Fire Bulls Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Game Components
• Game Preparation
• Playing the Game
  • 1. Resupply Fire Bulls
  • 2. Attack the Yen Army
• End of the Turn
• End of the Game
• Points Counting

Game Components

Fire Bulls (10): 2 each of the 5 colors.

Qi Army Cards:

• Fire Bull Cards (50): 10 for each colored green, yellow, red, blue, and brown totem.
• Warrior Cards (4): which can be used as any color of the 5 Fire Bulls.

Yen Army Cards:

• Single Soldier Cards (15): image of 1 soldier. Can be beaten by 1 Fire Bull Card of the color assigned on the card; worth 1 point.
• Wu Cards (12): with the image of 2 soldiers. Can be beaten by 2 Fire Bull Cards of the color assigned on the card; worth 2 points.
• Xi Cards (9): with the image of 3 soldiers. Can be beaten by any 3 Fire Bull Cards of the same color; worth 3 points.
• Bo Cards (6): with the image of 6 soldiers. Can be beaten by 5 Fire Bull Cards each of a different color; worth 6 points and the player beating them may draw 1 card from the Qi Army pile.
• Vice-General Cards (3): can be beaten either by 3 Fire Bull Cards of the same color plus 2 other Fire Bull Cards of another color, or by 5 Fire Bull Cards all of the same color; worth 8 points and the player beating him may discard 1 card from each of the other players.
• General Qi Jie Card (1): can be beaten either by 4 Fire Bull Cards of the same color plus 3 Fire Bull Cards of another color, or by 7 Fire Bull Cards all of the same color; worth 12 points and the player beating him may draw 1 card from each of the other players.
• Stockade Cards (8) (representing stockades protecting the Yen army): can be beaten by any one of the Fire Bull Cards; worth 0 points.

Game Preparation

1. Shuffle the Yen Army Cards and divide them equally into 3 piles, representing 3 streams of retreating troops. Draw 3 cards from each of the 3 piles and place them in a straight row facing up, forming 3 straight rows. The farthest card from the pile represents the Yen army the players encounter first. The players can choose to attack the Yen army from 5 directions: either through one of the three straight lines, or through two diagonal directions, as indicated in the picture right.
2. Each player chooses a color of Fire Bulls, placing 1 Fire Bull in front of himself and another in one of the 5 directions mentioned before; there can only be 1 Fire Bull per direction. The placement of Fire Bulls is random and disputes over it will be resolved by "Paper, Scissor, Stone" duels.
3. Shuffle the Qi Army Cards and let each player draw 3 cards from them. Then reveal 3 more cards and placed face up beside the pile of Qi Army Cards.
4. Decide a starting player.

Playing the Game

The players take turns in a clockwise order. If the Qi Army Cards have all been used, reshuffle the discard pile to form a new pile.

Check after every turn to see whether the result fulfills the conditions to end the game: if it does, the game is over and points earned will be counted; if not, then it is the next player's turn.

When it is your turn, choose one of the 2 actions below.

1. Resupply Fire Bulls

Resupply your Fire Bulls by choosing one of the following steps:

• Take 1 card from those facing up. If there are less than 3 Qi Army Cards facing up on the table, draw 1 from the pile and put it face up on the table.
• Draw 1 card directly from the pile. You can also change the attacking direction and at the same time: move your Fire Bull 1 row to the left or to the right; if your Fire Bull is on the diagonal attacking directions, then the Fire Bull can only be moved to the nearest straight row; if there is another Fire Bull in the direction you want to move to, the attacking directions of the 2 Fire Bulls will be switched.

Note: The number of cards each player holds is limited to 8. If a player holds more than 8 cards, he chooses extra card(s) and placed it face up with the Qi Army Cards on the table; it can then be drawn by any of the players afterwards.

2. Attack the Yen Army

• Players can play the Qi Army Cards to attack the Yen army in accordance with the colored totems on the Yen Army Cards. The player can choose to attack the Yen Army from any of the 5 attacking directions, but must first attack the farthest Yen Army Card before he can attack the next card according to the attacking direction.
• The beaten Yen Army Cards are placed in front of the attacking player. The used Qi Army Cards are put aside as discard pile.
• 3 Yen Army Cards can be beaten in one turn unless the player attacks from his own attacking direction. If the player successfully beats 3 Yen Army Cards, he will be rewarded with drawing 2 Qi Army Cards from the pile.
• The beaten Yen Army Cards have to be displayed.
• If a player played a Warrior Card, 1 of his beaten Yen Army Card will be removed from the game (but not from those beaten in the same turn); this rule is in effect only when the player has any Yen Army Cards in front of him.

End of the Turn

• If one player beats Yen Army Cards in a row in one time, 3 Yen Army Cards will be drawn from the pile and placed in a row sequentially, resupplying the cards; the process can be skipped if there are no more cards in the Yen Army pile.
• If there are remaining Yen Army Cards in the straight rows, move them down sequentially and resupply the cards from the pile till there are 3 cards in a row.
• If the player attacked from 2 diagonal directions, move the remaining cards in every row downward, and then resupply cards from each pile till there are 3 cards in each row; attack-free rows need no resupplies.
• Whenever the General Qi Jie Card is drawn from the pile, it will be placed aside while another card will be drawn to fill the straight row.
• The General Qi Jie Card does not belong to any row and any player can attack it directly, but without attacking other Yen Army Cards at the same time.

End of the Game

The game is end when one of the conditions below is fulfilled:

• 2 of the 3 piles of Yen Army Cards are used up and General Qi Jie is beaten as well (even when there are still remaining Yen Army Cards in that row).
• The 3rd time the Qi Army Cards' pile is finished. When the second condition is fulfilled, it suggests that the players have let the main force of the Yen army escape; 1 card of the highest points will be removed from each of the players as a punishment, and its points will not be counted.

Points Counting

• After the points on the Yen Army Cards placed in front of each player are added, the player with the highest score wins. If there are Yen Army Cards with the same color as the player's Fire Bull, each of those cards adds 1 extra point, which is to say that beating 1 Bo Card actually produces 7 points, since the color of the players' Fire Bulls is surely found on the Bo Card. Attention! The white totem is different from all players' Fire Bulls, so cards with it give no extra points.
• If a tie occurs, the beaten Yen Army Cards will be placed according to their points, from high to low, and the player having beaten the card with the higher points wins; if a tie still occurs, the players all win.

Example:

Player Gong has 1 Vice-General Card, 2 Bo Cards, 2 Wu Cards, 2 Stockade Cards, and 4 Single Soldier Cards in front of him when the game ends, as indicated in the picture below. Since the game ends because the Qi Army Cards have been used up for the 3rd time, the Vice-General Card of Gong will not be counted as it has the highest points. The points added from the remaining cards will be 6+6+2+2+1+1+1+1=20. After checking the totems on his Yen Army Cards, it turns out that there are 3 cards that have the same color as Gong's Fire Bull (which are 2 Bo Cards and 1 Single Soldier Card), so 3 extra points are added, producing Gong's final score of 23 points.