The Icarus Club Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Contents
• Game Setup
  • 3 Players
  • 4 Players
  • 5 Players
• Trick Flow
• Overwriting the Lane
• Game Flow
• Game Winner

Contents

55 cards (ranks 1-11 in five suits, representing five casino games - roulette, craps, poker, blackjack, and slots.)

Game Setup

Setup varies by player count. The rest of the rules are the same.

3 Players

Choose 4 out of 5 suits and shuffle the 44 cards. Deal the cards into 4 piles with 11 cards each, face down. Each player takes one pile as their hand. Flip the remaining pile face up one at a time in a row, to form the casino's schedule (hereafter referred to as the "lane"). Each card is the game played each night, and the card farthest left in the lane is referred to as the "Follow Card".

4 Players

Shuffle all 55 cards and deal them into 5 piles of 11 cards each. Each player takes one pile and creates the lane as in the instructions above.

5 Players

Shuffle all 55 cards and deal them into piles with 9 cards each. There will be one card left, which is out of the game. Place it face up away from the play area. As in the other player counts, each player takes one pile into their hand and the remaining one becomes the lane.

Trick Flow

The Icarus Club is played over a series of tricks. Every trick, each player in turn order chooses a card from their hand, places it face up in front of them, and after every player has done so you determine the winner of the trick.

The leftmost card of the lane determines which suit you must play if you have it in your hand, and the highest card played of that suit will win the trick. If you do not have a card of that suit in your hand, you may play any card. The winner takes all of the cards played, as well as the Follow Card (and any card beneath it) which determined the suit.

If no one played a card of the suit determined by the Follow Card, then no one wins that trick and those cards are discarded. At the end of the game, the total number of cards you have won is your earnings for the night. The second highest score wins.

Overwriting the Lane

The casino's schedule is overwritten every night. The winner of a trick must choose one of the cards played (but not their own) and place it on top of any card in the lane. The new card may be a different suit or the same suit of the card you are overwriting. You may also place the new card on top of cards that have already been overwritten. The new card is now the suit that must be followed for that night. This will increase the winnings for that night as well, as the winner takes all cards from that night in the lane when won.

Game Flow

1. Determine the start player by a method of your choosing.
2. Beginning with the start player, going clockwise, each player chooses a card from their hand and plays it face up. Once everyone has played into the trick, determine the winner.
3. If there is a winner, they take all cards from that night (cards played as well as lane cards) into their score pile. The winner must also overwrite one card in the lane as described above.
4. If there was no winner, discard that night's follow card (and any cards beneath it) and move on to the next trick.
5. The starting player for the next trick is the winner of the previous trick. If there was no winner in the previous trick, the previous starting player will also be the starting player for the next trick.
6. Repeat this until there are no more lanes and the hand ends. 11 tricks for 3-4 players, 9 tricks for 5 players.
7. The player(s) who scored the most gets reprimanded by the casino and has their winnings taken away, scoring 0 points for the round. Record all other players' scores. Collect the cards, shuffle and redeal, as detailed in the setup. The player who earned 0 this round leads the first trick in the next round.
8. Play a number of rounds equal to the number of players.

Game Winner

When the game is over, add up the points from all rounds. This number is the total amount of money earned over the entire run of the casino. However, the player with the highest score - the one who made the most money at the casino - will be stripped of their winnings and ejected from the Casino - making the player with the second highest score the winner of The Icarus Club. If there are multiple people with the most points scored, all of them will be ejected. If everyone has the same number of points, everyone is ejected and the casino is closed forever.