Yokai Pagoda Rulebook

Table of Contents

Components
Goal of the Game
Setup
Player's Turn
- Calculating the Total Points in Your Hand
End of a Round
Pool of Failed Offerings
New Round
End of Game
Two-Player Game
Credits

Components

100 Yokai cards (10 for each Yokai type)
4 Torii Gate cards
5 summary cards

Goal of the Game

A game of Yokai Pagoda is played in 3 rounds.

During your turn and in each round, leave offerings around the pagoda to try to gain the Yokai's favor. Unplayed offerings at the end of each round become negative points, as though they were unfulfilled promises.

The player with the fewest negative points at the end of the game wins.

Setup

Place the Torii Gate cards in a separate pile and lay Torii Gate 1 face up in view of all players. This card indicates the ongoing round.
Shuffle all offering cards thoroughly and deal 7 to each player. Place the remaining cards face down. These cards make the Pagoda deck, and they should be accessible to all players.
Reveal the first and second card of the Pagoda deck and place one on each side of the deck to form two face-up offering piles.
The starting player is the last person to have seen a scary movie.

The play area is arranged with the Torii Gate showing the current round at the top, the two offering piles flanking the Pagoda deck in the middle, and each player's hand in front of them.

Player's Turn

On your turn, play a card from your hand and put it on one of the two offering piles and apply one of the possible effects:

A. If the card played matches in Yokai or in number with the card in the offering pile, hand over one of your cards to any player of your choice without showing it. If you have no more cards in your hand, the chosen player draws the first card from the Pagoda deck. The rest of players cannot see this card.

B. If the card played does not match in Yokai and is higher than the card in the offering pile, you must choose between:

Drawing the first card from the Pagoda deck.
Drawing the first card from the opposite offering pile. If the card you draw is also the last card of the offering pile, reveal the first card from the Pagoda deck and put it where the offering pile was.

C. If the card played does not match in Yokai and is lower than the card on the offering pile, check the total score value of your hand.

If it is higher than 3, the round continues as usual.
If it is equal to or lower than 3, you can choose whether to show your cards to the other players and close the round -or- let the round continue as usual.

If after applying any of the above effects, you still have cards in your hand and you have not closed the round, it is the next player sitting clockwise's turn.

Calculating the Total Points in Your Hand

To calculate the total points in your hand, sort the cards by Yokai type and only consider the lowest card of each Yokai type. For example, if a player has 7 cards, but 3 of them belong to the green Yokai Kappa and the other 4 cards to the red Yokai Tengu, the player actually has only 2 cards: the lowest card of Kappa and the lowest card of Tengu. Both cards added together make the total points of this hand.

Example: Olivia has four cards in her hand: two red Tengu cards (a 1 and a 6) and two blue Tanuki cards (a 2 and a 4). To calculate how many points she actually has, she must only add the lowest Tengu card (a 1) and the lowest Tanuki card (a 2), which gives a total of 3 points in hand.

End of a Round

A round ends either when a player has no cards left in hand at the end of their turn -or- when a player decides to close the round because they have 3 points or less in hand after playing a card of a different Yokai with lower value, as described in situation C in the "Player's Turn" section.

Pool of Failed Offerings

If you have cards in your hand when a round is over, keep them hidden to build up your personal pool of failed offerings.

You may check and sort your pool as you wish at any time, but you can neither get rid of these cards nor mix them with the cards in your hand.

After each round, all players place their unplayed cards from their hand into their pool of failed offerings.

At the end of the game, the cards in your pool of failed offerings will determine the winner.

New Round

The starting player is the person to the left of the player who closed the previous round. The number of Torii Gate increases by one each round and every player draws 7 cards from the Pagoda deck to form a new hand.

If the Pagoda deck runs out, shuffle all the cards from the two offering piles —except the top card of each pile— and make a new Pagoda deck.

End of Game

The game ends after the third round. Each player reveals the cards collected in their pool of failed offerings and sorts them by Yokai type. The final score of each player is obtained by adding only the lowest card of each Yokai type, just like you did when calculating the total points in hand.

Example: Alexander has 7 cards in his pool of failed offerings at the end of the game. Three of them are of the green Yokai Kappa cards (a 3, a 7 and an 8) and four are of the blue Yokai Tanuki cards (a 2, a 5, a 7 and a 10). Instead of having a final score of 47 —which would be the result of adding up all the cards— he only has 5 negative points. That is, the result of adding up only the lowest cards of each Yokai type.

The player with the lowest final score wins the game. In case of a tie, the player with the fewest different types of Yokai wins. If there is still a tie, the player with the fewest total cards wins.

Two-Player Game

In a two-player game, you play 4 rounds instead of 3. There will be two randomly selected starting players: a starting player to start the odd rounds (1 and 3) and another starting player for the even rounds (2 and 4). Here, which player closes the round is not relevant.

Credits

Author: Jacobo Rufete Illustrations: Nakara Studio Production / Editing: PIF games Layout: María Alcaraz Box design: Jacobo Rufete Translation: Lourdes Torres Revision: Jaime García, Andreu Horrach, Verónica Diaz, Lucía Anaya, Cristina Capilla and Irene Rubio.