FIXER Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Game Overview
• Components
• 3-4 Player Rules (2 Player Rules: see below)
  • Setup
  • Areas and conflict markers
  • Game Overview
  • Player Turn
  • Rules for playing a card
• Conflict Resolution
  • Determining a winner
  • Suit matchups
  • Card Resolution
• Game End
• Scoring
• Expert Rules
  • A. Card Exchange
  • B. Long Game
• 2 Player Rules
  • Setup
  • Rule differences
• Tips
• FAQ

Game Overview

The card's suit matchups are crucial for deciding each conflict; while media cards are weak to capital cards, they are strong against people cards. Exploit your options, outwit your opponents, and manipulate the odds in your favor to become the nation's shadow ruler!

Components

• Rulebooks: 2 (Japanese / English)
• Playable cards: 36 (4 suits, 9 cards each). The 36 playable cards are divided into four suits. Each suit is a distinct color and contains cards numbered 1 through 9. No two cards are the same.
  1. The suit's name.
  2. Icon indicating the suit: Regime, Media, Capital, People.
  3. Number indicating the strength and score value of this card.
  4. Icon indicating this suit's weakness.
• Reference cards: 4. These cards are used as a reference for players to know the strengths and weaknesses of each suit. They also provide you with a space for your discard area.
  1. Suit matchups. Each suit has one advantageous (strong) and one disadvantageous (weak) suit. The direction of the arrow indicates the stronger suit. (e.g. the people win against the regime, but lose against the media.)
  2. Discard space. When cards are discarded during play, they are placed face down on this space.
• Area boards: 6. Area boards are placed between players. Referred to as an area, this is where players play their cards.
  1. Indicates where players can play their cards.
  2. Conflict marker slots.
  3. Player count indicator. For 3-4 player games use the side with the 3-4 player indicator, for 2 player games use the side with the 2 player indicator.
• Conflict markers: 18. Placed on the conflict marker slots of each area at the start of the game. These markers are used to indicate remaining game time and to score additional points at the end of the game.

3-4 Player Rules (2 Player Rules: see below)

Setup

1. Place the area boards in the center of the table with the 3-4 player side face up as indicated on the setup diagrams. When playing with 4 players, combine two area boards to create one central area.
2. Place all 18 conflict markers face down on the conflict marker slots.
3. Each player receives a reference card, keeping it within their play area.
4. Shuffle all 36 cards, then deal out an equal number of cards to each player. Cards are kept secret from other players. In a 3-player game, each player receives 12 cards. In a 4-player game, each player will receive 9 cards.
5. The player who most recently lied goes first.

Areas and conflict markers

Players can play cards into areas that are facing them. Each player can access four areas in a 3 player game, and three areas in a 4 player game. Players enter a 1-on-1 conflict within each area, with the conflict markers indicating the amount of remaining conflicts per area. Every time a conflict is completed, one conflict marker is removed from that area. (See: Determining a winner).

When playing with 4 players, the two central area boards are used by the A and C, and B and D player pairs respectively. You do not engage in conflicts with your neighboring players in the central area. (The red players can only utilize the red markers, whereas the blue players can only utilize the blue markers. If all three red markers are gone, players C and A cannot play into the central area.)

Game Overview

Players take turns in clockwise order starting from the first player. The game ends once all conflict markers have been removed from all areas.

Player Turn

The active player chooses a card from their hand and plays it face up into one of their open, unoccupied areas.

Rules for playing a card

1. You cannot play a card into an area with no conflict markers.
2. You can only play cards into an area that's unoccupied on your side.
3. If your opponent already played a card into the area, you must play a card of the same suit if you are able.
4. If there is no card on your opponent's side of the area, or if you don't have a card of the same suit as your opponent's card, you can play any card you'd like.

If you play a card into an area that already contains an opponent's card, you resolve the conflict immediately. Afterwards, the player to your left takes the next turn.

Conflict Resolution

Determining a winner

Compare the two cards in the area to resolve the conflict and determine a winner.

• Same Suit: the card with the higher number wins.
• Different Suits (refer to the reference card for suit matchups):
  • If there is a suit matchup: the card from the stronger suit wins, regardless of the cards' numbers.
  • If there is no suit matchup: the card that was placed first wins, regardless of the cards' numbers.

Winning via a suit matchup is referred to as a Critical victory, whereas all other victories are classified as Normal.

