Also be sure to check out All Fluxx FAQ for more general questions. If you don’t see your question answered among these, please email us at:
FAQ@looneylabs.com
- Q: If Play All Plus 1 is in effect, must I take the final +1 play immediately upon playing the last card in my hand, or can I still take Free Actions?
- Q: It is possible to use Get On With It if the rules are only Play 1?
- Q: If it’s draw 1, play all but 1, I draw 2 cards if I have no cards. If I then play draw 4, do I draw 2 or 3 more? Is that extra card counted as a draw or ignored like the no hand bonus is?
- Q: If Rhyme Time is in play, do I need to speak in rhyme constantly to get the bonus?
- Q: Does Double Agenda include the playing of a second Goal as part of it’s effect?
- Q: When using Zap A Card in Fluxx, can I take cards out of the discard pile?
- Q: What happens if I have zero cards in hand, with draw 1, play 1, and I draw and play Play All But 1?
- Q: What happens if I play an Action that causes my turn to end immediately in the middle of Draw 3 Play 2 or Draw 2 & Use Em (or Fizzbin, or Goal Bonanza)?
- Q: Can I use Get On With It if I played my only card, but the Play rule says to play more? Does that count as “before my final play”?
- Q: Why does Let’s Do That Again say we shouldn’t change the order of the discard pile?
- Q: It seems like Get On With It or Swap Plays for Draws would contradict Play All. Would putting either of these into play cause Play All to be discarded?
- Q: What cards have effects that include ending my turn immediately if I play/use them?
- Q: What happens to the two Goals when Double Agenda is trashed?
- Q: Could you clarify how many cards we can eliminate with Let’s Simplify? What does “up to half (rounded up)” mean?
- Q: Can you Get On With It or Swap Plays For Draws with your cards from an Action like Draw 3 Play 2?
- Q: If a card says “Your turn ends immediately,” but Play All is in effect, which takes precedence?
- Q: Do the cards you draw with the No-Hand Bonus count towards your Draw for that turn?
- Q: If something is played where “your turn ends immediately,” does it mean that you are not subject to the hand and Keeper limits that turn?
- Q: When Double Agenda goes into play, does the next Goal played have to go in the second slot?
- Q: If Play All But 1 is in effect, and there’s something that requires me to increase my plays, do I end up playing all?
- Q: For Actions that re/distribute Keepers and/or Creepers among the players, how are those dealt back out?
- Q: For Everybody Gets 1, do I get to look at the cards before I hand them out to people?
Q: If Play All Plus 1 is in effect, must I take the final +1 play immediately upon playing the last card in my hand, or can I still take Free Actions?
A: To review, Play All Plus 1 says: Play all of the cards in your hand. Then take 1 card from the top of the draw pile and play that as well. This immediately ends your turn.
You do not have to take that last +1 play as soon as you play the last card from your hand. You can still take optional Free Actions granted by Rules, or use special powers granted by Keepers or Creepers. Taking that final +1 draw-and-play-it will be your final play, however, as that’s what invokes the “your turn then ends immediately” portion of the instructions.
Imagine that Play All Plus 1 is like adding a mandatory Free Action Rule to the table that says “At any time you have played all the cards in your hand down to zero, you may Draw 1 and Play It* and your turn ends immediately”. It’s like other Free Action Rules, in that you can do other Free Actions before it, but it’s also part of the Play Rule itself, and therefore mandatory, so if you’ve run out of other things to do (i.e. other Free Actions) you’ve got to do that last one and end your turn.
Also see: Order of events in a Fluxx turn
*i.e. Mystery Play or any of its analogues.
Q: It is possible to use Get On With It if the rules are only Play 1?
… The wording “final play” makes it seem as if there’s more than one play needed….
A: If you have only one Play (or only one card to play, even if the rules allow more) then that one card would be both your first and your final play. So yes, there IS a final play, even if you’d only be playing one card.
So, in order to use Get On With It, you’d have to do it before your final play, i.e. before your ONLY play. You’d just not take your Play for that turn, and do Get On With It instead.
Q: If it’s draw 1, play all but 1, I draw 2 cards if I have no cards. If I then play draw 4, do I draw 2 or 3 more? Is that extra card counted as a draw or ignored like the no hand bonus is?
