Gamehelpsticktocolours

Objective

The basic goal of the game is to collect cards in sets of the same color or the same value. When there is no more card to pick, the game ends and players count their Victory Points (VP).

Components

A deck of 48 cards :

• 3 colors : Red, Green and Blue
• values from 1 to 9 and 1 "Joker" for each color
• Distribution:
  • Red: 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6, 7,8,9, JOKER (the star icon)
  • Green: 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6, 7,8,9, JOKER (the star icon)
  • Blue : 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6, 7,8,9, JOKER (the star icon)

Setup

• Everyone starts with 2 cards.
• The market starts with 5 cards for 2-3 players or 6 cards for 4 players.
• The first player (according to BGA permutations) starts with the dealer token.

Gameplay

• Each round players choose card to trade and make a bid by refusing 1 or more other cards from the market or their hand.
• VP begin counting when the deck and the market are empty.
• Each round consists of 3 consecutives stages :
  1. Choosing cards
  2. Trading
  3. End of trading

On Your Turn

Choosing cards

The dealer can :

• choose 1 card in the market. Then this player begins a normal turn (see next section) except that passing is not an option before a first bid.
  • The chosen card cannot have a "Refuse" token from the dealer on it (The X icon of the player color) .
• pass the dealer token to the next player

Trading

The player can :

• bid
• pass

Bidding

In order to stay in the bidding, you can select 1 or more cards from your hand and the market, the total number of selected cards must be > the current best offer of a previous player (as displayed in the central zone). Each of these cards receive a "Question" token (the ? icon of the player color).

The next player who can bid begins a new trading turn.

Conditions :

You must bid with the same cards than previous players (in the current best offer) before raising with whatever number of cards.

You cannot bid for a card when you "refused" it earlier in the game; ie. if you put a "refuse" token on it.

You cannot put multiple refuse tokens on the same card => you cannot bids with a card you already refused earlier on the game !

NB : beware that cards coming from your hand are not shown to others AND will always be discarded even if you pass the bid later on !

Pass

If you can't or don't want to participate in trading, you say "Pass" and get back your "question" tokens.

When only one player remains in the trading (ie. did not pass and can bid for the card), the card is automatically won and go in this player hand and the round ends.

End of a round

Once a round ends :

• All refused cards coming from players's hand are discarded.
• All remaining "question" tokens are flipped over and become unremovable "refuse" tokens.
• If the deck is not empty, the market is replenished to the starting number of cards.

• If there is at least 1 card in the market, then a new round begins and the dealer token is passed to the next player.
• Else the game is over and whoever has the most points is the winner. If any joker has been collected by a player, a value must be given by the player to this joker.

Scoring

Score helper image provided in the game : https://x.boardgamearena.net/data/themereleases/current/games/sticktocolours/230306-1854/img/memo_score.png

Each player scores points according to the 2 scoring rules :

• Each set of 3 cards of the same number but strictly of a different color gives 3 VP. If the number is 7,8 or 9, it gives 3 VP more because it's rarer. (called "Three of a kind" in poker)
• Each set of 3 or more cards of the same color with consecutive numbers gives 1 VP per card in the series. (called "Straight flush" in poker)

Note : the same card counts for these 2 rules at the same time !

Example :

Alice collects RED 3,5,6,JOKER + Green 3,3,5,6,8,9 + Blue 3,4,4,5,9 and Alice chooses to turn the joker as a 9.

Bob collects RED 1,2,2,3,4,4,5,6,7,8 + Green 1,2,4,5 + Blue 2,8

Alice scores a total of 15 VP :

• 6 VP for the set of three 9
• 3 VP for the set of three 5
• 3 VP for the set of three 3
• 3 VP for the set of blue cards (from 3 to 5)

Bob scores a total of 11 VP :

• 3 VP for the set of three 2
• 8 VP for the set of red cards (from 1 to 8)

Alice is the winner !

Variants

No variant available on BGA for now.