessibility

The green and beige agent cards are close in value under low light. The game is entirely language-based and assumes fluent shared vocabulary and cultural reference, which makes it hard across a language gap in a way that Codenames Duet's cooperative framing does at least make gentler.

Coup

Be the last player with any influence remaining, by bluffing about which characters you hold and calling other players' bluffs.

You hold two character cards face down. You may claim to be any character at any time, whether or not you hold them. Everything else follows from that.

Setup

Shuffle the fifteen character cards and deal two to each player, face down. These are your influence. Take two coins each from the treasury.

The general actions

Available to everybody, always, and never challengeable:

• Income — take one coin.
• Foreign aid — take two coins. Can be blocked by a claimed Duke.
• Coup — pay seven coins and force a player to lose a card. Cannot be blocked or challenged. If you begin your turn with ten or more coins you must coup.

The characters

• Duke — take three coins. Blocks foreign aid.
• Assassin — pay three coins to make a player lose a card. Blocked by the Contessa.
• Contessa — blocks assassination. Has no action of its own.
• Captain — steal two coins from another player. Blocked by another Captain or by the Ambassador.
• Ambassador — draw two cards from the deck, keep two of the total, return two. Blocks stealing.

Claiming and challenging

To take a character action, simply claim that character. You do not show anything.

Any other player may challenge. If they do, you reveal the card:

• If you had it, the challenger loses a card. You shuffle your revealed card back into the deck and draw a replacement, so your bluffing position is restored.
• If you did not have it, you lose a card and the action does not happen.

Blocks work identically. Claiming a block can itself be challenged, and a false block costs you a card.

Losing influence

When you lose a card you choose which one and turn it face up permanently. Everybody can now see it, and everybody knows what you no longer hold.

Lose both and you are out of the game.

Winning

Be the last player with a face-down card.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Impossible — the game ends when one player is the last with influence.

When it is fair to stop

Eliminated players are out for the whole game rather than the round, so a short game is a real risk. Playing best of three is the usual fix, and anyone knocked out in the first two minutes should be offered the next deal quickly.

How people cheat

Looking at your revealed influence card after it has been turned face up, to remind yourself what is left.
Spot it: It is public information anyway. This one is barely cheating and mostly forgetfulness.

If a piece is missing

Coins are trivially replaced by anything countable. The character cards are the game. Reference cards are the component people lose first and miss most — writing the five characters and their actions on paper solves it.

Accessibility

Coup demands holding five characters, their actions and their counters in mind simultaneously, which is a real barrier without the reference card in front of every player. It is also a game about lying to friends, which some players find genuinely uncomfortable rather than fun.

Crazy Eights

Empty your hand before anyone else by matching the top discard by rank or suit.

The public-domain ancestor of Uno, playable with any deck of cards. If you know Uno you already know this; the differences are that suits replace colours and that only the Eight is special.

Setup

Deal five cards each, or seven for a two-player game. Place the remainder face down as the stock and turn the top card face up to begin the discard pile.

Playing a turn

Play one card that matches the top discard by suit or by rank. A seven of hearts can be followed by any heart, or by any seven.

An Eight is wild. Play it on anything, and name the suit that the next player must match. You are not obliged to name the suit of the Eight itself.

If you cannot play, draw from the stock until you find a playable card, then play it. If the stock runs out and you still cannot play, your turn passes.

Ending the round

The first player to empty their hand wins the round.

If the stock is exhausted and nobody can play, the round is blocked. The player with the lowest total in hand wins it.

Scoring

The winner scores the value of the cards remaining in every other hand:

| Card | Points | | --- | --- | | Eight | 50 | | King, Queen, Jack, Ten | 10 | | Ace | 1 | | All others | Face value |

Play to 100 points, or to whatever total suits the length of evening you want.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

If two players go out on the same round, which requires a house rule to occur at all, the lower card total wins.

When it is fair to stop

End it whenever. There is no accumulated position to waste, and a hand can be abandoned mid-trick without anyone losing anything they built.

If a piece is missing

Needs nothing but a standard deck, which makes it the game to fall back on when a boxed game is missing pieces. If you are short of cards, deal fewer.

Accessibility

Standard playing cards have small corner indices; a large-index or jumbo deck helps considerably. The wild card is defined by rank rather than colour, so colour vision is not required.

Cribbage

Be first to peg 121 points, scored from card combinations during play and from the hands counted afterwards.

Two people, one deck and a wooden board with a hundred and twenty-one holes. The game is arithmetic dressed as a pub tradition, and it is very old.

The deal

Each player is dealt six cards. Both players choose two to throw face down into a separate four-card hand called the crib, which belongs to the dealer and is counted last. Throwing well into your own crib and badly into your opponent's is half the skill.

The non-dealer then cuts the deck and the dealer turns the top card of the lower half face up. This is the starter, and it belongs to everybody. If it is a jack, the dealer immediately pegs two.

Card values

Aces are one, face cards are ten, everything else is its number. Suits only matter for flushes.

The play

Players alternate laying cards face up in front of themselves, announcing the running total as they go. The total may never exceed thirty-one. Score as you go:

• Making the total exactly fifteen scores two.
• Making it exactly thirty-one scores two.
• Playing a card of the same rank as the previous one scores two, a third in a row scores six, a fourth scores twelve.
• Completing a run of three or more, in any order, scores one per card.

If you cannot play without exceeding thirty-one, say "go" and your opponent continues alone. Whoever plays the last card before a reset scores one. The total then resets to zero and play continues with the remaining cards.

The count

Now everybody counts their four cards plus the starter as a five-card hand. The non-dealer counts first, which matters when the game is nearly over.

• Every distinct combination totalling fifteen scores two.
• Every pair scores two, counted for each pairing.
• Every run of three or more scores one per card, counted for each distinct run.
• Four cards of one suit score four; if the starter matches too, five.
• The jack of the starter's suit scores one.

The dealer then counts their hand, and finally the crib on the same terms — except that a crib flush requires all five cards to match.

The first player to 121 wins immediately.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

The board makes ties impossible: the game ends the moment somebody pegs 121, mid-count if necessary.

When it is fair to stop

The board makes the gap visible, so a player twenty holes from home against an opponent still in the first street can simply be conceded to. Skunk lines exist precisely so that a hopeless position has a name.

Levelling it up

A beginner — The experienced player counts both hands aloud, including their opponent's, until the beginner is confident. Then switch muggins off.

How people cheat

Over-pegging by a hole or two on a crowded board, especially on long counts.
Spot it: Peg with two pegs so the previous position is always visible. That is what the second peg is for.

Undercounting an opponent's hand out loud while they are distracted.
Spot it: Everyone counts their own hand, aloud, in turn. If you play muggins, this matters even more.

If a piece is missing

The board is only a counter. A pen and paper replaces it entirely, and a missing peg can be a coin or a match. Losing the board is inconvenient, never fatal.

Accessibility

Standard boards have small holes and small pegs, which is a real dexterity barrier; large-format boards and continuous-track boards exist. The counting is genuinely arithmetic-heavy and happens under mild time pressure, which is the main cognitive load of the game.

Dominion

Build a deck that buys victory points faster than anyone else, then have the most points when the game ends.

Everybody starts with the same terrible deck of ten cards. You buy better ones, they shuffle into your deck, and you draw them again later. That loop is the whole game and it was the first of its kind.

Setup

Every player begins with seven Coppers and three Estates. Shuffle and draw five.

Lay out the basic supply — Copper, Silver, Gold, Estate, Duchy, Province, and Curse — plus ten kingdom card stacks chosen from the box. The ten you choose change the game completely, which is why the same box plays differently every time.

A turn — three phases, always in this order

Action. Play one action card from your hand and do what it says. Many action cards grant extra actions, and chaining them is where the game gets interesting. If you have no actions to play, or do not want to, skip straight on.

Buy. Play as many treasure cards as you like from your hand, adding up their coin values, then buy one card from the supply costing no more than that total. The card you buy goes to your discard pile, not your hand.

Clean-up. Discard everything you played and everything left in your hand. Draw five new cards.

The deck

When your draw pile runs out, shuffle your discard pile and it becomes the new draw pile. This is why every card you buy matters — everything you own comes back around eventually, including the Estates that clog your hand and do nothing.