A: This is VERY good question, which we are surprised hasn’t come up before! We had to sit down and really contemplate the situation to make a ruling on this.
To recap, the Play All But 1 (New Rule) says “If you started with no cards in your hand and only drew 1, draw an extra card.” And, as we all know, when you play a card that increases the Draw amount, you get to draw the difference to increase your total cards drawn to the current New Rule in play.
The way Andy framed the question is “Is the extra card one draws like a ‘salary advance’ on your regular draw allotment , or is it more like a ‘bonus’ on top of your regular draw?” After some thought we felt that what the Play All But 1 card is doing is more like a temporary modification of the Basic Draw rule, and, as such, would make the extra card part of your total Draw allowance for your turn.
So, in the example presented in the question above, where (after having started with no cards, and Drawing 2) you have played Draw 4, you would draw only 2 additional cards (and continue to Play until you have only 1 card left in your hand).
Q: If Rhyme Time is in play, do I need to speak in rhyme constantly to get the bonus?
A: No, you only have to make one rhyme (or two) on your turn to get the bonus/es. Note that if you want the extra Draw, but you DON’T want the extra Play for some reason (it’s a mandatory extra Play) then you don’t have to do a second rhyme.
Q: Does Double Agenda include the playing of a second Goal as part of it’s effect?
…Double Agenda says “A second Goal can now be played…” The person I was playing with thought this meant they automatically got to put a second Goal down as part of the Double Agenda play.
A: Double Agenda allows there to be two Goals at the same time, but playing a second Goal (or even first if you’re really early in the game!) still uses up one of your plays for your turn.
Q: When using Zap A Card in Fluxx, can I take cards out of the discard pile?
A: No. The card says you can take any card “in play” on the table. That includes: the current Goal, any current Rule (not the Basic Rules, of course), or any Keeper or Creeper in front of any player. Note, of course, that Creepers cannot be held in your hand, so they go back into play in front of you if you steal them from someone else, instead of going into your hand.
Q: What happens if I have zero cards in hand, with draw 1, play 1, and I draw and play Play All But 1?
A: The card Play All But 1 says: Play all but 1 of your cards. If you started with no cards in your hand and only drew 1, draw an extra card.
So, the player in question, starting with zero cards, must play the card they draw. If that card turns out to be Play All But 1, then, as per the directions on that card, since they “started with no cards in [their] hand and only drew 1,” then they need to draw an extra card. Since the current Rule is Play All But 1, they are left with 1 card in their hand, and their turn is over.
*Note that in some earlier printings, the last instance of the number 1 is written out as “one,” but, to avoid conflicts with Inflation, it should actually be a numeral as written here.
Q: What happens if I play an Action that causes my turn to end immediately in the middle of Draw 3 Play 2 or Draw 2 & Use Em (or Fizzbin, or Goal Bonanza)?
…Since these cards are all played as part of a single play, would the player get to finish playing them out, or would their turn just stop? And if it just stopped, what would happen to any unplayed cards? We’ve been letting the player keep them.
A: The clear answer is that if you decide to play one of these turn-ending Actions, your turn would end immediately, and you would not get to continue playing cards from your temporary mini-hand (in other words, no, you would not get to finish playing D3P2/D2UE.
Of course, in the case of Fizzbin, you don’t get a choice as to the order of cards played, but that card most closely resembles D3P2/D2UE, since you set your main hand aside, and are working from a temporary hand of extra cards to execute the Fizzbin.
Using the optional Free Action Rule Goal Bonanza also creates a sub-hand with your main hand set aside. While it’s not in any decks with turn-ending Actions, it’s in the More Packs, which could be added to any deck, including those with turn-ending Actions.
However, there is NO way that any remaining cards would go back into your set-aside hand. They are never intended to go into your actual hand at all, as indicated by the requirement to set your hand aside. Any cards left unplayed when you played the turn-ending card are discarded. If you wanted to play them, you should have done it before the turn-ending card.
Brain Transference: Discard remaining cards in your temporary hand and trade places with the player of your choice. Turn ends.
