Gamehelpphopho

Phở Phở is a hand-shedding card game where players compete to inherit the street stall by serving customers, managing favor tokens, and collecting star ratings.

Objective

Collect the most Stars on Loyal Customer cards by the end of the game.

Setup & Customer Line

• Three customers are face-up in the customer line: one Active Customer on the Bowl and two Side Customers waiting in line.
• Customers feature a Star Value (1 or 2 Stars), a Loved ingredient, and a Hated ingredient.
• Players start with a 6-card hand (which is also the hand limit) and 6 Favor Tokens set to their Mad side.

On Your Turn

Choose one of two actions:

• Serve the Customers: Play 1–5 cards from your hand:
  • Single Customer: Play 1 to 5 numerically consecutive cards (e.g., 2, 3, 4, 5) onto one customer.
  • Multiple Customers: Play 2–3 matching value cards to serve up to 3 separate customers (1 card per customer).
  • Bill: Play 1 Bill card next to any customer. This allows you to discard any number of cards from your hand and redraw that many.
  • Placement Rule: An empty customer must start with a Value 1 (Noodle). Subsequent cards must either match the current top card's value or be exactly 1 value higher.
• Restock Ingredients: Draw cards equal to your current number of Mad Tokens. You may then immediately perform a "Serve the Customers" action, finally discarding down to 6 cards.

Loved & Hated Ingredients

• Loved: Playing a customer's loved ingredient flips 1 of your Mad Tokens to its Happy side.
• Hated: Playing a customer's hated ingredient immediately fails the order; the customer and their cards are discarded, and you give 1 of your Mad Tokens to an opponent.

Completing Orders & Scoring Favor

• An order is finished once a customer has both a Bill Card and a Value 5 Ingredient (unless the customer hates Bills, in which case no Bill is required).
• Active Customer finished: All players flip Favor Tokens from Mad to Happy equal to the customer's Star Value.
• Side Customer finished: Only the player who completed the order flips Favor Tokens to Happy equal to the customer's Star Value.
• When a customer leaves, slide remaining customers toward the bowl and draw a replacement.

Key Bonuses

• Empty Hand: If you empty your entire hand, flip 1 Mad Token to Happy and immediately draw a fresh hand of 6 cards.
• Perfect Reputation: When all your tokens become Happy, immediately claim a Loyal Customer card facedown to score at the end of the game, then reset all your tokens back to their Mad side.

Game End

When The King card is revealed from near the bottom of the deck, each player gets one final turn. The King is awarded as a 3-Star Loyal Customer to the player with the most Happy Tokens (tiebreak: fewest Mad Tokens). Players reveal all earned Loyal Customers, and the player with the most total Stars wins.

• Watch the deck count: When four or fewer Customer cards remain, The King is imminent. Shift your focus toward hoarding Happy Tokens before the final turn trigger.
• Leverage your token lead: Players with more total reputation tokens have a distinct edge. If you fall behind in token count, you risk resetting to entirely Mad Tokens, instantly knocking you out of the running for The King's massive 3-Star bonus.