Spree!
Spree! Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Overview
Spree! is a simple race through a shopping mall, with plenty of mayhem, violence, and hilarity, plus just enough luck and strategy to make everybody happy.
Components
Aside from the board, you can assemble these components from ordinary things you already own.
- Game Board
- Two Poker Decks with jokers
- Two 6-sided dice
- Two Pawns for each player (shopper and car)
- A way to keep score
The Pawns: Because they will spend some time on their sides, you want pawns that can lie down without rolling away. Aside from that, your pawns can be anything.
The Board: The game board is 11 x 17 and is available as a single PDF file.
More About the Board
The Spree! board represents LeGrand Mall, that easily-robbed repository of consumer goods. The darker squares are shops, the lighter squares are open space. The outer ring is the parking lot, and the cars in the parking lot represent parking spots. The thick black lines are walls.
In the center is a two-square "fountain." You can't move through this space, but you can shoot through it. It's sort of a semi-wall.
The Game in Brief
Players run around the mall, grabbing stuff from the shops and also from each other. To keep your stuff safe, you need to take it to your car.
The winner is the first player to lock enough stuff in their car. For a good target score, based on the number of players, check the Target Scores table below.
To Begin
Shuffle the two poker decks together. The backs of these decks don't really need to match, but it helps.
Leave the jokers in the decks. You can even use extra Jokers if you have them.
Deal a hand of five cards to each player. Put the deck where everyone can reach it, with space for discards beside it. When the deck runs out, you will shuffle the discards and replace the deck.
Roll two dice to see who will park first. Starting with that player and moving to the right (counterclockwise), players take turns parking their cars in the parking spaces around the mall. The parking spaces are the 12 spots with cars.
Both pawns, your shopper and your car, start in your parking spot. You can't park in an occupied space, in case that wasn't obvious.
Look at your starting hand when deciding where to park. It will help to park close to the cards in your hand.
Normal play now begins with the player who parked last, and proceeds to the left from there.
On Your Turn
At both the beginning and at the end of your turn, you draw your hand up to five cards.
You can perform three basic actions on your turn: Moving, Shopping, and Shooting. There are also some special actions, like stealing other people's stuff and stashing your loot in your car, and there are some special cards that do special stuff.
Moving
To move, roll both dice, and move as far as you like, up to the number you rolled.
You don't have to take the entire roll; you can stop at any time.
You can only move orthogonally (not diagonally) and you can't move through walls. You also can't move through the fountain.
You can move freely through other players, and through cars, and you can stop on the same spot with another player (or car).
The one thing you can't do is double back. This means going from one square to another, and then immediately back. For example, moving from the Jc to the 9c and back to the Jc in two steps. You may pass through the same space multiple times in the same move, you just can't do it right away. This rule will hardly ever affect you, but it means that when you move into a dead end (the Aces, Kings, and Queens), you have to stop moving.
Shopping
Your hand is your shopping list. To play a card from your hand, you must move through a store that sells it (i.e. a space marked with that card), and then play the card on the table in front of you. Cards on the table are in your "shopping cart."
You can play cards into your shopping cart at any point along your move, including the squares where you start and stop. You will often play several cards on the same turn.
If you have both cards of exactly the same rank and suit, you can play them together; you don't have to walk over the same space twice.
Robbing Others
Shops aren't the only place to get stuff. You can steal cards from other people's shopping carts, just by moving over them and playing the right cards. It's a little like shopping, but not exactly.
- You only need to match the rank of the card you're stealing, not the suit. For example, any 5 can steal a 5h.
- The card you play is discarded, but the cards you steal go into your cart.
- Just one card is enough to steal every card of the same rank. In other words, if your victim has three Jacks, you can play just one Jack and steal them all.
- You can play as many steals as you want at the moment you walk over your victim, but you must play them one at a time, giving your victim the chance to Ace each one (described below).
Shooting
You knew we'd get to the shooting part eventually. Shooting incapacitates your enemies (yay) but it's also useful because a successful shot gives you another turn.
When you shoot someone, your victim must be in a straight line of sight (orthogonal, not diagonal), and must not be on the same square with you. You can shoot across the fountain, and you can even shoot past other players and cars, but you can't shoot through walls.
To shoot, roll one die and start counting where you stand. If you stop counting before you reach your target, you miss, which means if you roll a 1 you'll miss automatically.
If you stop counting exactly on the target, you hit it. If you keep counting, you not only hit, but you push the target backward until you stop counting, or until you reach a wall (or the fountain, or the edge of the board).
If you hit, the player you hit falls over. If you miss, you fall over. Players who are lying down can't play cards. Players stand up at the beginning of their next turn.
When you shoot someone, it ends your turn. You can't do anything else after shooting, except draw your hand back up to five. However, if your shot is successful, you'll take another turn right away.
If You Hit Someone: If you hit your target, lay the victim's pawn over. This is significant, because if a player's pawn is lying down, that player can't be shot at, and also can't play any cards. The first rule keeps a shooting rampage from lasting forever; the second rule keeps downed players from playing Aces while they are being robbed.
When you shoot someone, you take an extra turn. This gives you ample opportunity to rob your target, do some more shopping, or even go shoot someone else!