Time Portal: Choose a card as described and add to your set-aside hand. Discard remaining cards in your temporary hand. Turn ends.
What Do You Want: If you choose to take a Keeper or Goal out of the discard, it goes into your set aside hand. Discard remaining cards in your temporary hand. Turn ends.
I’ll Be In My Bunk or I’ll Be Right Back: This card does not specifically say that your turn ends immediately, but you certainly can’t continue your turn if you “Excuse yourself from the game and leave the room for a few minutes.” Discard any cards remaining in your temporary hand. Leave the room.
Swap Plays For Draws and Get On With It, while they do involve having your turn end immediately, are New Rules, not Actions, so, as you can see from this answer, things would work a bit differently:
See: Can you Get On With It or Swap Plays For Draws with your cards from an Action like Draw 3 Play 2?
Q: Can I use Get On With It if I played my only card, but the Play rule says to play more? Does that count as “before my final play”?
…I had one card in my hand, with Play 4 in effect. I played my card, an Action card which was then discarded. I wanted to claim to able to get 3 new cards because “Get On With It” which was on the table says I could since I had discarded my hand and had 4 – 1 = 3 plays left.
A: In order to take the option to Get On With It, you must be sacrificing (at least) one of your Plays, and you must be discarding a hand of at least one card.
The most obvious issue is that, at the point when you wanted to Get On With It, you didn’t discard your hand. You played an Action, and now your hand is empty. You have to have something to discard in order to discard something. Your hand has to exist in order to be discarded.
The second issue is almost a side effect. We would not consider you to “have plays left” if you have no cards to play. In this case your first play WAS your final play, so you can’t take this option because it’s not before your final play. In order to have a final play, you have to have a card to play.
The whole thing follows logically, since the card/s you could have played – but didn’t – will be remaining in your hand, and therefore among the cards you’re throwing away.
See also: Is Swap Plays For Draws limited by the number of cards you have in your hand?
Q: Why does Let’s Do That Again say we shouldn’t change the order of the discard pile?
…It seems like it wouldn’t really matter.
A: Actually, this is mostly unnecessary. There used to be a rule where one could take things out of the top three cards, but that card has been replaced in all current versions with this one, which is more liberal. That said, there is a promo card which allows you to take the bottom card off the discard pile, so it would matter if you were playing with the promo card Composting. Hmm.
In Nature/EcoFluxx, the Action Scavenger lets you look down through the discard pile and play the first Keeper you find. Anyhow, you could look at the other cards in your deck, and see if this is going to matter for the version you’re playing with. It’s a matter of logic.
Q: It seems like Get On With It or Swap Plays for Draws would contradict Play All. Would putting either of these into play cause Play All to be discarded?
A: No. The instructions on Get On With It (or Swap Plays for Draws) only temporarily override the instructions on Play All and only on the turn of the player using it. Since choosing to use one of these is optional, simply putting either of them into play doesn’t contradict Play All, so you wouldn’t discard Play All just because you played one of them (nor vice versa!)
Q: What cards have effects that include ending my turn immediately if I play/use them?
A: Cards (Actions) that end your turn immediately if you play them:
Brain Transference: Star Fluxx
Clean Cup!: Wonderland Fluxx
Time Portal: Star Fluxx, Doctor Who Fluxx, TNG Fluxx, Voyager Fluxx,
What Do You Want?: Star Fluxx, Oz Fluxx, Doctor Who Fluxx
I’ll Be In My Bunk: Firefly Fluxx
I’ll Be Right Back: Fluxx Remixx
(These last two cards don’t specifically say that your turn ends immediately, but you certainly can’t continue your turn if you “Excuse yourself from the game and leave the room for a few minutes.”)
Cards (Rules) that end your turn immediately if/when you execute them, but not when you play them:
Swap Plays for Draws
Get On With it
Play All +1 (not optional, but see below)
Free Action Rules are optional, so you could choose not to use one that will end your turn immediately. While Play All +1 is not optional, you have some options about when you choose to take that final +1.
