Picky Eaters Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
  • Guest cards
  • Item cards
• Setup
• Gameplay
• Actions
• Additional Rules
• Game End
• Scoring
• 2-Player and 3-Player Variant

Components

• Ingredient cards x 85
• Recipe cards x 35
• Item cards x 19
• Guest cards x 16
• Player aid cards x 6
• First player card x 1
• Score pad x 1

The guest cards form the Guest deck, shown as an envelope. The ingredient, recipe and item cards form the Food deck, shown as a shopping cart.

Guest cards

Each guest card lists the dishes that guest feels about, grouped into four categories:

• Favorite (heart icon): +4 points
• Like (thumbs-up icon): +2 points
• Dislike (thumbs-down icon): -1 points
• Restriction (X icon): -3 points

The three guest cards shown in the rulebook are:

• Billie (school teacher)
  • Favorite: moussaka
  • Like: pizza, bolognese, sushi
  • Dislike: pad thai, falafel
  • Restriction: peanut butter sandwich, naan
• Alex (health nut)
  • Favorite: sushi, peanut butter sandwich
  • Like: baba ganoush, veggie burger, kebab
  • Dislike: burger, pizza
  • Restriction: pierogi
• Ramona (food critic)
  • Favorite: maafe
  • Like: moussaka, baingan bharta, sushi
  • Dislike: burrito, dal, popcorn
  • Restriction: peanut butter sandwich

Item cards

• Extra Seasoning: Put on an opponent's Recipe to downgrade it one notch for all Guests that have it listed.
• Sprinkle of Herbs: Put on one of your Recipes to add +2 points each time it is a Guest's favorite.
• Fancy Silverware: +1 point for each of your Recipes. This card permanently takes up a Recipe slot.

Setup

1. Shuffle the Food Deck.
2. Shuffle the Guest Deck.
3. Give the first player card to the player who most recently went grocery shopping.
4. You are now ready to start the first round!

Gameplay

The goal of Picky Eaters: Make the best feast for 5 picky dinner guests!

The game has 5 rounds.

Each round has 5 steps:

1. Reveal 1 new Guest.
2. The Market is in the center of the table and where players get Food cards. Fill the Market with Food cards, face up (2 cards x the number of players). If there are cards still in the Market at the end of a round, discard them.
3. Deal 5 Food cards to each player. These cards are kept secret. If necessary, players must discard down to a maximum 10 cards.
4. Starting with the first player, each player takes 1 action until all players have passed.
5. Pass the first player card to the next player clockwise.

Actions

Players can choose from 5 actions:

• Get Food from the Market: Take 1 card from the Market. Do NOT replace or refill it.
• Prepare a Recipe: To prepare a Recipe:
  1. Have both the Recipe card and its listed ingredients in your hand. If you don't have all of these, you can't prepare a Recipe!
  2. Discard the Ingredient cards and place the Recipe card in front of you.
  3. This Recipe remains in play and will now take up one of your 5 Recipe slots.
  4. When preparing a Recipe, you may discard any 3 cards in your hand in place of any 1 Ingredient. You may only do this once per Recipe.
• Play an Item: Play an Item card from your hand.
• Discard 2 to draw 1: Discard 2 cards from your hand to draw 1 face-down card from the Food Deck.
• Pass: Announce you are done taking actions. Once you pass, you may no longer take actions for that round.

Additional Rules

You may replace a Recipe when (and only when) you prepare a new Recipe. When you replace a Recipe, you discard the Recipe you are replacing as well as any Items on it. You may replace a Recipe even if you have only 1 Recipe in play. You may not replace a Recipe that has Hot Plate on it.

Editor's note: the rulebook refers to "Hot Plate" here but does not define it in the text, and the component page shows only three of the 19 item cards. Transcribed as printed.

There is no limit to how many Items can be on a Recipe. However, no Recipe can have more than 1 of the same Item on it.

Players may never end their turn with more than 10 cards in hand. If a player has more than 10 cards at the end of their turn, they must discard down to 10.

If the Food Deck is ever empty, shuffle the discard pile to form a new Food Deck.

You may never use more than 5 Recipe slots.

The Market only gets refilled at the beginning of each round.

Game End

The game ends once all players have passed in the fifth round.

Scoring

Go through each player's Recipe slots and calculate their score:

1. Each Recipe is worth 2 points.
2. Modify the Recipe's point value each time it is listed on a Guest card:
   • Favorite: +4 points
   • Like: +2 points
   • Dislike: -1 points
   • Restriction: -3 points
3. Add the scores of all your Recipe slots together.

The player with the most points wins. In the case of a tie, whoever started the game as a later player wins.

2-Player and 3-Player Variant

For 2-player and 3-player games, make the following changes for a less picky experience:

1. Fill the Market with 6 cards (instead of 4 cards for 2-player games).
2. Deal 6 cards to each player at the beginning of each round (instead of 5 cards).