Suit matchups

All suits have one advantageous suit and one disadvantageous suit, indicated by the arrows on the reference card. The arrow always points to the weaker suit. Suits on the opposite sides of the matchup diagram (not neighboring) have no relationship. For example, the people win against the regime but lose against the media. They have no match up with the capital.

The regime controls the capital, the capital funds the media, the media influences the people, the people overthrow the regime...

Card Resolution

Winning player: The conflict's winner takes the losing card and places it within their scoring area. Additionally, the winning player takes one of the conflict markers from the conflict area, and places it on top of the card they just scored. How they place the card and marker depends on the type of victory.

• Normal victory: both are placed face down.
• Critical victory: both are placed face up.

Defeated player: The conflict's loser receives the opponent's winning card, and does one of the following:

1. Adds it to their hand. You cannot add a card to your hand if you have a card of that suit face up in your scoring area.
2. Places it face down in their discard area. If you are unable to add a card to your hand, you have to discard the card.

Game End

The game ends once all conflict markers have been removed from all areas. (In a 3-player game, each player takes 12 turns. In a 4-player game, each player takes 9 turns.) Players now calculate their scores.

Scoring

Each player calculates their own score. Cards remaining in a player's hand can be set aside as they will not be scored, only the following 2 factors are used for scoring:

1. Cards in your scoring area: turn all cards in your scoring area face up, and add up all of their values.
2. Conflict markers facing up: every face up conflict marker in your scoring area is worth 4 points. Face down conflict markers are worth 0 points.

Combine these two factors. The player with the highest score wins the game.

(Example: 2 + 3 + 5 + 6 + 4 + 4 = 24, where the last two values are face up conflict markers.)

Expert Rules

Experienced players may wish to spice up their game by incorporating the expert rules. You can choose to either add the A rules, B rules, or both.

A. Card Exchange

During set up, after dealing out all the cards, each player simultaneously chooses any 3 cards from their hand and passes them to the player on their left. The rest of the rules are unchanged. (This adds strategic depth as you are able to play around the cards you gave away and received, helping you to formulate a strategy.)

B. Long Game

These rules allow players to carry their cards over into a second round. Players hold onto any cards left in their hand at the end of the game. After scoring all cards, the cards are shuffled and dealt out between all players corresponding to the player count. All conflict markers are returned to their starting state. The player with the highest score becomes the first player. The rest of the game rules are unchanged. The player with the highest total score across both rounds wins the game.

(The long game allows for collusion and temporary partnerships between players to increase the tension of the game.)

2 Player Rules

Setup

1. Place 4 area boards with the 2 player side face up as indicated on the setup diagram. Each player will have access to 4 playable areas.
2. Place 3 conflict markers face down per area, for a total of 12 markers.
3. Each player receives a reference card and places it within their play area.
4. Return the 8 and 9 cards from each suit to the box. All other cards are shuffled and dealt out until both players have 12 cards. The remaining 4 cards are also returned to the box. The unused cards must remain unknown to both players.
5. The player who most recently lied goes first.

Rule differences

The following rule changes apply for a 2 player game:

• When a player wins a conflict, they do not place a conflict marker on the acquired card. Instead, the marker is moved towards their side of the area, as indicated by the arrows. The conflict marker follows normal / critical victory orientation rules.
• On their first turn, the second player cannot play a card into the same area as the first player's first turn.
• If a player moves all 3 tokens from two areas onto their side, they immediately win the game.
• When calculating the score, each player scores 4 points per face up conflict marker that's on their side of an area.

Tips

• Try to work out what cards your opponents have in their hands. Most players will try to reduce the number of different suits in their hand as a priority.
• Players with face up cards in their score area indicate that they do not have cards of that color in their hand. Players with only media cards in their hand cannot secure a critical victory against any people cards, so timing the suits you play is very important.
• The second half of the game tends to be more competitive as the higher-numbered cards come out. If you cannot score it big, try to string together multiple smaller wins to minimize the score difference between yourself and your opponents.

FAQ

• If there are no available areas to play cards into, your turn immediately ends and the next player takes their turn.

• When you play a card that would result in a critical loss, the winner places that card face down in their score area instead of face up. (The winning player could have cards of that suit in their hand.)

  Example: Minori plays a 9 of the people, and Yusei follows up with a 2 of the regime. Minori achieves a critical victory due to the suit matchup and places the regime 2 card face down in her play area. (She could have regime cards in her hand after all.) She places the conflict marker face-up on the acquired card.

Corrections, clarifications, and fixes to the rules: https://jelly2games.com/fixer