Other questions pertaining to cards which cause your turn to end immediately:
Interaction with Play All
Interaction with Hand Limits
Using immediate turn-end Actions with compound Actions like Draw 3 Play 2, etc
Using immediate turn-end New Rules with compound Actions like Draw 3 Play 2, etc
Interaction with Play All +1
Also see:
Q: What happens to the two Goals when Double Agenda is trashed?
A: Whoever caused it to go away gets to choose which Goal stays in play, and which gets trashed.
Q: Could you clarify how many cards we can eliminate with Let’s Simplify? What does “up to half (rounded up)” mean?
A: The wording on Let’s Simplify is as clear as we could make it. If we had said that you may discard up to half of the New Rules in play, and there were an odd number (for example, five of them) you wouldn’t know whether you should round up or down. But we tell you that you should ROUND UP when figuring out what “half” is, so in this example, you know you can discard up to three.
Of course, you may discard up to half – you don’t have to discard three; you could choose to discard just one or two, or even zero if you want. Those numbers are all less than “half (rounded up) of five”.
Q: Can you Get On With It or Swap Plays For Draws with your cards from an Action like Draw 3 Play 2?
A: You could certainly put either of these New Rules (Get On With It, or Swap Plays For Draws) into play as part of an Action like Draw 3 Play 2 of them (D3P2) or Draw 2 and Use Em (D2UE), or Fizzbin (or your cards drawn via the Rule Goal Bonanza) but you could not utilize their functions while in the middle of executing one of these cards. While all four of these Actions/Free Actions do give you a sort of temporary hand, you can’t substitute it for your real hand to “discard and draw back up to 3”, for example.
You would either need to invoke Get On With It! before the Free/Action with the temporary hand is played or after. The Playing of D3P2/D2UE/Fizzbin/Goal Bonanza, and all actions as a result of it are considered 1 “Play”.
Q: If a card says “Your turn ends immediately,” but Play All is in effect, which takes precedence?
A: When you play an Action or use a New Rule card says “your turn ends immediately” it means it’s specifically overriding any Play rule that might otherwise require you to keep playing cards on this turn. You also end any option you may have to use Keeper powers or “Free Action” Rules. If it says “your turn ends immediately” then your turn ends immediately – so make sure you’re all done with stuff before you play/use one of these cards!
See: Q: What cards have effects that include ending my turn immediately if I play/use them?
Also see: Would putting either of these two into play cause Play All to be discarded?
Q: Do the cards you draw with the No-Hand Bonus count towards your Draw for that turn?
If I qualify for drawing three cards because of the No-Hand Bonus, and the Draw rule is five, do I draw a total of five cards or eight?
A: The No-Hand Bonus states: “Draw a new hand of 3 cards BEFORE observing the current draw rule” (emphasis added). Your drawing 3 cards is considered a “pre-turn action”: these cards essentially make up a “new hand” which simulates you having had a hand BEFORE starting your turn. Then you observe the current draw rule, which says draw 5 cards.
So you draw a total of eight cards in this case.
Secondary Q: So if I increase the Draw rule from Draw 2 to Draw 4 on my turn, do I still get to draw an extra 2 cards? One of my opponents argued that I had already drawn 5 for the Bonus plus the Draw 2, so I couldn’t draw more when I increased the Draw rule.
A: Since the cards drawn for the No-Hand bonus are separate from those drawn because of the Draw rule in play, and don’t count towards the number of cards drawn for your turn, YES, you get to draw two more cards when you increase the Draw from 2 to 4.
Q: If something is played where “your turn ends immediately,” does it mean that you are not subject to the hand and Keeper limits that turn?
A: No. Hand and Keeper Limits apply to you when it’s not your turn, so you would observe them as soon as your turn ends.
See also: Q: What cards have effects that include ending my turn immediately if I play/use them?
Q: When Double Agenda goes into play, does the next Goal played have to go in the second slot?
Or can it replace the single Goal in play, leaving a spot empty?
See this answer in a video!
Little Answers
A: If there is an empty slot for a Goal because of Double Agenda, the next Goal played must fill that spot, and not replace the single Goal already in play.
Q: If Play All But 1 is in effect, and there’s something that requires me to increase my plays, do I end up playing all?
