Chez Grunt Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Setup
  • MOS Cards
  • Variable Free Time
  • Service Cards
• How to Play
  • 1. Draw
  • 2. Roll
  • 3. Call People
  • 4. Free Time
    • Shopping
    • Activities
  • 5. Discard
  • Other Actions You Can Take
    • During Your Turn
    • Actions You Can Take When It's Not Your Turn
• Marking Slack
• Winning the Game
• Additional Rules and Definitions
  • Canceling
  • Double Cards
  • Getting Rid of People
  • Illicit Things and Activities
  • MOSs and Slack
  • Negative Slack
  • Noisy Nookie
• Combining Chez Grunt with Chez Geek
  • Welcome to the Reserves
  • More Illicit Things
  • TV
  • Jobs and MOSs

Setup

There are two types of cards, Service and MOS. These go in separate piles. Each player (barracksmate or soldier) will need table space for his quarters – that is, the cards he has played for Activities and Things, and the People who have come over. You'll also need to requisition at least one six-sided die, and some markers for cards with variable Slack. Regulation markers include dice, pennies, and poker chips. Non-regulation items such as beer nuts and cheese puffs may be used in an emergency.

MOS Cards

There are 10 of these; they are purple, front and back. Each MOS (Military Occupational Specialty, i.e., Job) has three numbers and a special perk or disadvantage.

• Income is how much money you can spend on Shopping or Activities. You get your Income at the beginning of your turn. You can't save Income from turn to turn; any Income not spent on Things or Activities disappears at the end of your turn.
• Free Time is the number of things you can do during your Free Time phase.
• The Slack Goal is the number of Slack points you need to win.
• The perk or disadvantage is something special that your MOS lets you do or keeps you from doing.

Variable Free Time

MOS cards have two numbers (e.g., 1/3) for Free Time. Roll a die each turn, on your Roll phase, to see how much Free Time you have for that turn. On a roll of 1, 2, or 3, you have the lower number. On a roll of 4, 5, or 6, you have the higher one. Hurry up and wait, soldier.

Service Cards

There are four kinds of Service cards: Person (green), Thing (blue), Activity (red), and Whenever (orange). If you run out of Service cards during a game, shuffle the discard pile and reuse it. Some rules refer to "military cards"; they are marked with a star in the corner of the card. (Which is most of them in this game; the distinction is more important in combined Geek/Grunt games.)

Note: You may not give cards away or trade them with your fellow soldiers, but you may show a barracksmate your hand if you like, and you may make any deal that you like about how you will play your cards. No deal is binding if someone decides to welsh, though. No one said life is fair. You gonna cry to your momma?

How to Play

The dealer shuffles the MOSs and deals one, face up, to each player. He then shuffles the Service cards and deals five, face down, to each player. The player to the left of the dealer goes first. Play proceeds clockwise. Each player's turn has five phases: Draw, Roll, Call People, Free Time, and Discard.

1. Draw

Draw cards from the Service card pile until you have six cards in your hand (five if you have the Tanker MOS, or seven if you have the Military Intelligence MOS). You should never have more than this number of cards in your hand at any time (unless you have the Scrounging card in play).

2. Roll

Various cards require you to roll a die at the beginning of each turn, either to determine Income or Free Time, or to get rid of a Person. The Roll phase is when you do it.

Example: Pvt. Lankowski is assigned to Supply. His Free Time is variable (1/3), so Pvt. Lankowski must roll according to the rules in Variable Free Time, above. This turn, he rolls a 2, so he has a Free Time of 1. Enjoy latrine duty, Lankowski!

3. Call People

Person cards represent people who might visit the barracks. They may only be played during the Call People phase. You may call as many People as you want, if you have their cards in your hand.

There are two types of Person cards: invited (they give Slack) and uninvited (they have a Slack of 0 or less, and have other bad features, too). Invited People must be Called (see below). Uninvited People are put into play during the Call People phase, but you don't have to Call them. After all, fun people need to be called; jerks and superior officers just drop in. To play a Person card:

1. Announce your intention to have a Person come over, and lay down the card. Then announce whether the Person is coming to your quarters or another player's quarters. If the Person gives no Slack, play them now. Bad effects, if any, take place immediately. For instance, when The Colonel drops in, you must immediately discard your highest-Slack Food or Booze card.
2. If the Person gives Slack, roll a die. On a roll of 1-2, that Person was not on the base. Discard the card.
3. On a roll of 3-6, the call succeeded and that Person card stays in your quarters. Any effects that Person has on the game then occur, including Slack awarded to the occupant of the quarters in which the Person was played!