Ending

The game ends immediately at the end of any turn where the Province pile is empty, or where three supply piles are empty — four in a four-player game.

Then count the victory points in your entire deck: Estates are one, Duchies three, Provinces six, Curses minus one. Most points wins. If tied, the player who took fewer turns wins.

The thing that catches everyone

Victory cards do nothing during play. They are dead weight in your hand all game, and they are the only way to win. Buying them too early strangles your deck; buying them too late loses the race. That tension is Dominion.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Fewer turns taken wins. If both have taken the same number, it is a genuine shared victory, which the rules explicitly allow.

When it is fair to stop

A player whose deck has failed to come together by the midpoint is unlikely to win, but the province race can end abruptly and second place is genuinely contested. Playing on costs five minutes, so finish it.

Levelling it up

A first-time player — Give them an extra Silver in the opening deck, and use the recommended First Game card set.

How people cheat

Drawing an extra card during a busy turn with a lot of chaining.
Spot it: Play cards in a visible row rather than a pile, and leave them there until clean-up.

If a piece is missing

The cards are the entire game. Nothing here can be improvised, and a missing kingdom pile simply means playing without that card, which is fine since only ten of twenty-five are used anyway.

Accessibility

The card text is dense and every game uses a different ten cards, so the setup requires reading and understanding ten new abilities before the first turn. Laying the ten kingdom cards where everyone can read them, rather than in a tight row, makes a substantial difference. Constant shuffling is a real dexterity demand across a whole game.

Fishbowl

Get your team to guess as many names from the bowl as possible, across three rounds that use the same slips with progressively harsher restrictions.

Three games in one, played with the same slips of paper. The reason it works is that by the third round everybody already half-remembers what is in the bowl, so an impossible restriction becomes achievable.

Filling the bowl

Everybody writes the same number of slips — three is standard — each with one name or phrase. Famous people, characters, places, objects, anything the room can reasonably be expected to recognise.

Fold them and put them all in one bowl. Do not sort them and do not look.

Round one — describe

Teams alternate. One player takes the bowl and has a minute.

They may say anything at all except the words on the slip. No rhymes with it, no spelling it, no using any part of the phrase itself.

Every slip guessed correctly goes into that team's pile. Keep going until the timer stops, then pass the bowl to the other team. The round ends when the bowl is empty.

Round two — one word

Put every slip back in the bowl. Same teams, same order.

Now the clue-giver may say exactly one word. Not one sentence, not one word plus a gesture. One word, then silence while their team guesses.

This is only possible because everyone heard the slips in round one. That is the design.

Round three — mime

Refill the bowl again. No words, no sounds at all. Acting only.

By this point the room has heard every slip twice and round three moves alarmingly fast, which is the intended payoff.

Scoring

Count each team's slips across the three rounds and add them together. If your group has stopped keeping score by round three, the game is working correctly.

Passing

Most groups allow you to skip a slip you cannot convey, putting it back in the bowl. Agree before round one whether skipping is unlimited or costs you something, because it materially changes how hard the later rounds are.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Add a fourth round with a new restriction, or accept the draw. The scores usually stopped being tracked long before this matters.

When it is fair to stop

Stop after a completed round rather than mid-round, because the same slips carry across all three rounds and abandoning one wastes the writing everybody did. Finishing round two and stopping is a perfectly respectable end.

If a piece is missing

Nothing to lose beyond paper and a bowl, both of which are improvised anyway. A hat, a mug or an upturned hood all work.

Accessibility

Round three is mimed and excludes anyone who cannot perform physically unless the group agrees to seated play. The first round is purely verbal and the second is a single word, so a player who prefers not to mime can be swapped out of round three without disrupting anything.

Go Fish

Collect more complete sets of four matching ranks than anyone else.

A children's classic that is quietly a game of deduction: every question you ask tells everyone else what you are holding.

Setup

Deal five cards to each player, or seven when only two or three are playing. Spread the rest face down in the middle — this is the pond.

Playing a turn

Ask one specific player for one specific rank: "Siyu, do you have any sevens?"

You must already hold at least one card of that rank. This is the rule that makes the game work, and the one most often dropped.

• If they hold any, they must hand over all of them, and you take another turn.
• If they hold none, they say "go fish" and you draw one card from the pond. Your turn ends.

Completing sets

The moment you hold all four cards of a rank, place them face up in front of you. That set is scored and out of play.

Ending the game

The game ends when all thirteen sets have been laid down. Whoever has the most sets wins; equal sets is a shared win.

If your hand empties while cards remain in the pond, draw one and continue. You are only out when both your hand and the pond are empty.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Most sets wins; if level, the game is drawn. Nobody minds.

When it is fair to stop

Stop the moment the youngest player stops enjoying it. Nothing is lost, and a game abandoned happily is better than one finished grimly.

Levelling it up

Mixed ages — Adults play with their hand face up on the table. Children find this hilarious and it evens the memory gap completely.

How people cheat

Denying holding a card you were asked for, then playing it two turns later.
Spot it: It is usually a child and usually not malice. Ask to see the hand rather than accusing.

If a piece is missing

Works with any deck. With a partial deck, remove whole ranks rather than individual cards so that every set is still completable.

Accessibility

Rank-based rather than colour-based, so colour vision is not needed. Holding a large fan of cards is the main dexterity barrier — a card holder or a stand solves it for small hands and for anyone with limited grip.

Hearts

Avoid taking tricks containing hearts or the queen of spades — unless you decide to take every single one of them, which flips the whole game.

Every heart you take is worth a point. The queen of spades is worth thirteen. Points are bad. That is the entire game, and it takes about thirty seconds to explain and several hours to stop thinking about.

Dealing and passing

Deal the deck out evenly. Before anyone plays a card, each player chooses three cards from their hand and passes them face down to another player — left on the first hand, right on the second, straight across on the third, and on the fourth hand nobody passes at all. The cycle then repeats.

Choose your three before you look at what arrives. Everybody passes at once.

Playing

Whoever holds the two of clubs must lead it. Play proceeds clockwise. You must follow the suit that was led if you hold anything in it. If you do not, you may play any card you like, and this is where the game lives — a void in a suit is permission to hand somebody the queen.

The highest card of the led suit wins the trick. Suits other than the led suit cannot win it, no matter how high. The winner leads the next trick.

Two restrictions worth stating plainly

On the very first trick you may not play a heart or the queen of spades, even if you have nothing else. Hearts may not be led until a heart has already been discarded on some earlier trick — commonly described as hearts being broken. You may play a heart onto a suit you cannot follow at any time; that is usually how they get broken in the first place.

Scoring

Count what you took. Each heart is one point, the queen of spades is thirteen. A whole hand is therefore worth twenty-six points to somebody.

Shooting the moon

If one player takes all thirteen hearts and the queen of spades, the scoring inverts: they score nothing and every other player takes twenty-six. Attempting this and falling one heart short is catastrophic, which is what makes it worth attempting.

The game ends when a player crosses the agreed target, and the lowest score wins.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

If two players are level on the lowest score when somebody crosses the target, play another hand. Sudden death is the usual convention.

When it is fair to stop

Hearts is played to a target score, so the graceful exit is to lower the target rather than abandon the sheet. A player sitting on ninety points is one bad hand from ending it anyway.

How people cheat

Reneging — failing to follow suit while holding the suit, usually to dump the queen.
Spot it: When a hand ends strangely, the trick pile shows it. Anyone may ask to check the last trick.

If a piece is missing

Nothing to lose beyond the deck itself. A missing card means a missing card, and the hand cannot be dealt evenly, so retire the deck.

Accessibility

Scoring is arithmetic-heavy and runs across many hands, so a calculator or a phone is genuinely useful. Distinguishing the queen of spades from the jack at a glance matters more here than in most games; large-index decks help.

Hive

Completely surround your opponent's queen bee with tiles of any colour.

Chess with no board. Twenty-two tiles, and the playing area is whatever shape the tiles happen to make.

Setup

Each player takes eleven tiles: one queen bee, two spiders, two beetles, three grasshoppers and three ants.

The first player places any tile on the table. The second places any tile touching it. From then on, every new tile you place must touch at least one of your own tiles and must not touch any of your opponent's.