Players who are lying down will stand back up at the beginning of their next turn.
If You Miss: If you shoot at another player and miss, you fall over. You'll stand back up on your next turn.
As mentioned above, nothing can help you if you miss. You can't play an Ace to make your shot successful.
A Shooting Example: Let's say Brad is shooting at Janet. Janet is two steps away from Brad, i.e., there is one open space between them. If Brad rolls a 1 or a 2, he will miss, and fall over. If he rolls a 3, he will hit Janet exactly, and knock her over. If he rolls a higher number, he will push Janet backward, either to the end of his shot, or into an obstacle.
Janet could play an Ace to foil Brad's shot, if she has one. She doesn't have to do this until after she sees his roll.
Special Cards
10's and 2's: These cards can be played as Move-10 and Move-2, respectively. Play them to move farther than the number you've rolled.
Though it doesn't usually matter, you do not have to play move cards before you start moving. This means that you can move to the end of your roll, think about it, play a 10, finish that move, then play another one, and so on. However, you still can't double back, so playing a move card after you move into a dead end won't do you any good.
As with normal movement, you don't have to take the entire benefit of a Move card. In fact, it's sometimes a good idea to play 2's just to get them out of your hand, even if you don't want to move any farther, because they take up precious hand space.
Aces: These can be played as "stop" cards. Stop cards make certain other cards and actions fail, even on other players' turns. You can use an Ace to:
- Stop someone from shopping. The card they played is discarded instead.
- Stop someone from robbing another player's cart (like yours). The card they played is discarded.
- Stop a movement card from working.
- Stop a shot from hitting (see Shooting).
- Stop another Ace from working.
That last one is worth attention. If you "Ace" someone's Ace, then whatever they were trying to stop doesn't stop. And that might have been another Ace, and so on.
You can't use an Ace to do either of the following things, though we're sure you'd like to:
- You can't make your own shot succeed even though you rolled too low to hit.
- You can't stop a player from putting stuff in their car.
Jokers: Jokers are wild cards; they can be anything you want. You can use a Joker as an Ace, a movement card, or to steal cards from someone else. The one thing you can't do with Jokers is shop. If you put one in your shopping cart, it's worth zero points.
Scoring
Once you've got a few cards in your shopping cart, you'll probably want to put them in your car, because this is how you score points and win the game.
To score points for your shopping cart, move to your car, discard the contents of your shopping cart, and record the points. This ends your turn, so you can't score and shoot on the same turn.
Once in your car, your points are safe. Number cards are worth their face value, Jacks are worth 11, Queens 12, and Kings 13. Aces are worth 15. Jokers are worth zero.
Being at your car has special rules: you can't shoot or be shot from that space, you can't play cards, and you can take your next turn to move your car.
If you start a turn at your car, you can take a full turn to drive your car to a different parking spot. You still draw your hand back up to five, but you don't do anything else on that turn.
Winning the Game
The first player to reach the target score wins the game. Target scores vary with the number of players, and are given in the chart below.
These scores are just suggestions, of course. Feel free to adjust the game to whatever length you want!
Target Scores
| If there are: | Play the Game to: |
|---|---|
| 3 players | 200 points |
| 4 players | 150 points |
| 5 players | 120 points |
| 6 players | 100 points |
| 7 players | 85 points |
| 8 players | 75 points |
Strategy
It's up to you to decide how much stuff is safe to carry, but just remember that the more loot you've got, the bigger a target you become.
You can take several turns in a row if you shoot everybody. Of course, you'd better be prepared, because one of them is bound to have an ace.
Beware of dead weight in your hand. You need to burn through cards quickly, and that means clearing out those hard-to-play sixes! It may also mean playing 2's and even 10's just to get them out of your hand, even if you don't need to move any farther.
It's possible for several people to gang up on the leader, but they really have to make a concerted effort. Your best bet is to convince everyone else to gang up on the leader, and then go for points yourself!
Hong Kong Rules
So far, you've only read the rules for the basic game. In the Hong Kong edition, we introduced a bunch of extra violence rules that we'd barely tested. Here they are!
Power Shots: Your shots go one space farther. Basically, you add 1 to your roll. That means, among other things, that 1's don't always miss.
The Fountain: Shooting people pushes them through the fountain. If they would stop right inside the fountain, they keep going to the other side.
Moving Cars: Your car is now a weapon, so there are some new rules for moving it. You still end your turn if you get into your car; you also end your turn by getting out of your car after you move it. However, you now need to roll dice to drive between parking spaces, just like a normal move.
The reason for the car movement rules is so that you can now shoot people from your car, and be shot while in it. You can also run people over, if you're lucky.
Auto Etiquette: You can't get out of your car until it's parked. And you can only drive in the parking lot and the open spaces (not in the shops).
Running People Over: If you run over someone in your car, they fall over, just as if they were shot. (They can't Ace this.) You can also shoot people from your car, and if you hit your target, you get an extra turn.
Now, there's a little problem with this. You can't steal stuff from people you're running over, because you're in the car. Instead, all the stuff in their cart is spilled all over the ground when you hit them, and is immediately discarded. Which is even better, if you think about it.... unless you wanted the game to ever end.