Burning Cookies
Burning Cookies Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
- 80 playing cards (58x88 mm).
- Numbered 1 to 20 in four colors.
Card corner symbols (for colorblind players): Pink = triangle pointing down; Orange = circle; Green = diamond; Violet = star.
Objective
Avoid accumulating 8 burnt cookies at all costs, or you will be expelled forever from the International Federation of Amateur Bakers and you will lose the game.
If you are the person with the fewest burnt cookies when someone loses, you win the game, but you will soon discover that in this game victory is something secondary.
Setup
Shuffle all the cards well and deal 3 at random to each person. The rest of the cards form the draw deck; leave it face down within reach of everyone.
How to Play
1. The round
- In the first round, whoever has seen a platypus eating a cookie live and can prove it with evidence starts.
- If nobody meets this condition, you can invent your own absurd condition to decide who starts.
- In the following rounds, the person who lost the previous round starts.
- Rounds are played in turns in clockwise order.
- Throughout the round you will be putting cookies in the oven. How? By playing one card per turn and forming a horizontal row, or by revealing some suspicious card in the row.
- If someone cannot play a card, or if someone reveals a card from the row, some innocent cookies will get scorched and this triggers the end of the round.
2. Your turn
You must perform one of 4 possible actions:
Play a card face up:
- At the beginning of a round: if you start the round, place any one of your cards face up on the table.
- If the round has already started and there are cards on the table, the card you play must always meet 2 conditions with respect to the last visible card of the row: its number must be higher and its color must be different from those of that card (see the colorblind symbols above).
- Place your face-up card next to the previously played card.
Overlap a card:
- You may place a card face up on top of the last card of the row if it is face up (see the exception on page 8: the flame icon). The card you place on top of another must be of the same color; the number does not matter.
- There can only be one overlapping card in each position; that is, there cannot be more than two cards in the same space of the row.
Play a card face down:
- You may play any card face down as long as the last card of the row is face up.
- If the last card of the row is face down, you may reveal it or play the next card face up, taking the last visible card of the row as the reference for meeting the conditions.
Reveal a card:
- You may reveal the last card of the row if it is face down. When a card is revealed, one of these two things can happen:
- The revealed card meets the conditions. If its number is higher and its color is different from the previous card, the person who revealed this card loses the round.
- The revealed card does not meet the conditions. If its number is lower or its color is the same as the previous card (or both), the person who played this card face down loses the round.
- Remember that revealing a card always triggers the end of the round.
Always after having played a card you must take another from the draw deck to replenish your hand. This ends your turn.
3. End of the round
- When someone cannot play a card on their turn or when someone reveals a card, the end of the round is triggered.
- Reveal all the face-down cards in the row and check the color of the first cookie of the row.
- All the cookies that match in color the first cookie of the row (included) will have burned; whoever lost the round must keep them and place them face down in front of themselves so that everyone else can see them.
- Each burnt cookie is a negative point, and the first person to collect 8 loses. Do not forget it, because besides, whoever loses must treat the rest to a snack.
- If nobody has accumulated 8 burnt cookies, you must keep playing.
- Discard the cards already played that were not turned into burnt cookies and begin a new round. The person who lost the previous round starts.
- If the draw deck runs out and nobody has yet accumulated 8 burnt cookies, shuffle the discard pile well and place it face down to form a new draw deck.
- You can see an example of a round on pages 10 and 11.
4. Special actions
The icons on the cards trigger special actions whenever they are possible and you play the card face up.
- Flame: You cannot overlap a card on top of another card that has the flame icon. It is the only exception to the overlap-a-card action.
- Gift (one): Give one of your burnt cookies to someone who has between 0 and 6 burnt cookies.
- Gifts (two): Give 2 burnt cookies to someone, or split them between 2 people. This(these) person(s) must have between 0 and 6 burnt cookies.
- Croissant: Whoever plays next will have to draw the first card of the deck and play it however they prefer. They cannot swap it for one of their own cards.
- Blender: Choose left or right, and that will be the direction in which all of you pass your burnt cookies to whoever is next to you. When starting the game you can choose between the classic blender or the sugar-free variant.
- Sugar-free variant: After playing the blender card, take another card from the draw deck to complete your hand. Then choose left or right, and that will be the direction in which all of you must pass your hand of cards to whoever is next to you.
- Burning cookie: The people to the left and right of whoever played this card must each draw 1 card from the deck and place it face down in front of themselves as a burnt cookie. But only if they have between 0 and 6 burnt cookies.
If you cannot execute a special action you may play the card anyway. Example: if you only have one burnt cookie and you are asked to give two, give only one!
End of the Game
The first person to gather 8 burnt cookies will lose the game and will have to invite the others to homemade cookies, or chocolate with churros, or whatever they like best.
Whoever has accumulated the fewest burnt cookies will win. If there is a tie you can always play another game to break it. And then another, and another. Oh, my cookies are burning!
Round Example
(Illustrated example.) The row shows, in order, the cards 2 (orange, croissant icon; "1st card"), 11 (green, burning cookie icon), 16 (orange) with a 3 (orange, gift icon) overlapped on it, and 10 (violet, flame icon) as the last card.
Your hand: 5 (violet, flame icon), 7 (green, two gifts icon), 20 (violet).
- It is your turn. You cannot play a card face down and the only card you can play face up is the violet 20.
- You could also reveal the last card of the row, since it is quite suspicious. If it was badly played, whoever put it there will lose the round. If it was well played, you will lose it.
- Will you risk taking at least 4 burnt cookies (yellow ones) and losing the game?