The queen rule

Your queen bee must be placed by your fourth turn at the latest. Until your queen is on the table you may not move any of your tiles — only place new ones.

Moving

Instead of placing, you may move a tile already in the hive. Three restrictions govern every move:

The hive must stay connected. If removing a tile would split the hive into two separate groups, that tile cannot move at all. It is pinned.

Tiles must slide. A tile must be able to physically slide into its destination without being lifted over anything. If the gap between two tiles is too narrow to slide through, the move is illegal.

The hive must remain one piece after the move too.

How each creature moves

• Queen bee — one space.
• Spider — exactly three spaces, no more, no less, never backtracking.
• Beetle — one space, and may climb on top of the hive. A tile underneath a beetle cannot move, and the beetle takes the colour of the stack for placement purposes.
• Grasshopper — jumps in a straight line over one or more tiles, landing on the first empty space beyond. It does not slide, so it ignores the narrow-gap rule entirely.
• Soldier ant — any number of spaces around the outside of the hive. The strongest piece in the game by a distance.

Winning

Surround the opposing queen on all six sides. Any tiles count, including that player's own and including your own. If both queens become surrounded on the same move, the game is drawn.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Both queens surrounded on the same move is a draw. It is the only drawn result in the game and it is rare.

When it is fair to stop

Resigning a lost position is normal, as in any abstract with no hidden information. Both players can usually see the surround coming three moves out, and playing it through teaches the loser nothing they have not already grasped.

Levelling it up

A stronger player — They start without one grasshopper. Removing the ant is too severe and removing a spider too mild.

If a piece is missing

Nothing to lose but tiles, and a lost tile changes the game rather than stopping it. The tiles are chunky bakelite and famously durable; the pocket edition is smaller and lighter.

Accessibility

There is no board, which means the play area drifts and can spread further than expected — a large flat surface matters more than it sounds. The tiles are substantial and easy to grip, and the two colours are strongly contrasted. The insect symbols are embossed as well as printed, which helps considerably.

Jaipur

Sell goods at better moments than your opponent across three rounds, taking the higher-value tokens before they run out.

Two traders, one market of five cards, and a shrinking pile of tokens. The whole game is knowing when to sell.

Setup

Shuffle the deck. Place three camels face up in the market plus two more cards, making a market of five. Deal five cards to each player; any camels dealt to you go face up in front of you immediately, into what is called your herd.

Lay out the goods tokens in stacks, highest value on top. Diamonds, gold and silver are the expensive commodities; cloth, spice and leather are the cheap ones.

Your turn — take or sell

Taking comes in three forms:

• Take one single goods card from the market into your hand.
• Take all the camels from the market into your herd, however many there are.
• Swap two or more cards, exchanging cards from your hand and herd for the same number from the market.

Selling means discarding any number of cards of one commodity and taking that many tokens from the top of that commodity's stack.

Because tokens descend in value, selling early gets you the good ones. Selling late gets you whatever is left.

The rules that shape everything

You may never hold more than seven cards in hand. Camels do not count towards this, because they live in your herd rather than your hand.

Diamonds, gold and silver may only be sold two or more at a time. You cannot sell a single one.

Selling three, four or five cards at once earns a bonus token drawn blind from the matching stack, and those bonuses are large enough to decide rounds.

Ending a round

The round ends immediately when three token stacks are empty, or when the deck cannot refill the market.

Total your tokens. Whoever has the larger herd of camels takes the five-point camel bonus. Higher total wins the round.

The match

First to two rounds wins.

The tension

Taking camels is powerful because it lets you swap greedily later, but every camel you take is one you are not selling. And every turn you spend building a big set is a turn your opponent might spend taking the top diamond token.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Higher token count first, then the largest single bonus token. Rounds cannot realistically end level after that.

When it is fair to stop

Each round takes about ten minutes and the match is best of three, so there is no reason to abandon one. A player who has lost the first two rounds has lost the match already and the third need not be played.

Levelling it up

A stronger player — They may not take camels on their first two turns, which delays the big swaps that decide early rounds.

If a piece is missing

The tokens are the scoring system and their descending values matter, so they cannot be replaced casually — though a written list of the values would do at a pinch. The cards are the game.

Accessibility

Commodities are distinguished by both colour and illustration, which works well. The tokens are small and stack into piles that need reading from the top down, which is the main visual demand. Turns are short and the whole thing sits in a small space, making it excellent for cramped tables.

Love Letter

Be the last player standing in a round, or hold the highest card when the deck runs out.

Sixteen cards. You hold one. On your turn you draw a second and play one of them. That is the entire ruleset, and it produces a surprisingly deep bluffing game.

The deck

Eight kinds of card, numbered by strength:

• 8 Princess (one copy) — discard this for any reason and you are out.
• 7 Countess (one) — must be played if you also hold the King or Prince.
• 6 King (one) — swap hands with another player.
• 5 Prince (two) — force a player to discard their card and draw a new one.
• 4 Handmaid (two) — you cannot be targeted until your next turn.
• 3 Baron (two) — compare hands privately with another player; the lower is out.
• 2 Priest (two) — look at another player's card.
• 1 Guard (five) — name a card other than Guard; if that player holds it, they are out.

A round

Shuffle and remove the top card face down without looking. It stays out of the round, which means you can never be certain what remains. Deal one card to each player.

On your turn, draw a card so you hold two, then play one of them face up and do what it says. Your discarded cards stay visible in front of you, and tracking what everybody has played is most of the skill.

Being out

An eliminated player reveals their hand and takes no further part in the round. They return for the next one.

Ending a round

The round ends when only one player remains, or when the deck runs out. In the second case, everyone still in reveals their card and the highest number wins.

The winner takes a token. Play more rounds until somebody has enough tokens to win the match.

Two rules that catch everybody

If you ever hold the Countess together with the King or the Prince, you must play the Countess. You have no choice, and this is the only compulsory play in the game.

Discarding the Princess eliminates you immediately, however it happened — even if a Prince forced you to do it. That is not a punishment for a mistake, it is a weapon somebody used on you.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Compare the values of the cards discarded during the round; highest total wins. Some printings instead award a token to each tied player, so check the edition in front of you.

When it is fair to stop

A single round takes about two minutes, so there is never a reason to leave mid-round. Stop after any round; the token count carries no partial state.

If a piece is missing

The tokens are purely a counter and can be coins, sweets or tally marks. The cards themselves are the game and cannot be improvised without a printout.

Accessibility

The card text is small and the numbers matter more than the names, so a quick-reference list of the eight cards and their effects placed in the middle of the table removes almost all of the memory burden. Rounds are short, which suits players who find long games tiring.

Ludo

Get all four of your tokens around the board and into the home column before the other players manage it.

Four tokens, one die, and a lap of the board. It is almost pure chance, which is exactly why it works with a four-year-old and a grandparent at the same table.

Setup

Each player takes the four tokens of one colour and places them in their base. Nothing starts on the track.

Getting out

You cannot move onto the board at all until you roll a six. A six places one token on your coloured starting square and then earns you another roll, so a lucky opening can put two tokens out and move one of them.

Roll three sixes in a row and your turn ends immediately with no move, which exists purely to stop one player monopolising the dice.

Moving

Move any one of your tokens clockwise around the track by the number rolled. You choose which token each turn, and that choice is the only real decision the game offers.

Capturing

Land exactly on a square occupied by an opponent's token and it goes back to their base, to begin again from nothing. Your own tokens never capture each other; they simply share the square.

The starting squares are safe in most sets, usually marked with a star or a different colour, and a token sitting on one cannot be captured.

Coming home

After a full lap you turn up your own coloured column towards the centre. You must roll the exact number to reach home — overshooting means you do not move that token at all. A token three squares from home with a five rolled is stuck, and you must move something else.

Winning

The first player to bring all four tokens home wins. Most tables carry on to settle second and third place, which is worth doing because the game is frequently more interesting after the winner has left it.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Impossible. One player brings all four tokens home before the others.

When it is fair to stop

A player with every token still in base after twenty minutes is entitled to stop, and it is kinder to let them. Nothing in the game rewards persistence, so nobody is giving up an advantage by leaving.

Levelling it up

Adults against small children — The adult must roll a six to move at all, not merely to enter. It slows them dramatically and children find it very funny.

