This is the cover... If you are fighting about the contents of this page, seek counseling.

This page isn't rules... it's just stinkin' cute. 

To reitterate: You are not meant to read anything (rules-wise) into what is written on this page.

Not rules. Not rules. Not Rules. Not Rules. 

...Not Rules.

Finally - some rules!  

Here, we introduce the core concept of how to play the game. It's pretty simple - you setup the game (more on that later), then players take turns drawing and taking actions (also more on that later), then eventually the end round is triggered (you guessed it: more on that later), after which the game is over.  

This is a summary page introducing each of these phases. There is at least one page dedicated to each concept later on in the rulebook. 

Setting up the game is meant to be fairly quick and painless:

1) Each player picks a character to embody. This involves taking the players tuck box, removing the cards, placing the character's card in front of them, and then handing the rest of their cards to whomever is combining all of the decks together. 

2) The player who is combinign all fo the decks together takes all players' character decks (minus the character card) and... combines them all together vis a vis shuffling. 

3) Once all they are thoroughly mixed together, each player is delt 3 cards from the stack. If a disaster card is delt to a player, it must be shuffled-back into the deck and replaced with another non-disaster card. 

4) Next, the dealer splits the deck and looks at the card revealed in the middle of the deck.  Whichever character's deck that card comes from (denoted by the banner at the top of the card) gets to go first. 

5) Before recombining the halves of the deck, the MAD ORACLE card is shuffled into the bottom half. Afterward, the halves are combined by placing the half containing the Mad Oracle on the bottom of the other half WITHOUT SHUFFLING. The idea is that the MAD ORACLE should be in the bottom half of the deck.

6) The recombined deck, now containing the MAd oracle in the bottom-half, is placed face-down in the middle of the table, in reach of all players. The shop cards are then shuffled together and placed on the table, face-down. Afterward, three shop cards are delt face-up to form the inital store stock. 

Th penalty cards are then shuffled together and placed on the table, face-down.

The next page shows how all of this looks after setup is completed. 

Next, we learn how most of the game works. 

The game consists of turns, during each of which one player is active (i.e. it is "their turn"). On their turn as active player, they do the following:

1) They must draw a card from the draw pile and put it into their hand (without showing it to anyone). This is not optional.

2) Take 0, 1, or 2 actions from the following. For these actions, the player may do any combination of the following, including taking the same action twice: 

• - Take another card from the draw pile and place it in their hand (without showing anyone).

• - Play an action card from their hand by placing it on the discard pile THEN following the instructions as closely as possible. If any part of the action cards instructions can not be followed, then that single part is skipped. 

• - Purchase an item from the shop by discarding cards with resource value greater than or equal to the cost of a shop card (as directed at the bottom of the shop card under "Pay One:". No change is given. The purchased card is placed in the players hand, and a new shop card is immediately drawn from the shop draw pile to replace the purchsed card.

• - Caching / Uncacheing cards by doing any of the following: placing one card from your hand into the protected cache in front of the player (up to 5 cards - if 5 cards are already cached by a player, no more cards may be cached by thart player); removing a card from your cach and placing it in your hand; both adding a card to the cache AND removing a card from the cache (as noted above).

Now, we learn about the end of the game...

At some point, a card will be drawn, revealing the MAD ORACLE card. From this moment through the end of the game, no cards can be drawn for the remainder of the game. 

The current player finished their current turn, then every other player takes one additional turn (without drawing any cards). Once the last player has take their turn, scores are tallied as follows:

The value of each card in the players hand AND cache (positive and negative) are summed. Any card in a player's hand/cach that belongs to that players deck (as signified by the corner banner) is worth 1 additional point. 

In the case that no one player has a highest score, ALL player (not just those who tied for the win) draw a card from the penalty card deck and scores are retallied. If there is still not a clear winner, another card is drawn until a winner is declared. If the penalty card deck does not have enough cards for all players to draw, then another deck can be used (i.e. shop deck, draw deck).

Now that we've learned how to play the game, it's time to get some clarification on the different types of cards in the game and how to read them. 

The first card explained is Player Cards. There is one for each character in the game, and this card is removed from each players deck before the communal draw deck is formed. The cards are mostly decorative, but also contain the player's unique action, which can be taken (in addition to a players 2 actions each turn) whenever an action card is player which features a glowing star. 

The player must elect to take the action, and if they forget before the game proceeds, the bonus action is forfeit. 

The next type of card we'll learn about is Action Cards. These cards come in two flavors - common actions and unique actions. Common Actions are cards found in every player deck (e.g. Ambush, Charity, Fire!). These cards have a simple directive which, when the card is played, must be followed as closely as able (skipping any parts that are not possible to complete). These cards also feature a glowing star which allows a player to take the bonus action found on their player card if they so elect. 

Player Action cards are unique to each player deck, and feature a set of instructions followed by anyone who plays the card (just like common action cards) plus a special extra action that is only taken if the card is played by the character whose deck the card originated.