ButaBabel Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup
• Objective
• Game-play
• Game-end

Components

A deck of cards, separated into three types:

• Straw house (Paper)
• Stick house (Scissors)
• Brick house (Rock)

Setup

1. Shuffle the deck of game cards and deal each player 3 cards as their starting hand, followed by dealing and revealing one card for each player as the foundation of their tower.
   • In a 3-player game, reveal an extra card on the table as the foundation for the dummy player. (I.e. there will be 4 foundation cards in play in a 3-player game.)
2. For the remaining cards, separate the deck into three roughly equal portions and place them in easy reach for all players and the game is ready to begin.

Objective

Each Piggy Architect will be building its tower in this game and the goal is to build the tallest tower.

Building on your tower is easy: simply stack the cards in the sequence of "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Rock…" and so on. However, if your tower gets too tall, you will enrage God and become eliminated from the game!

As an outstanding Piggy Architect, apart from building your own tower, you must also learn to "help" other players at the appropriate timing so that you can achieve the goal of building the highest, yet not-too-tall tower!

Game-play

After the players say "Ready, GO!", the game will begin!

• The rules of "rock, paper and scissors" will apply to determine how cards are played. Any player may play a card on any tower in play as long as the card played beats the top card shown on that tower (i.e. rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper and paper beats rock).
• When you have less than 3 cards in hand, you can draw the top card from any deck and refill your hand up to 3 cards.
• In the circumstance where none of the players are able to play cards due to the state of the towers in play, the game will pause; all players will say "Ready, GO!" and play a card from their hand to their own tower (rules of "rock, paper and scissors" DO NOT apply). The game will then proceed as normal. (While this may happen, it is rather rare.)
• When all the draw decks run out, all players will cease playing cards immediately and the game will end.

Game-end

Each player will calculate the height of the tower they have built (i.e. count the number of cards) and one player will do the calculation for the dummy player. The player with the highest tower wins! (i.e. having the most number of cards)

However, if the player with the highest tower wins the game by having his/her tower 3 or more cards taller than the player in the 2nd place (≧3), the player with the highest tower would have built a tower that is too high and be the target of God's punishment and will be eliminated from the game. The same restriction will also apply for the players in the 2nd and 3rd place until a winner is determined (i.e. you can only win by having the highest tower that is only 1 or 2 cards higher than the runner-up's tower).

• If only one player remains at the end of the game, he/she will automatically become the winner.

• If the dummy player ends up having the highest (legitimate) tower, all players lose the game.

• When all cards have been calculated with two or more players tied for the highest tower, they will all be eliminated from the game and the remaining players will determine the winner of the game.

• A(23), B(20), C(18), D(14) ▶ B wins! Player A is eliminated for having 3 cards more than B on his tower.

• A(22), B(22), C(20), D(12) ▶ D wins! Both players A and B are eliminated for tying for the 1st place; C is also eliminated for having 8 cards more than D on his tower.

• A(23), B(18), C(18), D(16) ▶ B & C wins! Player A is eliminated for having 5 cards more than B and C; although B and C are tied, as they did not have the most cards, they will share the victory together.