Mia Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Setup
• The Cup Owner's Turn
• The Next Player's Turn
• After a Challenge
• Scoring: The Order of Rolls
• Variants

Overview

The most fun you can have with two dice.

For 3 or more players, aged 8 or older (younger players sometimes have trouble with the bluffing element in this game). You need 2 dice, a cup, and pen and paper (or simply use coins to keep track of lives).

Setup

Roll a die to see who goes first. All players start with three lives. (For a longer game, increase the number of starting lives.)

The Cup Owner's Turn

The first player rolls the dice under the cup in the middle of the table and, after discretely peeking at them, keeps their value hidden. This is known as the "cup value," and the roller is the current "cup owner." He or she then has 3 choices:

(a) Tell the truth and announce the actual cup value.

(b) Lie and announce a greater value than the actual cup value.

(c) Lie and announce a lesser value than the actual cup value.

Note: It can sometimes happen that the 2 dice are stacked on top of each other beneath the cup after a roll. In this case, the roller should reveal the "stacker" to the other players and then roll again.

The Next Player's Turn

The turn then passes to the next player. This player has 3 options:

(1) Challenge the cup owner (that is, call him a liar) and lift the cup to reveal the cup value. If the cup value is less than that which the cup owner announced, the cup owner loses a life. However, if the cup value is equal to or greater than that which the cup owner announced, the challenger loses a life.

(2) Pass his turn to the next player, without looking at the cup value. (Note that only the turn is passed. The cup is not passed, so as not to disturb the dice. Alternatively, some groups play with a cup and a lid, and pass the lidded cup around from one player to the next very carefully.) In passing, the passer is claiming that the cup value is as announced, and he or she becomes the new cup owner. This relieves the previous cup owner of all responsibility — that is, the passer has assumed all responsibility for the cup value, as if he or she had rolled the dice.

(3) Roll the dice, in the hopes of rolling something higher than the currently announced cup value. (In this case, the new roller does not get to check to see if the cup owner was telling the truth. So without lifting the cup to check the actual cup value, he or she should vigorously rattle the cup to re-roll the dice — either that, or carefully slide the cup off the table into his or her hands without looking at the dice, and then covering the cup, shake the dice. After rolling, he or she should carefully peek at the new value without revealing it to the others.) By choosing to roll, the player becomes the new cup owner. Important Note: Even if the new cup owner's actual roll is not higher than the previously announced cup value, the new cup owner must lie and announce a higher roll.

If either option (2) or (3) is chosen, the turn then passes to the next player, who has the same three options above. By contrast, option (1), a challenge, ends a round, and someone (the loser of the challenge) loses a life.

After a Challenge

After the challenge is resolved, the cup owner (that is, the person who was challenged, not the challenger), regardless of whether he or she won or lost the challenge, then begins a new round with a fresh roll of the dice. Since this is the start of a new round, the roller is free to announce any cup value he or she wishes.

It can happen that the cup is passed all the way back to the original roller, that is, all other players choose option (2) (pass) and the turn of play comes back to the original cup owner for the round. In this case, the original roller can pass only if he or she at the same time calls a higher cup value. The next player is free to pass, roll, or challenge as usual. (The one exception to this rule is if the original roller announced "Mia" (explained below). If an announcement of Mia goes around the table and back to the original roller, then that person can start the round again by re-rolling, if he or she chooses, and announce any cup value.)

If a Mia is either rolled or announced during a round and then challenged, then the player who loses that challenge loses two lives.

The game is won by the last player with at least one life.

Scoring: The Order of Rolls

Unlike most dice games, the value of the roll is not the sum of the dice. Instead, the highest die is multiplied by ten and then added to the other die. So a 2 and a 1 is 21 and a 5 and 6 is 65. The highest roll is 21 and called Mia. Next come all the doubles from 11 up to 66, and then back down again. The complete order of rolls is as follows:

21, 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 65, 64, 63, 62, 61, 54, 53, 52, 51, 43, 42, 41, 32, 31

Why is 21 the high score? Apparently, the game of Mia is an ancient one played as long ago as the Viking era, when knucklebones of animals were used as dice. Knucklebones have four sides, and are closer to rectangular blocks rather than to cubes. The two long narrow faces were marked 1 and 2. Obviously, these faces were much less likely to land facing up, as this would mean the rectangular bone was standing precariously on one of its narrow faces. Thus, the least likely combinations were 21, 11, and 22, since this would mean both bones were standing on their narrow faces. The guess is that because 21 is the odd combo out (since it is not a double), it was ranked the highest.

The game is much easier to play than to explain. The best way to learn is simply to try it!

Variants

Different groups play this game with slightly different rules, even playing the game under a different name such as "Meyer" ("Meier") or "Kuriki" ("Kariki"). So feel free to adjust the rules to your liking. Here are some common variants:

• According to the rules above, after a challenge, the person who was the cup owner during the challenge is always the one to begin a new round with a fresh roll (regardless of whether the cup owner won or lost the challenge). Some groups play that the challenger, not the cup owner, always begins a new round. Alternatively, some groups play that the loser of a challenge (which could be either the cup owner or the challenger, depending on the case) always begins the new round, while other groups play that the winner of a challenge always begins the new round.

• In a significant change to the rules of play, some groups play that if (after a series of passes) the cup comes around again to the original roller, then the original roller has the option of passing without raising the cup value. However, the next player may not pass again (since he or she has already chosen to pass once on this roll). In this case the next player's options are only (1) and (3) above, that is, to try to roll something higher, or to call the original roller a liar by pulling the cup.

• For a slightly easier to remember ordering of dice values, a popular alternative is the following: 2-1 at the top as usual, followed by doubles in descending order (6-6 as the best double, then 5-5, 4-4, ...); for all other rolls use the sum of the dots on the dice. (Thus a roll of, say, 5-6 has a value of 11, and beats a 5-4, which has a value of 9, but loses to 5-5, which ranks higher because it is a double.)

• Some groups play that after a round in which a Mia is announced and then challenged, the winner of the challenge has the option of reversing direction of play during the next rounds (until another Mia challenge winner changes it again).

• Some groups play that in addition to the loser of a challenge losing a life, the winner of the challenge wins an extra life. (This can easily be kept track of using coins for lives. The loser simply gives the winner a coin.) This allows a player to recover from a losing streak. It does, though, obviously prolong the game's length.

• Some groups expand on the roll option (option (3) above), by allowing a roller who does not like his or her roll to "blind roll" — that is, roll again and then announce a cup value without ever having looked at the dice.

• One disadvantage of the standard rules to Mia is that players are eliminated one by one, so that players eliminated early are left out of the subsequent action. One possible variant that addresses this is the following. During a challenge, as in the rules above, the loser loses a life. However, the winner of a challenge gets a bonus point (note: a bonus point, not a bonus life). Play continues until one person is out of lives. At this time, the game is over. The person with the most lives left wins. If there is a tie at the top in number of lives left, then the tied player with the most bonus points is the winner. If this fails to break the tie, then the tied players are joint winners. (If you are playing with a small number of players, you may want to make the initial allowance of lives more than the usual three, to increase playing time and to reduce the odds of joint winners occurring.) If you don't like the idea of joint winners, then have a "roll off" (modeled on penalty shots in soccer): player A begins a round with only player B as an opponent, then player B begins a second round. If one player takes both rounds, he/she wins. If not, then keep playing pairs of rounds (one with A starting, the other with B starting), until one player takes both rounds in the pair.