Top Dogs Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Players
• Goal
• Setup
• Gameplay
  • Player turn
  • Situation (ties)
  • Counting a team

Players

3–5 players.

Goal

Collect the most points by winning cup cards.

Setup

• Each player receives 20 cards of one colour.
• Each player receives 1 of the 5 racer cards. Place it face up in front of you.
• Shuffle the cup cards and place them face down in the middle of the table.
• Shuffle your own 20 cards and place them as a face-down stack in front of you. Take the top 7 cards into your hand.

Gameplay

The game consists of 10 rounds. Each round, the top cup card is turned face up. For this cup card, the round is played by assembling a team of 3 dogs.

Player turn

When a cup card has been turned face up, all players choose 3 cards from their hand of 7 cards that form a team, and place these three cards face down in front of them. When everyone has done so, the cards are turned face up simultaneously (or in turn order). The player whose team has the highest point value wins the round and therefore the cup card.

The winning player takes the cup card and places it in front of them. The other players receive nothing. Every player then discards the 3 team cards plus one more card from their hand. You now have 3 cards in your hand. Refill your hand to 7 and continue this way until there are no cup cards left.

Source notes: the discard paragraph follows the winner paragraph in the Dutch text, but it is written generically ("you now have 3 cards in your hand"), so it is read as applying to every player each round. The text does not say which card from the hand is the "extra" card, so the choice is left as printed. The text also does not say what the racer cards do beyond being placed face up in front of each player. The text says the game consists of 10 rounds and also says to continue until there are no cup cards left; both are kept as printed.

Situation (ties)

If there is a tie, the cup card goes to the player whose team has the second-highest value. If that second-highest value is also shared by 2 or more players, the cup card goes to the player whose team has the third-highest value. If there is no such player, the cup is lost.

Counting a team

• When a team consists of 3 different cards, add all the values together. For example, 5-6-2 is 13 points in total.
• When a team contains 2 identical cards, first multiply those 2 cards together, then add the value of the 3rd card. For example, 5-5-2 is 27 points in total (5 × 5 + 2).
• When a team consists of 3 identical cards, multiply all the cards together. For example, 6-6-6 is 216 (6 × 6 × 6).

Source note: the text does not state how many points a cup card is worth at the end of the game. The goal says to collect the most points by winning cup cards, but no point values for cup cards are printed in the source.