Monster Chase Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Contents
• Setup
  • Figure 1
• The Basic Game
  • Game Turn
• Winning
• Variants
  • Easy Game for Younger Players
  • Make the Game Harder Once You Have Mastered the Basic Game...
    • "Monsters in a Pack" Variant
    • Expert Hunters
    • Fearless Hunters Variant
• Credits

Contents

• 20 Monster cards (child in his bed on the back)
• 1 Closet card
• 10 Toy tiles
• 2 Expert tiles (blue background)
• 3 Progression cards (red on one side and blue on the other)
• 1 rules booklet

Setup

• Shuffle the Monster cards in a pile, child side up (the monsters are hidden). Use 10 cards for a short game, 15 cards for a medium length game and all 20 cards for a long game. Unused cards are put back in the box.
• Without looking at them, place the 10 Toy tiles face down around the bed, making sure that there is enough space for manipulation.
• Assemble the monster with the 3 Progression cards, blue side up.
• Place the Closet card about 6 inches from the bed.
• Reveal a Monster card and place it above the bed (North). See figure 1.
• Do not use the 2 Expert tiles for your first game.

Figure 1

The Closet card sits to one side. The first Monster card is placed above the bed on its north side. The Toy tiles are arranged face down around the bed. The Progression cards, assembled blue side up, sit near the bed.

The Basic Game

Each player takes his turn in clockwise order. The player least afraid of monsters starts. The players try to find a toy that will scare the monsters away. Each monster is only afraid of one specific toy, illustrated in the top right corner of the Monster card.

Game Turn

On your turn, flip a Toy tile and one of two things happens:

1. If the toy can scare away one of the monsters found around the bed:
   • You say "Back into the closet, you monster!" and place the Monster card under the Closet card.
   • If you get rid of the last monster around the bed, a new monster comes out! Reveal a new monster and place it next to the bed.
   • Flip the toy face down and your turn ends.
2. If the toy doesn't scare away any of the monsters (it is not on any of the revealed Monster cards):
   • Flip ONE of the Progression cards (from left to right). After three failed attempts, add a new monster around the bed. Reveal a new monster and place it in an OPEN spot near the bed: north, south, east or west.
   • Flip the Toy tile face down and your turn is over.

In short, each time a player is wrong, he must flip a Progression card. After three failed attempts, once all the Progression cards are the same color (all blue or all red), you add one new monster around the bed.

Winning

The players win if they succeed in sending every single monster in the closet!

The monsters win if they occupy all four spaces around the bed. They also win if you have to reveal a Monster card (because the third Progression card is flipped) and the monster pile is empty.

If the monsters win, the best thing to do is to play another game to get back at them.

Variants

Here are some variants to adapt the gameplay to different difficulty levels.

Easy Game for Younger Players

Play with the same rules but do not use the Progression cards. This implies that there can only be one monster on the table at any time... You can't lose! A new monster only appears when you send the one that is around the bed into the closet.

This can also be used as a competitive variant. When the player flips the right toy, he keeps the monster card instead of sending it into the closet. At the end of the game, the player with the most cards wins.

Make the Game Harder Once You Have Mastered the Basic Game...

"Monsters in a Pack" Variant

The monsters form a pack. The more monsters there are, the harder they are to scare away! If several monsters are around the bed, they must all be eliminated at the same time. When you turn a tile that scares a monster away, you leave it face up and must find all the necessary toys to chase the other monsters that are around the bed. If you make a mistake, you set the Toy tiles face down, no monsters go into the closet and, as usual, a Progression card is flipped over.

Expert Hunters

The Expert tiles are colored blue. We recommend that you integrate them only when you have mastered the basic game. If you feel brave enough, here is how you integrate them.

At the beginning of the game, place them with the other tiles without looking at them. During the game, the first time you flip one over, it has no effect. You set it face down WITHOUT flipping a Progression card. The next time you flip over one of the special tiles (the one you saw or the other one), apply the appropriate effect:

1. The sock — The sock does not scare any monsters away and makes a mess in the bedroom! Put it face down and swap it with another face down tile. As usual, flip a Progression card.
2. The monster hidden under a bed sheet — All the Progression cards required to make a new monster appear are flipped and a monster immediately comes out from under the bed.

Fearless Hunters Variant

Before the first turn, place every Toy tile face up for 10 seconds so everyone can see them and then flip them back face down. Remove the middle Progression card, leaving only the two end cards. Now, a new monster card appears after only two failed attempts instead of three!

Credits

For more information on Le Scorpion Masqué games, visit www.scorpionmasque.com.

Le Scorpion Masqué would like to thank Dave Capogreco for the English translation.

The designer would like to thank every teacher who tested this game with their classes as well as his parents for reading to him "Il y a un cauchemar dans mon placard" by Mercer Mayer, over and over and over...

Use of the cards, illustrations, title, Le Scorpion Masqué name and logo are strictly forbidden without prior written consent from Le Scorpion Masqué inc.

© 2009 Le Scorpion masqué inc.