Figment
Figment Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
- A deck of Figment cards, each showing an abstract illustration built from the same four colors.
- 8 Arrow cards (two for each of the four colors), each pointing toward "more" of its printed color.
- 5 numbered betting chips (1 through 5), which double as the round tracker.
You never need to shuffle the Figment deck.
Setup
- Place the five betting chips on the table where everyone can see them. These also track how many rounds you have left to play — a game of Figment lasts five rounds.
- Shuffle the eight Arrow cards and place them in a stack.
- Set the Figment deck to one side, face down.
- Take the top card of the Figment deck and place it in front of the top Arrow card. This is the first card of your row.
You are now ready to play.
Playing a Round
Figment is fully cooperative: everyone at the table works together to build one row of five cards, in order from the least of the Arrow card's color to the most of that color.
- Decide who takes the first turn. This is a largely ceremonial role: whoever's turn it is has the final say on where the newly drawn card goes in the row if the table can't agree, but every decision is discussed as a team.
- On a turn, draw the top card of the Figment deck and decide, as a team, where it belongs in the row — is it showing more or less of the Arrow's color than the cards already placed?
- There is nothing illegal about how you compare cards: hold them up to one another, layer them over each other, or use your fingernail to measure a sliver of color against another card. The only thing you may never do is look at the backs of the cards, where the numbers are printed.
- Play then passes to the next player clockwise, who draws the next card and the team repeats the process.
- Keep drawing and placing cards until there are five cards in the row.
Betting and Revealing
Before you check your work, your team must make two final decisions:
- How much to bet. Choose one of the remaining betting chips (1 through 5) and put it forward. Each chip can only be used once across the whole game, so save the higher-value chips for rounds you feel more confident about, and spend the low-value chips on rounds you're less sure of.
- Which end of the row to start revealing from. Pick whichever end you feel more confident is correctly ordered.
Starting from the chosen end, flip the cards face down to reveal the percentage printed on the back of each one, one at a time. The moment a revealed card breaks the correct order (compared to the previous card revealed), stop immediately — you stop scoring the instant you make a mistake.
- The card that broke the sequence goes to the discard pile.
- Any card you never got to reveal also goes to the discard pile.
- Every card that was correctly revealed before the mistake (or all five, if you never made one) goes to your scoring area, worth 1 point each.
- If you got all five cards in the row correct, you also keep the betting chip you put forward, worth its printed value in points. If you made a mistake anywhere in the row, that betting chip is lost, whether or not you had already used it to reveal any correct cards.
Starting the Next Round
Take a new Arrow card (it may show a different color than the previous one) and draw a new Figment card from the deck to place in front of it — this is the first card of the new row. Continue playing rounds this way until all five betting chips have been used, i.e. after five rounds.
Scoring
At the end of the fifth round, add up your final score:
- 1 point for every card in your scoring area.
- Plus the value of every betting chip you successfully earned (by getting a full row of five correct).
Compare your total to the manual's thresholds:
- 25 points or more: Bronze
- 30 points or more: Silver
- 35 points or more: Gold
Challenge Mode
Figment also includes a Challenge Mode with higher scoring thresholds to aim for, for teams looking for a tougher target than the normal game.