The Computer promo card, or Batcomputer in Batman Fluxx, for example, increases both your Play and your Draw by 1. So does the Rich Bonus. Play 1 extra doesn’t affect Play All, so why would it affect Play All But 1?
A: Play All But 1 isn’t the same as Play All: when you Play All But 1, you do have 1 card remaining, so when you are then required to play +1 cards, you do have one left to play, so you must play it.
You need to take Play All But 1 as a unit into consideration: you can’t just break out the Play All, and apply the effects of the Computer, and then apply the …But 1 part.
Note that since the effects of the Computer are not optional, you have to do it, whether you like it or not. Other similar effects may be optional, so always check on that. It’s pretty easy to see whether something says you “may” do it, or if it just happens.
Q: For Actions that re/distribute Keepers and/or Creepers among the players, how are those dealt back out?
Do I get to decide who gets what? Do I get to decide how many to deal to each player? Do the recipients put them in their hands or on the table in front of them? Are they face up or face down? When I’m dealing them out, who do I start with?
A: First of all, only for Everybody Gets 1 (or Dreams & Omens) does the active player get to look at and decide who gets what. That’s a very different situation that the ones we’re talking about here. This question focuses on random (fairly even) redistribution along the lines of Share The Wealth.
The cards in question are shuffled or otherwise randomized so that the dealer does not know what’s being given out. They are then dealt out evenly, going around the circle clockwise, one card to each player in turn, continuing until the cards are all gone. Dealing starts with either the active player or the player to their left, with the intention of providing any possible benefit to the active player.
• So if it’s for Keepers, or a mixture of Keepers and Creepers, the active player should get the first card, because this is felt to be to their advantage, so they won’t get shorted if the number doesn’t deal out evenly. However, we would consider it an officially sanctioned house-rule if your group wanted to give the active player the option of starting with the player to their left instead of themselves. There could be reasons…
• For redistribution of Creepers-only, the card will usually say to start with the player to the left of the active player, because Creepers are generally considered a disadvantage, and this would mean that if anyone was going to receive fewer, it would always be the active player. However, as with other redistribution cards, your group may choose to let the active player decide whether they want to start with themselves or the person on their left. Again, we can think of reasons why someone might want to start distributing Creepers to themselves first.
Once dealt, all cards will be put into play immediately, so it’s OK to deal them out face up, but it’s sometimes better to deal them out face down, then have everybody reveal what they got all at once. As mentioned above, re/distributing by dealing will cause all players to end up with roughly equal numbers of cards. So if there are large discrepancies in the number of cards players had in play, this will even them out: players with a lot more than other players will end up with fewer than they had, and players with few or zero cards in play may end up with more. That’s the way it goes.
Here’s a list of redistributing cards, and their types:
Keepers only Share the Wealth Monster Mash Run!!! The Grand Ball |
Keepers & Creepers Mix It All Up Zombie Jamboree Crawling Chaos Mass Hysteria It’s a Cyclone!!! |
Creepers only Return of the Dead Jailbreak/removal of Arkham Asylum rule |
Scramble Keepers, which is only in early versions of “Basic” Fluxx (1.0-3.x) is the only Action which is different. While you still shuffle up the Keepers and hand them back randomly and they go back into play, you don’t deal them out evenly, but instead give each player the same number of Keepers they had before. When we came up with Share The Wealth, we felt it was far superior, as we liked the way it leveled the playing field, keeping the game more competitive, to maximize player engagement.
Q: For Everybody Gets 1, do I get to look at the cards before I hand them out to people?
The card reads, in part “You decide who gets what.” My brother thinks I should hand them out without looking at them, but I think I get to look at them so that I know what they all got, but they only know what they each got.
A: As you have surmised, there is indeed no meaning to the phrase “you decide who gets what” unless you get to look at all the cards before you hand them out (yes, the intention is that you hand them out face down so that each person only knows what they themselves got).
Many people’s first instinct upon seeing someone else play this card is to simply reach forward and draw from the deck themselves, as if it were indeed intended to be random, but most, upon a careful reading of the card, come to the correct conclusion.
Since we have plenty of room on this card, we started implementing clearer text on this card in 2016:
“You look at the cards and decide who gets what, dealing them out face down to each player.”