The Bottled Imp Game

The Bottled Imp Game is a card game. The object of the game is to be the player holding the Bottled Imp Card at the end of the game's allotted 8 rounds.

Each player begins the game with 5 cards in their hand. One of the players (nobody else knows who) has the Bottled Imp card. The number of cards they are permitted to hold is denoted by their 'Life Dice', it begins at 5, but can go up or down from 2 to 7.

In each round players get a turn to lay any number of one type of card, then draw back up to their allotted hand size. The card types and their affects are:

Dagger = Reduce and opponents Life Dice Pie and Ale = Increase your own life dice Spyglass = Look at an opponent's hand Lockpick = Blindly take one card from an opponent's hand Wild/Coins = Wild card Bottled Imp = Win the game

Sounds simple, but in reality keeping track of where you think the Imp is and timing when to make a play for it provides some very interesting decisions and a tense atmosphere.

After each player has taken a turn the round is over. This happens 8 times, recorded on a D8, then the game is over. The player holding the Bottled Imp Card at this point is the winner.

—description from the publisher