If a piece is missing

Everything here is replaceable. Tokens can be coins, buttons or torn paper, and the board can be drawn. A missing die is the only genuine stopper, and a phone will do.

Accessibility

The four colours are traditionally red, green, yellow and blue, and the red and green pairing is the worst possible choice for the most common form of colour blindness. Marking tokens with shapes or letters solves it entirely. The tokens themselves are small and fiddly to lift from a crowded square.

Monopoly

Bankrupt everyone else by acquiring property and charging rent.

The published game is roughly ninety minutes long. The game most people have played is three hours long, because of two rules — one added and one skipped. Both are covered in the rulings.

Setup

Each player takes a token and 1500 in cash. Place tokens on Go. Shuffle the Chance and Community Chest decks.

A turn

1. Roll two dice and move clockwise that many spaces. 2. Resolve the space you land on. 3. Build, trade or mortgage — you may do these at almost any time, including on other players' turns for trades. 4. Pass the dice, unless you rolled a double, in which case roll again. Three doubles in a row sends you to jail.

Landing on a space

• Unowned property — buy it at the printed price, or decline. If you decline, it is auctioned to every player, starting at any price. The auction is not optional.
• Owned property — pay the owner rent. Rent doubles on undeveloped properties if the owner holds the whole colour group.
• Chance / Community Chest — draw and follow the card.
• Tax — pay the bank.
• Go To Jail — go directly there.
• Free Parking — nothing happens.

Jail

You leave jail by rolling a double, paying 50, or using a card. After three failed attempts you must pay. While in jail you still collect rent and may still build and trade.

Building

You may build once you own every property in a colour group. Houses must be built evenly — no property in a group may have more than one house more than another. Five houses become a hotel.

There are exactly 32 houses and 12 hotels. When they run out, nobody can build until some are sold back.

Bankruptcy

If you cannot pay, you are bankrupt and out. Your assets go to your creditor, or to the bank if the debt was to the bank. The last player standing wins.

Ending early

Almost nobody plays to a single survivor. Agreeing a time limit at the start, then counting cash plus property value, is a perfectly good way to finish and produces the same winner most of the time.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Only arises when a game is stopped by agreement rather than played to bankruptcy. Count cash plus the face value of property, and highest total wins.

When it is fair to stop

Agree a finish time before you start, and when it arrives, count cash plus property value and declare a winner. Almost nobody plays to the bankruptcy of every opponent, and pretending otherwise is how the game got its reputation.

Levelling it up

Young children — Give them a larger starting bank and allow rent to be waived once per player.

How people cheat

The banker paying themselves from the bank, usually in small amounts across a long game.
Spot it: Never let the banker also be a player if you can avoid it, and keep the bank's cash physically separate from theirs.

Quietly under-declaring rent owed, or collecting rent on a property somebody else owns.
Spot it: Title deeds face up in front of their owner, always. Most rent errors are genuine and this fixes those too.

If a piece is missing

Money is the component most often lost and the easiest to replace with paper or a phone. Missing houses can be represented by anything of the right size — but note the official rules cap houses at 32, and that cap is a real constraint, not an accident of the box.

Accessibility

Property groups are identified by colour bands, which is the main barrier for colour vision — the deeds are labelled by name and can be sorted by position. Money handling and repeated arithmetic are the biggest load; a banking app or a dedicated banker helps considerably.

Pablo

Finish with the lowest total in front of you, while remembering cards you are only allowed to look at twice.

Also played as Cabo and Cambio. Four cards in front of you, face down, and you are allowed to look at two of them — once, at the start. Everything after that is memory.

Setup

Deal four cards face down to each player, arranged in a two-by-two square. Do not look at them.

Each player may then look at exactly two of their own four cards, once. Then they go back face down and stay that way.

Place the rest of the deck face down as the stock and turn one card to start the discard pile.

Playing a turn

Draw one card, either from the stock or the top of the discard pile. Then choose:

• Swap it for one of your four face-down cards, putting the old one on the discard pile. You may look at the card you are putting down, but not at the one you are picking up if it came from the stock.
• Discard it directly, using its power if it has one.

Card powers

There is no publisher and therefore no official set. The most common is:

| Card | Power | | --- | --- | | 7 or 8 | Look at one of your own cards | | 9 or 10 | Look at one card belonging to another player | | Jack or Queen | Swap any two cards on the table, without looking | | Black King | Worth zero points |

Agree the set before dealing. Every group plays this differently and every group assumes theirs is standard.

Calling Pablo

Instead of drawing, you may call "Pablo" if you believe you have the lowest total. Every other player takes one final turn, then all cards are revealed.

• You are lowest — you score zero for the round.
• You are not — you take a penalty, most commonly 10 points plus your hand.

Scoring

Number cards count face value, Jacks and Queens count 10, Kings count 10 except the black Kings which count zero, and Aces count 1.

Play rounds until somebody passes 100 points. Lowest cumulative score wins — this is a game you are trying to lose.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Lowest total wins; if two players tie, the one who did not call Pablo takes it.

When it is fair to stop

Fine to stop after any completed round, since scores carry cleanly and a part-finished round can simply be dropped.

If a piece is missing

Any deck. Without jokers, drop their power and treat Kings as the zero-value card, which many groups do anyway.

Accessibility

Relies on memory rather than speed, but the snap rule rewards quick hands and can exclude players with slower reaction times — it is easily dropped without harming the game. Card values are numeric, so colour vision is not required.

Patchwork

Fill your quilt board with patches while keeping ahead on buttons, and avoid leaving empty squares.

Two people building quilts out of awkward shapes, spending buttons and time. The clever part is that turn order is not fixed.

Setup

Arrange all thirty-three patches in a circle in any order, with the neutral token sitting immediately before the smallest patch. Each player takes an empty nine-by-nine quilt board, five buttons, and a time token placed at the start of the time board.

Whose turn it is

Not alternating. The player whose time token is furthest back takes the next turn, which means you can take two, three or four turns in a row while your opponent sits ahead of you on the track.

If both tokens are on the same space, the one on top goes.

Your turn — one of two things

Buy a patch. You may choose from only the three patches immediately clockwise of the neutral token. Pay its button cost, move the neutral token to where that patch was, and sew the patch onto your quilt. Then advance your time token by the patch's time value.

Patches may be rotated and flipped freely, but must not overlap and must fit entirely on the board.

Advance and get paid. Move your time token to one space beyond your opponent's, and collect one button for every space you moved.

Buttons and income

Some patches have buttons printed on them. Whenever your time token passes a button symbol on the time board, you collect one button for every button printed across your entire quilt. Patches with button income are worth far more than their cost suggests, and worth more the earlier you buy them.

The bonus tile

The first player to completely fill a seven-by-seven square anywhere on their quilt takes the special tile, worth seven points at the end. Only one player can ever claim it.

Ending

The game ends when both time tokens have reached the final space.

Score your buttons, add seven if you hold the bonus tile, and subtract two points for every empty square left on your quilt. Highest score wins; a tie goes to whoever passed the final space first.

The thing that decides games

Empty squares cost two each, and a nine-by-nine board has eighty-one of them. Players who chase button income without covering their board reliably lose to players who bought ugly cheap patches and filled the gaps.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

The player who reached the final space first wins. It is the only tiebreak in the game and it decides a surprising number of close ones.

When it is fair to stop

Both players can see the whole board state, so a hopeless quilt is visible to everyone. That said, the game is half an hour and the second half is the interesting part, so finishing is usually worth it.

Levelling it up

A first-timer — Ignore the two-point penalty for empty squares in their first game, and tell them you are doing it.

If a piece is missing

The patches are the puzzle and cannot be improvised. Buttons can be any counter. The time board is easily drawn on paper.

Accessibility

The patches are small cardboard polyominoes and manipulating them into tight spaces is a real dexterity demand. The quilt boards are visually clear and the colour distinctions are not load-bearing, which helps. Spatial reasoning is the entire game, so it is a poor fit for anyone who finds that unenjoyable.

Texas Hold'em

Win chips, either by holding the best five-card hand at showdown or by making everyone else fold.

Two private cards each, five shared in the middle, four rounds of betting. The rules take five minutes; the game takes considerably longer than that.

Setup

Give everyone the same number of chips. Place the dealer button in front of one player; it moves one seat clockwise after every hand.