4. Free Time

During this phase, you may spend your Free Time by Shopping or doing Activities. Each Free Time allows you to do one Activity or to go Shopping. You may also play cards that give you more Free Time. You must always announce how you are spending your Free Time. Try to sound like it's the most important thing in your life; make your barracksmates jealous ("USO Nookie! Outstanding!"). You must have the card for any Thing you want to buy or any Activity you want to do.

Shopping

You must announce that you are Shopping. No matter how many Things you buy in one turn, the Shopping trip takes 1 Free Time. If someone cancels your Shopping, all Thing cards you played return to your hand. (See Canceling, below.) If you still have Free Time and Income left, you may attempt to Shop again. (The rules for buying Illicit Things are different. See Illicit Things and Activities, below.) If no one prevents you from Shopping, you may buy as many Things as you have the Income to afford.

Example: This turn, Pvt. Chavez has an Income of 2 and a Free Time of 2. She plays Hazard Pay, raising her Income to 4 for this turn. She then announces that she will use her first Free Time to go Shopping. She buys Lucky Ducks (Cost 1) and The Art of War (Cost 3), which net her a total of 4 Slack. She puts both cards in her quarters. During her second Free Time, she will play an Activity card:

Activities

Some Activities have a Cost. If you don't have enough remaining Income to match the Cost, then you may not perform that Activity. You must announce the Activity that you plan to perform as you play the Activity card. If nobody plays a card to stop you, place the card in your quarters and gain the appropriate Slack. Some Activities are worth a variable amount of Slack, determined by a die roll. If a result is ever zero Slack (or less), the Activity is considered unsuccessful and the Activity card is put in the discard pile. You have still used up one Free Time in the attempt. (The rules for Illicit Activities are different, and there is an exception to the zero-Slack rule. See Illicit Things and Activities, and Negative Slack, below.)

Example: During Pvt. Richards' Free Time phase, he announces that he will try for some nookie. He plays an FTX Nookie card. No one plays a card to stop him, so he rolls and gets a 1. The Slack for a Nookie card is 1 die-1, so Pvt. Richards' Nookie is worth 0 Slack and he must discard it. As his barracksmates, you are now required to rag him unmercifully for his unsuccessful attempt at nookie.

5. Discard

If you have more than five cards, you must discard down to five. You may discard all the way down to one; you can't discard to zero. This rule only applies to discarding. If you can use your whole hand before your Discard phase, more power to you!

Other Actions You Can Take

During Your Turn

Your Whenever cards may be played at any time, unless the card text specifically prohibits it.

Actions You Can Take When It's Not Your Turn

Again, Whenever cards may be played at any time, unless the card text specifically prohibits it.

Marking Slack

If an Activity gives variable Slack, or if anything changes the amount of Slack on any card so the printed value is no longer correct, the owner must place Slack counters on the card, one for every point of Slack. All barracksmates must be able to look at your quarters and count up the counters, and the printed value on all cards with no counters, to see how much Slack you have.

Or: Players start with a pile of markers, as many as their Slack Goal, and then mark each card in their quarters with the appropriate Slack. When someone runs out of markers, he knows he's won.

Winning the Game

The first person to reach or exceed the Slack Goal on his MOS card immediately wins.

Example: Pvt. Skarita has the MOS card EOD (Slack Goal 20). She has 19 Slack currently and buys Cigarettes. Even if Pvt. Minoru plays Bum to take the Cigarettes from Pvt. Skarita immediately after she plays them, Pvt. Skarita still wins the game because she had 20 Slack even for that short time. (Bum is not a canceling card.)

The winner gets to choose his MOS Card for the next game before everybody else draws theirs. Leaders write their own ticket.

Additional Rules and Definitions

Canceling

A card which can cancel other cards may only affect a target card as that card is being played – which means that the canceled card's Slack is never applied to the quarters' Slack total. Canceled cards are discarded. If the card was an Activity, the Free Time for that Activity is lost. If someone cancels Shopping, all Thing cards that the barracksmate was trying to buy are returned to his hand. A canceling card has no effect on any card already in play.

A card that is "being played" is a card that a barracksmate has announced and put in his quarters. You must play a canceling card before that soldier:

1. puts down another card, or
2. rolls to see if a Person is coming over, or to see how much Slack a card gives, or
3. ends his turn.

Example: Reveille can cancel a Sleep card. If Pvt. Weiss plays a Sleep card and ends her turn, and then Pvt. Abzug draws Reveille on his next turn, he cannot affect the Sleep card Pvt. Weiss already played. Pvt. Abzug will have to wait until someone announces that he is playing a Sleep card, at which point Pvt. Abzug can cancel it.

