Dead Man's Bluff

A microgame of tricks and treasure.

The goal is to find the map leading to buried treasure. And someone on this pirate ship has the map! To win, find that map and hold on to it, surviving the round - or be the last pirate alive with the lowest ranking card.

Rules:

• Each player is dealt two cards.

• Players can choose to use one or two cards against their opponents, discard and draw a new card, or bluff.

• A player can bluff as long as they have at least one card of the card type needed to perform an action in their hand.

Example: Danielle has one “Barrel o’ Grog” card and one “Cannon” card in her hand. She decides that she wants to use the special ability that requires two “Barrel o’ Grog” cards. This special requires that every player with a “Barrel o’ Grog” card must place the grog card face up in front of them. That card is out of play for the rest of the game. Those players now may only have one card in their hand.

• If a player does not believe that another player has the cards to do the action they just performed, they may call the player’s bluff. If the first player was lying, they have to reveal the card that was the lie, and they discard their remaining card and draw a new one.

Example: John doesn’t believe Danielle has two “Barrel o’ Grog” cards. He calls her bluff. As Danielle did not have two “Barrel o’ Grog” cards, she places the “Cannon” card in front of her, as it was the lie - and that card is now out of play. She then discards her “Barrel o’ Grog” and draws a new card. She is now down to having only one card in her hand.

• When the deck runs out of cards, the discard pile may be shuffled back in to form the draw pile.

• When there are no more cards to be drawn and no discard pile, the players that are still alive reveal their hands and what is stored in their “Smuggler's Chambers”. The player with the lowest numbered card wins.

Drop Box location for PnP rules are located here. Drop Box location for high-quality PnP card art is located here.

This game won first place for the 24 hour contest - March 2014.