Machiavelli
Machiavelli Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Players and Cards
This Italian game is for 2 to 5 players. It is played with two full 52-card packs shuffled together, without jokers (104 cards in total). Deal and play both proceed clockwise.
Setup
The dealer deals 13 cards to each player, one at a time. The remaining cards are placed face down on the table to form a drawing stock.
Object
The aim is to get rid of all the cards in your hand. You do this by laying your cards on the table in valid combinations.
Combinations
A valid combination is one of the following:
- A set of three or four cards of the same rank and different suits.
- A sequence of three or more adjacent cards of the same suit. An ace can be high or low, but not both in the same sequence (so a sequence such as 2-Ace-King is not valid).
Each card on the table can belong to only one combination at a time.
Playing a Turn
On your turn you may do one of the following, and only one:
- Play one or more cards from your hand to the table, provided that when you are done, every card on the table (both the cards you added and the cards already there) can be arranged into valid combinations. This includes cards forming brand-new combinations and cards added to combinations that already exist. You may also rearrange the combinations already on the table — breaking them up and regrouping them in any way you like — as part of making your move, so long as you finish with at least one card from your hand added to the table and every card on the table still forming valid combinations.
- Take the top card from the drawing stock and add it to your hand.
You cannot both play cards and draw a card on the same turn — it is one or the other, and then play passes to the next player.
Failed Moves
If you begin a move of the first type — playing cards from your hand, or rearranging the cards already on the table — but discover partway through that you cannot complete it (that is, you cannot arrange all the table cards into separate, complete, valid combinations), you must take back any card or cards you played. As a penalty, you must then draw three cards from the stock instead, and your turn ends.
End of the Game
Play ends the moment a player manages to get rid of every card in hand by laying them all on the table. The other players then receive one penalty point for each card still remaining in their hand at that moment — they get no further opportunity to get rid of cards.
Variants
In their book I Giochi di Carte, E. Fantini and C. E. Santelia describe the following further variations of Machiavelli.
Tahiti
Four jokers are added to the deck (108 cards in total). Only 5 cards are dealt to each player, and four more cards are dealt face up to the table. These four table cards can be used to help form melds, but do not have to be — until used, they remain as separate single cards in the layout.
A joker can be used as a substitute for any card needed in a meld, but a meld cannot contain more than one joker. A player who holds in hand the card represented by a joker on the table can replace the joker with the real card, and then use the released joker in another combination on the table. A meld that contains a joker cannot be rearranged unless the player first replaces the joker with the real card it represents. A joker cannot be replaced by a card that is already on the table — the replacement card must come from the player's hand.
When a player goes out, the other players get penalty points based on the cards remaining in their hands: cards ranked 2 through 10 score face value, picture cards score 10, aces score 11, and jokers score 30 points.
Guadalupe
This variant of Machiavelli is played without jokers. The players are each dealt 5 cards initially. On your turn, if you have not put down any cards, you draw two cards from the deck; if you put down cards from your hand without going out, you draw one card from the deck at the end of your turn. When a player goes out, the other players score 1 penalty point for each card remaining in their hand.
Antonio Ferraioli has published a Machiavelli game for iPhone.