Neos
Neos Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Preparations
Shuffle all the cards, and deal 6 cards to each player – their respective hands. Then set up a deck of 12 face down cards; this is called the lead pile. The remaining cards are placed face down – this is the draw pile. Keep the lead pile and the draw pile separate.
Flow of the game
1: Call – One player (anyone) reveals the top card of the lead pile, reads aloud the two letters on the card and places it face up beside the lead pile.
2: Play – All players may now play a card before them, that corresponds to either one or both of the lead card's letters. Each player has his own play field. If you manage to fit the colour and/or lines of the cards you've played previously, you will score points (see "Scoring" below).
If you don't have any cards you can play, or if you don't want to play any of your cards, you must instead discard a card from your hand. Keep your discarded cards separate from your played cards.
3: Draw – All players draw one card from the draw pile. Each player should always have 6 cards in hand.
4: Repeat – When all players have drawn, return to Call, and repeat until the lead pile is exhausted.
5: End – When all 12 cards of the lead pile have been read, the game ends. Proceed to scoring.
How to play cards
You can only play cards that correspond to either one or two of the lead card's letters. For example, if a player has AB, AD, AF, BC, BE and CF and the lead card is AF, he can play any of his cards except BC and BE.
Cards are played into your private play area. After the very first card, cards you play must be placed to either the right or left of the previously played card(s). You cannot play a card in between two other cards.
You'll save a lot of space if you play the first two cards beside each other and after that let the following cards partially cover the ones below (see below).
Note that you are not forced to match the colours or lines of your previously played cards. You can play any card as long as it matches the lead card.
Example of arranging your play field: [diagram in the source manual, showing the cards placed "instead of" overlapping; not reproduced here.]
Scoring
If you manage to group up 3 or more card colours or card lines, they are scored as a group. You can score for card colour or line, or both, on the same card. However, you do not get a higher score for grouping together more colours/lines than three. Even if you've grouped together 6 cards with the same colour, they still count as one group (if they were separated into two groups of 3, you would score twice). The player with the highest score wins.
A colour group (cards of the same colour) is always worth 5 points. Groups for lines vary in points. An 'A' line group is 3 points, a 'B' and 'C' line group is 4, a 'D' and 'E' line group is 6, and an 'F' line group is 7 points.
Look at the scoring example in the Japanese manual.
- 5 points for the colour group of red.
- 3 points for the 'A' line.
- 4 points for the 'C' line. This C-line is 4 cards, but still just one group.
This scoring example totals 12 points.
Note the position of the leftmost AF card. If the player had placed it to the right instead, he would have created an 'F' line group instead of an 'A' line group, getting 4 more points.
A practical way to set up the game (not a rule)
Create [# of players + 2] piles of 6 cards each. The remaining cards become the draw pile. Each player picks one of the 6-card piles as his hand, and the remaining two are placed together to form the lead pile.