The two players left of the button post forced bets: the small blind and the big blind, the big blind usually being twice the small.

The shape of a hand

1. Pre-flop — everyone gets two private cards. Betting starts left of the big blind. 2. The flop — three community cards are dealt face up. Betting starts left of the button. 3. The turn — a fourth community card. Betting. 4. The river — a fifth community card. Final betting. 5. Showdown — remaining players make their best five cards from any combination of their two and the five shared.

If at any point everyone folds to one player, that player wins the pot and does not have to show their cards.

Your options when the action reaches you

• Fold — give up the hand.
• Check — pass, only if nobody has bet this round.
• Call — match the current bet.
• Raise — increase it, by at least the size of the previous bet or raise.
• All-in — commit every chip you have. You can only win the portion of the pot you matched; the rest forms a side pot.

Hand rankings, best first

| Hand | Description | | --- | --- | | Straight flush | Five in sequence, all one suit | | Four of a kind | Four cards of the same rank | | Full house | Three of one rank, two of another | | Flush | Five of one suit, not in sequence | | Straight | Five in sequence, mixed suits | | Three of a kind | Three cards of the same rank | | Two pair | Two pairs | | One pair | Two cards of the same rank | | High card | None of the above |

A hand is always exactly five cards. When two hands share a rank, the remaining cards — the kickers — decide it. Identical five-card hands split the pot; suits never break the tie.

The Ace plays high or low, so A-2-3-4-5 is a valid straight (the lowest one). It cannot wrap: Q-K-A-2-3 is nothing.

Betting round ends when

Every player still in the hand has either folded or matched the largest bet. </br>

Playing at home

Set the blinds low enough that the evening lasts. A common mistake is blinds so large relative to stacks that the game becomes a coin-flipping contest within half an hour.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Identical five-card hands split the pot exactly. Suits never break a tie in Hold'em, whatever anyone at the table claims.

When it is fair to stop

Announce your last hand before it is dealt, never after you win one. Leaving immediately after a big pot is the single rudest thing you can do at a home game.

Levelling it up

A beginner at a table of regulars — Play with cards face up for the first three hands and talk through the decisions. It costs one round and saves an evening.

How people cheat

Looking at the next card while gathering the deck, or peeking at the bottom card during a sloppy shuffle.
Spot it: Cut the deck every deal and burn a card before each street. Both are standard practice for exactly this reason.

Soft play — two friends deliberately avoiding raising each other in a bigger game.
Spot it: It is very hard to prove and very easy to feel. Change the seating.

If a piece is missing

Any chips will do — coins, sweets, buttons — provided everyone agrees the denominations before starting. The dealer button can be any distinctive object.

Accessibility

Suits matter for flushes, and the standard suit colours are two black and two red, which is difficult for some colour vision. Four-colour decks solve this completely and are worth using by default. Chip denominations should differ in size or texture, not only colour.

Gin Rummy

Arrange your ten cards into sets and runs, then knock before your opponent does.

A two-player game of collecting and discarding, where the interesting decision is not what to keep but when to stop.

Melds

Your goal is to arrange cards into melds:

• Set — three or four cards of the same rank (7♠ 7♥ 7♦).
• Run — three or more consecutive cards in one suit (4♣ 5♣ 6♣).

A card can only be in one meld at a time. Anything not in a meld is deadwood.

Deadwood values: face cards 10, Aces 1, all others face value.

Setup

Deal ten cards each. Turn the next card face up to begin the discard pile; the remainder is the stock.

Playing a turn

1. Draw either the face-up discard or the top of the stock. 2. Discard one card face up.

That is the whole turn. The hand builds slowly and the tension is entirely in the timing.

Knocking

Instead of a normal discard, you may knock when your deadwood totals ten or less. Lay your hand down, melds separated from deadwood.

Your opponent then lays down their melds, and may lay off — adding their unmatched cards to your melds to reduce their own deadwood.

• Knocker has less deadwood — they score the difference.
• Defender has equal or less — that is an undercut. The defender scores the difference plus a bonus, and the knocker scores nothing.

Gin

If you have no deadwood at all, you have gin. Announce it, score the opponent's full deadwood plus a bonus of 25, and note that no laying off is allowed against gin.

Ending

Play hands until one player reaches 100 points. If the stock runs down to two cards without a knock, the hand is dead and nobody scores.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

If both players cross the target in the same hand, the higher score wins outright.

When it is fair to stop

Stop at the end of a hand. Gin is scored across hands to a target, so agreeing a lower target mid-game is more graceful than abandoning it.

How people cheat

Knocking with more than ten deadwood and hoping the count is not checked.
Spot it: The count is always checked. That is not distrust, it is how the score is worked out.

If a piece is missing

Any deck. If cards are missing, remove whole ranks so runs and sets stay possible, and adjust the target score down.

Accessibility

Sets and runs depend on rank and suit rather than colour alone, but suit recognition matters for runs — a four-colour deck helps. Holding and rearranging ten cards is the main dexterity load; a card stand solves it.

Indian Rummy

Arrange all thirteen cards into valid sets and runs, including at least two runs of which one contains no joker.

Thirteen cards each, two decks, and one rule that shapes the entire game: you cannot win without a pure sequence.

Melds

• Pure sequence — three or more consecutive cards of the same suit, with no joker used as a substitute. 5♥ 6♥ 7♥.
• Impure sequence — a run that uses a joker in place of a missing card. 5♠ 6♠ Joker (standing in for 7♠).
• Set — three or four cards of the same rank in different suits.

Jokers

Two kinds are wild:

• Printed jokers from the decks.
• Wild jokers — at the start of the hand, one card is turned face up. Every card of that rank, in all four suits, is wild for the hand.

Setup

Use two decks with jokers for up to four players, three decks for five or six. Deal thirteen cards each. Place the rest face down as the closed pile and turn one card to start the open pile.

Playing a turn

1. Draw from the closed pile or take the top card of the open pile. 2. Discard one card face up.

Arrange your hand into melds as you go.

Declaring

When all thirteen cards are arranged into valid melds, you may declare. Your hand must contain:

• at least two sequences, and
• at least one of those must be pure.

Discard your final card face down and declare. If the arrangement is valid you win the hand; if it is not, you take the maximum penalty.

Scoring

Everyone else counts their unmelded cards:

| Card | Points | | --- | --- | | Ace, King, Queen, Jack | 10 | | All others | Face value | | Jokers | 0 |

The total is capped at 80. If a player has no pure sequence, they score the full 80 regardless of what they hold — the single most important number in the game.

Dropping

In the points and pool formats you may drop out of a hand rather than play it. Dropping before your first draw costs 20 points; dropping later costs 40.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Lowest points wins. Level scores are split, since there is no further criterion in common play.

When it is fair to stop

A player who is clearly out of it can drop for a fixed penalty rather than play the hand out, which is a rule rather than a courtesy.

If a piece is missing

Two ordinary decks with their jokers are all that is required. If the printed jokers are missing, nominate a rank — commonly twos — as permanent wild cards and say so before dealing.

Accessibility

Thirteen cards is a wide fan and the main physical barrier; a card holder is genuinely useful. Runs depend on suit, so a four-colour deck helps players with limited colour vision.

Scrabble

Score the most points by forming interlocking words on the board.

Form interlocking words on a grid, with the board's premium squares doing most of the scoring work.

Setup

Each player draws seven tiles. Draw one tile each to decide who starts — closest to A goes first, blank beats everything.

A turn

Place tiles to form one word, then score it, then draw back up to seven.

The first word must cross the centre star. Every word after that must connect to tiles already on the board. All tiles you place in a turn must be in a single line, and everything formed must be a valid word — including words created incidentally alongside your main one.

Instead of playing, you may exchange any number of tiles (only while at least seven remain in the bag) or pass. Both score zero.

Scoring

Each tile has a value printed on it. Then apply premium squares:

| Square | Effect | | --- | --- | | Double / Triple Letter | Multiplies that tile's value | | Double / Triple Word | Multiplies the whole word |

Letter multipliers apply before word multipliers. If a word covers two word multipliers, they compound — a word across two triple-word squares scores nine times.

Premium squares only count on the turn a tile is first placed on them.

If your word creates other words, score each of them, and a shared tile scores in both.