Double Cards

There are certain cards that fall into more than one category. For example, Illicit Food counts as both Food and an Illicit Thing, and Care Package counts as Food and Whenever. These cards are open to the attacks and benefits of both categories, so Illicit Food can be canceled by Share with Squad, but MP can buy it on a roll of 3-6.

Getting Rid of People

On the Roll phase of your turn, you may attempt to get rid of any People in your quarters. To invite someone to leave, roll a die. On 1-3, the person hangs around and any negative effects take place. On 4-6, you can send them to any other quarters that they are not restricted from entering, and they have no effect on you that turn. If there are no other quarters the Person can enter, the card is discarded. Except for the turn they enter your quarters, unwanted People do not have a negative effect until after you roll to get rid of them.

Example: Pvt. Kleine plays The Colonel on Pvt. Fortman. Pvt. Fortman discards Beef Jerky, a Food card. During Pvt. Fortman's next Roll phase, he rolls to get rid of The Colonel, but gets a 3. The Colonel stays, and Pvt. Fortman discards Soju to appease his unwanted guest. On his next turn, Pvt. Fortman fails to get rid of The Colonel, but he doesn't have any Things to give his superior officer, so The Colonel just micromanages him. When Pvt. Fortman rolls during his next turn, he gets a 6. Outstanding! The Colonel must leave. Since Pvt. Fortman controls the card, he puts it in Pvt. Kleine's quarters. Turnabout is fair play! Now Pvt. Kleine must discard a card (and so on, and so on, and so on . . .).

Illicit Things and Activities

Illicit Things and Activities are against regulations. They have a lot of Slack, but carry heavy penalties if you are caught. Any Illicit card does not require a Free Time to play, but you may not play a Sleep card during the same turn, or a TV card, if you have a combined Chez Grunt/Chez Geek deck. (When do you think you're indulging in this non-regulation behavior?) You may not shop for more than one Illicit Thing at a time.

After you announce the card and put it in your quarters, roll a die. On a roll of 1-2, you were caught. Discard the Illicit card, lose any Income you spent, lose any leftover Free Time this turn, and lose a Free Time next turn – can you say "additional duty"? On a roll of 3-6, you were successful. Put the card in your quarters.

If another soldier cancels your Illicit card, it does not count as getting caught. You were intercepted before you did anything wrong. Discard the Illicit card. You have not lost any Income or Free Time. But I have my eye on you, maggot. You'd better toe the line.

MOSs and Slack

If your MOS increases the Slack of other cards in your quarters (such as Infantry increasing Sleep Slack), put a marker on the cards to show the extra Slack. If you get a new MOS during the game because of Needs of the Service, you keep Slack that you acquired during your old MOS. The new MOS's special trait only applies to cards played after the MOS card comes into play.

Example: Pvt. Carlov is Special Forces, and has some Booze in his quarters, each one worth +1 Slack. Someone plays Needs of the Service on him, and he draws Cook as his new MOS. The Booze he already has is still worth extra Slack, but if he plays any more Booze cards, they will not get a Slack bonus.

Negative Slack

MRE can have negative Slack. (Optionally, barracksmates may decide to extend the negative-Slack rules to other cards, such as Nookie.) To show that a card has a negative Slack value, mark the amount of negative Slack as you would positive Slack, then turn the card so it is upside down. An upside-down card with no Slack markers counts as 0 Slack. Do not discard MRE if it has 0 Slack. Even if their Slack points cancel each other, do not discard positive and negative Slack cards. Cards that you have in your room can have more effects than just Slack points. (For instance, you might be able to get rid of a negative MRE by feeding it to The Colonel!)

Noisy Nookie

At any time a player gets nookie worth 5 or more Slack, the barracksmates on either side of him lose (if they have it) one Sleep card from their quarters. Yes, this removes an already-played Sleep card.

Combining Chez Grunt with Chez Geek

Chez Grunt may be combined with Chez Geek and/or any of its expansion decks. The rules here have been abbreviated for space. The Chez Grunt web page has more complete rules for combination games; go to www.sjgames.com/chezgrunt/.

Welcome to the Reserves

Shuffle the Life cards with the Service cards, but keep the MOS and Job cards separate. Each player gets one MOS card and one Job card, and has the benefits and penalties from both. Players use the stats from their Job cards, but add 1 to their Income and 2 to their Slack Goal to reflect the extra work of being in the Reserves. The stats from the MOS cards are not used.

More Illicit Things

All Weed and Shroom cards are considered Illicit for players in the Reserves.

TV

TV cards cannot cancel military Activities, such as Firing Range or Ceremonial Duties. TV is not an option when you are on duty.

Jobs and MOSs

Cards that affect Jobs do not affect your MOS. Cards that affect your MOS do not affect your Job.