The seven-tile bonus

Using all seven tiles in one turn scores an extra 50 points, added after multipliers.

Blanks

Two blank tiles can stand for any letter. They score zero regardless of what they represent or which square they sit on, though they still benefit from word multipliers. Once placed, the letter is fixed for the game.

Challenges

Any player may challenge a word before the next turn begins. Look it up in the agreed dictionary.

• Invalid — the tiles come back and the player scores nothing.
• Valid — under tournament rules the challenger loses their turn; under standard home rules, nothing happens.

Agree which version you are playing before starting.

Ending

The game ends when the bag is empty and one player has used all their tiles, or after six consecutive scoreless turns.

Each remaining player subtracts the value of their unplayed tiles. The player who went out adds the total of everyone else's remaining tiles to their score.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

The player who went out first wins. If neither went out, highest score wins, and a genuine tie is a genuine draw.

When it is fair to stop

Playing on when you are 150 behind with six tiles left is a formality. Conceding is normal, but finish if anyone is chasing a personal best.

Levelling it up

An adult against a child — The child may use the dictionary freely and openly; the adult may not.

A very strong player — Start them at minus fifty, or bar them from using the two-letter word list.

How people cheat

Fishing in the bag — feeling for a blank, which is smooth-edged and identifiable by touch in many sets.
Spot it: Draw with the bag held at eye level and above the table, so hands go in and come straight out.

Playing a made-up word confidently and quickly, hoping nobody challenges.
Spot it: Agree the dictionary before the first tile and agree that challenges are free. Both remove the incentive entirely.

If a piece is missing

Lost tiles can be written on card, but the tile distribution is carefully balanced and a missing high-value letter changes the game. Note the count on the board or in the rules before replacing.

Accessibility

Premium squares are colour-coded, which is the main barrier — they are also labelled in text on most sets. Tile letters are small; large-print and braille sets exist. A tile rack stand helps players with limited grip.

7 Wonders Duel

Win outright by military or scientific supremacy, or accumulate the most victory points across three ages.

Two civilisations, three ages, and a pyramid of cards where taking one reveals the next. There are three ways to win and two of them end the game instantly.

Setup

Each player drafts four wonders. Lay out the age one cards in the prescribed pattern, some face up and some face down. Place the military marker in the centre of its track. Each player starts with seven coins.

Taking a card

On your turn, take any card that is not partially covered by another card. Then choose one of three things:

Build it. Pay the cost in coins and resources. If a previously built card grants you a free chain to this one, it costs nothing.

Discard it for coins. You gain two coins plus one for every yellow card you already own. This is always available and is the reason no card is ever dead.

Use it to build a wonder. Discard it face down and pay the wonder's cost instead. The card itself does nothing; it is simply the fuel.

After you take a card, any cards it was covering are revealed.

Resources and trading

You never trade with your opponent directly. If you lack a resource, you buy it from the bank at a cost of two coins plus one for each of that resource your opponent produces. Their production makes your purchases more expensive, which is the only indirect interaction in the economy.

The three ways to win

Military. Red cards push the marker towards your opponent. Reach their capital and you win immediately, whatever the points say.

Science. Collect six different scientific symbols and you win immediately. There are only so many in the deck, so denying your opponent a symbol they need is often more valuable than taking a card you want.

Civilian. If neither instant win happens, add up victory points after age three. Highest wins; a tie goes to the player with more blue card points.

Progress tokens

Five tokens are available from the start, granting powerful permanent abilities. Matching a pair of identical scientific symbols earns you one immediately.

Why it is tense

Because two of the three win conditions can end the game without warning, you cannot simply build the best engine. You must watch what your opponent is collecting on every single turn, and the card you most want to take is often the card you most need to deny.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Most points from blue civilian cards. Still level after that, the game is a draw.

When it is fair to stop

Two of the three victory conditions end the game instantly, so a losing position can evaporate in one turn. Conceding a civilian defeat on points is reasonable in the third age; conceding while your opponent is two steps from a military victory is simply accepting what is about to happen anyway.

Levelling it up

A stronger player — They start with three coins instead of seven. The economy is tight enough that it matters.

If a piece is missing

Nothing here is improvisable — the card costs and the pyramid structure are the game. Coins can be replaced with any counters.

Accessibility

The iconography is dense and entirely symbolic, with no text on most cards. The reference sheet is essential and should stay on the table permanently. The pyramid layouts are specific and fiddly to build correctly each age.

Skull

Win two bidding challenges by successfully flipping the number of flowers you promised, without turning over a skull.

Everyone has three flowers and one skull. You place discs face down. Then somebody bets they can turn over flowers without finding a skull. That is all of it, and it is one of the purest bluffing games ever published.

Placing

Each player secretly places one disc face down on their mat. Continuing clockwise, players either add another disc on top of their own stack, or open the bidding.

Stacks build up. Nobody can see anything but the count.

Bidding

To open, name a number — how many discs you claim you can flip without hitting a skull. The next player must bid higher or pass. Once you pass you are out of the bidding for this round entirely.

Bidding stops when everyone but one player has passed. Nobody may bid more than the total number of discs on the table.

Flipping

The winning bidder must now turn over that many discs, and here is the rule that makes the game:

You must flip your entire own stack first, from the top down, before touching anybody else's. Only then may you choose freely from other players' stacks, always taking from the top.

If you reach your number in flowers, you win the challenge. Win two challenges and you have won the game.

If you turn over a skull, you stop immediately and lose one disc. If the skull was somebody else's, they choose which of your discs is removed, at random and without seeing it. If it was your own, you choose.

A player with no discs left is out.

Why the own-stack rule matters

Because you must flip your own discs first, placing your skull early and then bidding is impossible. The bluff has to be built out of what you place, when you place it, and what you are willing to promise afterwards.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Impossible — the game ends the moment a player wins their second challenge.

When it is fair to stop

A player down to one disc is still genuinely dangerous, so conceding is both unnecessary and premature. If the group wants to stop, finish the current round and count who is closest to two wins.

How people cheat

Adding a disc to your stack during the bidding, when all eyes are on the bidder.
Spot it: Discs are placed one at a time, in turn order, and the placing phase ends when bidding starts.

If a piece is missing

Beer mats and coins reproduce this exactly — the game is four tokens per player where one is distinguishable. It is one of the easiest games here to improvise from nothing.

Accessibility

The discs are chunky and easy to handle, which is unusual and welcome. The game is almost entirely about reading faces and betting behaviour, which makes it a poor fit for players who find that kind of social pressure unpleasant and a superb fit for those who do not.

Spades

Bid how many tricks your partnership will take, then take exactly that many. Overshooting is punished almost as harshly as falling short.

A partnership game about promises. You say how many tricks you will take, and then the hand punishes you for being wrong in either direction.

Setup

Four players in two partnerships, sitting so that partners face each other. Deal the entire deck, thirteen cards to each player.

Bidding

Beginning to the dealer's left, each player states how many of the thirteen tricks they expect to win. You may not confer with your partner, and you may not change your mind afterwards. Add the two partners' bids together — that combined number is what the side must deliver.

A bid of zero is called nil, and is a separate contract: that player promises to take no tricks at all.

Playing

The player to the dealer's left leads first, and may not lead a spade until spades have been broken. Follow the led suit if you hold it. If you cannot, play anything, including a spade.

Spades are permanently trumps. Any spade beats any card of any other suit. If more than one spade lands on a trick, the highest spade takes it. Otherwise the highest card of the suit led wins. Spades become legal to lead once one has been played on a trick somebody could not follow.

Scoring

Make your combined bid and score ten points per trick you bid. Fail, and you lose ten points per trick bid — the whole contract, not the shortfall.

Tricks taken beyond the bid are called bags. Each one is worth a single point now and a problem later: accumulate ten bags across the game and you lose a hundred points immediately, with the counter resetting. This is the rule that makes deliberately losing a trick a real skill.

A successful nil scores a hundred for the partnership. A failed nil loses a hundred, and the partner's own bid is scored separately either way.

Play continues until a side reaches five hundred.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

If both partnerships cross five hundred in the same hand, the higher score wins.

When it is fair to stop

Partnerships play to five hundred, and a side four hundred behind is not coming back. Agreeing to stop at the end of the current hand is normal; both partners should agree, since one of them may still be enjoying it.

How people cheat

Table talk between partners, disguised as commentary about a previous hand.
Spot it: The bid and the cards are the only legal communication. Say it out loud before dealing with a new group.

If a piece is missing

Nothing beyond the deck. If a card is lost, the deal no longer divides evenly at four players, which the game cannot tolerate.

Accessibility

Bidding requires holding a running total across a whole hand, which is harder than it sounds in a noisy room; a visible bid marker per player helps a great deal. Partnership play involves reading a partner across the table, which is a barrier for anyone with limited vision of the far seat.

The Mind

Play every card in the group's hands in ascending order, without anyone saying a single word.

A hundred cards, numbered one to a hundred. The group must play them in ascending order. Nobody may say anything.

That is the whole game and it should not work.

Levels

At level one, each player is dealt one card. At level two, two cards each, and so on. The number of levels you must complete depends on how many players there are.

Playing

Look at your cards. When you believe you hold the lowest card still in anyone's hand, place it face up in the middle.

You may not speak. You may not gesture deliberately, count, tap, mouth numbers, or signal in any agreed way. What you may do is wait — and how long you wait is the entire language of the game.

A group holding a two and a ninety-eight will find the two appears almost instantly. A group holding a fifty-one and a fifty-four will sit in silence for a long, agonising while.

Mistakes

If somebody plays a card while another player still holds a lower one, the group loses a life. Every player then discards all cards lower than the one just played, face up, and play continues from there.

Run out of lives and the game is over.

Throwing stars

At any point, any player may propose using a throwing star by raising a hand. Everybody must agree. Each player then discards their lowest card face up simultaneously, which is the only sanctioned way to gain information.

Rewards

Completing certain levels earns the group an extra life or an extra throwing star, as printed on the level cards.

Winning

Finish the last level with at least one life remaining. There is no score and no individual winner — only how far you got and how close it was.

The one rule people break

Silence means silence. Sighing meaningfully, staring at somebody, or saying "okay, wait" all count. Groups that let this slide find the game evaporates, because the tension is the product.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Cooperative. The group either finishes the level or does not.

When it is fair to stop

There is no opponent to concede to. If the group is losing badly, restart at level one rather than abandoning — the game takes twenty minutes and the attempt is the entire point.

If a piece is missing

A deck of a hundred numbered slips reproduces it exactly, and lives can be coins. What cannot be improvised is the silence, which is the actual component.

Accessibility

The no-talking rule is absolute, which makes this one of the few games here that is fully playable without any shared spoken language. It relies instead on reading hesitation and body language, so it is difficult for players who cannot see the whole table clearly.

Ticket to Ride

Claim railway routes to connect the cities named on your secret destination tickets, scoring for the routes you build and losing points for tickets you fail to finish.

Collect coloured cards, spend them to claim railway routes, and try to connect the cities on the secret tickets in your hand.

Setup

Each player takes forty-five trains in one colour. Deal four train cards to each player, and lay five face up beside the deck.

Deal three destination tickets to each player. You must keep at least two of them. These are secret, they are worth points if you complete them, and they subtract those same points if you do not.

Your turn — exactly one of three things

Draw train cards. Take two, from the five face up or blind from the top of the deck. Locomotives are wild, and if you take a face-up locomotive it counts as both of your draws.

Claim a route. Choose a stretch of track between two adjacent cities and discard that many cards of that colour. Grey routes accept any single colour, as long as all the cards match each other. Place your trains along it.

Draw destination tickets. Take three and keep at least one.

Scoring routes

Longer routes are worth disproportionately more:

• One train scores 1
• Two score 2
• Three score 4
• Four score 7
• Five score 10
• Six score 15

Ending

When any player has two or fewer trains left, every player including them takes one final turn. Then the game stops.

Add up your route points. Add the value of every destination ticket you completed, and subtract the value of every one you did not. Add ten points for the longest continuous run of track, which is settled by tracing rather than counting routes.

Highest total wins.

The rule that decides most games

A ticket you fail to complete costs you its full value, so a twenty-point ticket drawn late and missed is a forty-point swing. Drawing extra tickets near the end is the single riskiest thing you can do, and it is also how most close games are won.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Most completed destination tickets wins. Still level, the longest continuous route decides it — and if that is also shared, the game is a draw.

When it is fair to stop

Do not leave early. Your trains block routes other players are counting on, and removing them mid-game rewrites everybody's plans. If the group must stop, score it where it stands — completed tickets count, incomplete ones subtract.

Levelling it up

A new player — Let them see everyone's opening tickets, or allow one free route claim of length two.

How people cheat

Claiming a route with one card too few while everyone is watching the board.
Spot it: Discards go face up in a single shared pile. The count is then checkable after the fact.

If a piece is missing

Trains can be replaced with any small markers of a distinct colour, though you need forty-five of each. Losing destination tickets is the real problem — they are the scoring engine and cannot be improvised without the printed distances.

Accessibility

The route colours include a pink, a red and an orange that are difficult to distinguish under poor lighting, and the board is dense. The trains are small and placing them into narrow route slots is genuinely fiddly for anyone with limited dexterity. The map text is small; a printed city list helps.

Uno

Be the first player to get rid of every card in your hand.

A shedding game: everyone races to empty their hand, and the special cards exist to stop whoever is closest.

Setup

Deal seven cards to each player. Put the rest face down as the draw pile and turn the top card face up to start the discard pile.

If that starting card is a Wild Draw Four, bury it in the deck and turn over a new one. If it is any other action card, its effect applies immediately to the first player.

Playing a turn

On your turn, play one card that matches the top of the discard pile in any of these ways:

• same colour
• same number
• same symbol (Skip on Skip, Reverse on Reverse, and so on)

A Wild can be played at any time. A Wild Draw Four can only be played when you hold no card of the current colour — see the rulings below, because this is the rule most often played incorrectly.

If you cannot play, or choose not to, draw one card from the draw pile. If that card is playable you may play it straight away. Otherwise your turn ends.

The special cards

| Card | Effect | | --- | --- | | Skip | The next player loses their turn. | | Reverse | Direction of play flips. With two players it acts as a Skip. | | Draw Two | The next player draws two cards and loses their turn. | | Wild | You name the colour that must be matched next. | | Wild Draw Four | You name the colour; the next player draws four and loses their turn. Only legal if you hold no card of the current colour. |

Saying "Uno"

As you play your second-to-last card — leaving you holding one — announce "Uno". If another player catches you before the next player has begun their turn, you draw two cards as a penalty. Once the next turn starts, you are safe.

Ending the round

The round ends the instant a player has no cards left. You may go out on any card, including an action card, and its effect still applies.

Scoring

The player who went out scores the total value of every card still held by everyone else:

| Card | Points | | --- | --- | | Number cards | Face value (0–9) | | Skip, Reverse, Draw Two | 20 each | | Wild, Wild Draw Four | 50 each |

Play until somebody reaches 500 points. Many groups skip scoring entirely and treat each round as a complete game, which is faster and loses very little.

Running out of draw cards

If the draw pile empties, take the discard pile except its top card, shuffle it, and use it as the new draw pile.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

If two players cross the target score in the same round, the lower total wins.

When it is fair to stop

Rounds are short and scores carry, so lower the target rather than stopping. Ending mid-round wastes the one hand somebody had actually engineered.

How people cheat

Palming a card into a sleeve or under a leg when the table looks away, then declaring Uno with one card left.
Spot it: Count the discard pile against the deck at the end of a suspicious round. The arithmetic does not lie.

Playing a card of a colour that does not match while everyone is talking, especially late in a fast round.
Spot it: The discard pile is face up. Turn the top three cards over at the end of any round somebody won unusually quickly.

If a piece is missing

A standard 52-card deck plays a near-identical game as Crazy Eights: Jack is Skip, Queen is Reverse, Ace is Draw Two, and Eight is Wild. If a single Uno card is lost, remove its three colour-siblings so the deck stays balanced.

Accessibility

Colour is the primary signal and the four colours are red, yellow, green and blue — the worst possible set for red-green colour blindness. Mark card corners with symbols, or use a deck with colour-blind markings. The number cards are high-contrast and large; the Wild cards are the hardest to read at a glance.

Werewolf

The villagers must identify and eliminate every werewolf. The werewolves must reduce the villagers to their own number without being caught.

A village is hiding werewolves. The werewolves know each other. Nobody else knows anything. That asymmetry is the entire game, and it needs no equipment at all.

Roles

One person moderates and does not play. They deal a secret role to everyone else:

• Werewolves, who know one another's identity.
• Villagers, who know nothing.
• The seer, a villager who may learn one player's true role each night.
• The doctor, a villager who may protect one player from death each night.

Roughly one werewolf per four players is the standard ratio.

Night

Everybody closes their eyes. The moderator says "werewolves, wake up." The werewolves open their eyes, see each other, and silently agree on a victim by pointing. They close their eyes again.

The moderator then wakes the seer, who points at one player; the moderator silently indicates whether that player is a werewolf. Then the doctor, who points at one player to protect — possibly themselves.

Day

Everybody opens their eyes. The moderator announces who died, and that player's role is revealed. They take no further part and must not speak.

The village then discusses. Anyone may accuse anyone. When the discussion has run its course, the village votes, and whoever receives the most votes is eliminated and their role revealed.

Then night falls again.

Winning

Villagers win the moment the last werewolf is eliminated.

Werewolves win as soon as their number equals the number of surviving villagers, because from that point they can never be outvoted. The game does not need to continue to the last villager, and stopping at parity saves a pointless final round.

The moderator's job

Keep the night quiet, keep the day moving, and never reveal anything you were not asked to. A good moderator is the difference between a tense forty minutes and a shapeless argument, and it is a genuine role rather than a chore.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

A side wins outright or it does not. There is no drawn result.

When it is fair to stop

Nobody may leave mid-game. A player who walks out takes hidden information with them and breaks the deduction for everyone still playing. Eliminated players may leave the circle but should stay silent rather than commentate.

How people cheat

A dead player reacting — a laugh, a glance, a sharp intake of breath.
Spot it: Eliminated players face away from the circle, or leave the room. It is the single most common way the game breaks.

Peeking during the night phase.
Spot it: The moderator watches for it and simply says so. In a group that plays often, the shame is sufficient enforcement.

If a piece is missing

There is nothing to lose. Roles can be dealt with playing cards, written on torn paper, or assigned by the moderator tapping shoulders in the dark. The game genuinely requires no equipment whatsoever.

Accessibility

The game depends on closing your eyes and on hearing quiet instructions, which makes it difficult for players with hearing loss and unworkable for anyone who cannot see the moderator's gestures. A written-card variant, where the moderator passes notes rather than speaking, solves most of this. It is also intensely verbal and fast, which some players find genuinely stressful rather than fun.

Xiangqi

Checkmate the enemy general, who never leaves the nine points of his own palace.

Chinese chess. Two armies face each other across a river, each general confined to a small palace he may never leave. It is played by more people than any other board game on earth, and almost none of them are in the West.

The board

Nine vertical lines and ten horizontal ones. Pieces sit on the intersections, not inside the squares — the single thing that most confuses anyone arriving from international chess.

Across the middle runs the river. At each end sits a palace: a three-by-three area marked with diagonals, which two pieces may never leave.

The pieces

General — one step, orthogonally, and never outside the palace.

Advisor — one step diagonally, also confined to the palace. Two of them, and they exist only to shield the general.

Elephant — exactly two points diagonally, and may never cross the river. It is blocked if the intervening point is occupied. Purely defensive.

Horse — one point orthogonally then one diagonally outward. Unlike the western knight it does not jump: if the orthogonal step is blocked, the horse cannot move that way at all. This restriction shapes the whole game.

Chariot — any distance along a line, exactly like a rook. The strongest piece.

Cannon — moves like a chariot, but captures only by jumping over exactly one piece, of either colour, and landing on an enemy. An empty file makes a cannon harmless; a crowded one makes it deadly.

Soldier — one step forward. After crossing the river it may also move sideways, but never backwards, ever.

Two rules with no western equivalent

The generals may never face each other down an open file with nothing between them. This is called the flying general, and it means an empty central file can win a game outright.

Perpetual check is forbidden. A player who repeats a check indefinitely must vary the move or forfeit. Endless repetition is not a way to save a lost game.

Winning

Checkmate the general. A player with no legal move has also lost — stalemate is a loss, not a draw. Draws exist but are far rarer than in international chess, which makes the endgame sharper and considerably less forgiving.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

Unlike international chess, stalemate is a loss rather than a draw — a player with no legal move has lost. Perpetual check is also forbidden and the offender must vary. Genuine draws are therefore much rarer, and a repeated position with neither side willing to change is the usual cause.

When it is fair to stop

Resigning a lost endgame is normal and expected. Because stalemate loses rather than draws, a hopeless position is genuinely hopeless — there is no saving half point to play towards.

Levelling it up

A much stronger player — Remove a horse, then a chariot. Handicap play is a long-established part of the game and carries no stigma at all.

A player who knows international chess — Nothing needs removing — the cannon and the river will do it. Expect them to lose several games to the cannon's jump capture before it becomes instinctive.

If a piece is missing

Pieces are flat discs marked with characters, so a lost piece can be replaced by a coin with the character written on it. The board is a grid of lines and can simply be drawn. Note that a set marked in traditional characters and one in simplified characters mix perfectly well.

Accessibility

The pieces are distinguished by the character written on them rather than by shape, which is a genuine barrier for anyone who cannot read them and for low-vision players — Western-style sets with figurine pieces exist and are worth seeking out. The two sides are conventionally red and black, a pairing that is legible to almost everyone. Playing on the intersections rather than in the squares confuses newcomers from international chess more than any rule does.

Yahtzee

Fill thirteen scoring categories with dice combinations, choosing which category to spend each roll on.

Roll five dice up to three times, then decide which box to spend the result on. Thirteen rounds, thirteen boxes, and the entire game is the tension between what you rolled and what you still need.

A turn

Roll all five dice. You may then set any number of them aside and reroll the rest. You may do this once more. Three rolls in total, and dice set aside can be picked up and rerolled again if you change your mind.

When you stop, you must write a score into exactly one category that you have not used yet. If nothing fits, you must still choose one and score it zero. That forced sacrifice is a real decision, not a punishment.

The upper section

Aces through sixes. Each scores the sum of the dice showing that number, so four fives scores twenty. If your upper section totals sixty-three or more — the equivalent of three of each number — you gain a thirty-five point bonus. Chasing that bonus drives most early decisions.

The lower section

• Three of a kind — total of all five dice.
• Four of a kind — total of all five dice.
• Full house — three of one number and two of another, scoring twenty-five.
• Small straight — four consecutive numbers, scoring thirty.
• Large straight — five consecutive numbers, scoring forty.
• Yahtzee — all five dice matching, scoring fifty.
• Chance — total of all five dice, whatever they are. The safety net.

Extra Yahtzees

Roll a second Yahtzee after already scoring fifty in the box and you earn a hundred point bonus, then place the dice in another category under the joker rules: the matching upper box if it is free, otherwise any lower box, which may be filled as a full house or a straight regardless of what the dice actually show.

If your Yahtzee box was scored zero, no bonus is available, but the joker placement still applies.

Finishing

Thirteen rounds fill every box. Add both sections and the bonus. Highest wins.

Settle the argument

If the scores tie

A tie is a tie. Yahtzee has no tiebreak and shared wins are common enough that groups usually agree one in advance — highest upper section is the popular choice.

When it is fair to stop

There is nothing to concede. Every player fills the same thirteen boxes regardless of what anyone else rolls, so a losing position costs nothing to finish and the last few rounds are often the funniest part.

Levelling it up

Young children — Let them reroll one die a fourth time. It barely shifts the odds and it removes the worst turns.

How people cheat

Rerolling a fourth time, which is astonishingly easy to do by accident in a loud room.
Spot it: Say the roll number aloud. One, two, three. It stops the argument and the accident.

If a piece is missing

Any five dice work, and score sheets are trivially reproduced on plain paper — the categories are the game, not the pad. A missing die genuinely stops play, so a spare is worth keeping in the box.

Accessibility

Reading five scattered dice quickly is the main visual demand; larger dice and a shallow tray help considerably. The score sheet involves repeated addition across two sections, which is the part young children need help with rather than the rolling.