A: Yes. Although it doesn’t say it on all versions, the function of the card requires that you set your main hand aside, so that you can be sure you are playing the exact five cards you drew for the Mission, and not other cards from your “main” hand. Also, just as with Draw 3 Play 2 of Them, or Draw 2 & Use ‘Em, anything you play as part of the Mission which references “your hand” applies to your main set-aside hand, and not the temporary hand of cards you’re playing from.

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A: The “Immediately redraw” is only for if that person has DRAWN a Creeper (or was dealt one at the beginning of the game). The idea is that, if you’re drawing, you are drawing to get a non-Creeper. If you get a Creeper, you are required to play it immediately, and because that draw-play acquisition was involuntary, it doesn’t count as a play or a draw for you… so you get to try again for a NON-Creeper. If you’re just taking or receiving a Creeper that was already in play somewhere else, you’re not attempting to execute a draw, you just get the Creeper.

Another way to remember that this is how it works is to note that it says REdraw. If you didn’t get the Creeper by Drawing, then you can’t REdraw.

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A: Yes, the unattached Creeper will instantly attach to its newly-found victim, and, after that happens, you discard a Keeper to bring you back down to the Limit. This means you can choose to discard the afflicted Keeper, thus ridding yourself of the Creeper. If, however, for some reason you wish to keep the Creeper, you can choose to discard a non-afflicted Keeper instead.

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A: No, using any special powers or abilities listed on Keepers or Creepers does not use up one of your plays for your turn.

The Keeper does have to be in play in front of you, however, not just in your hand.

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A: There are a handful of Keepers which are able to get rid of certain Attaching Creepers, and the language about how this happens varies.

In Star Fluxx, both the Doctor and the Engineer say they can “detach and discard” Brain Parasites and Malfunction respectively. The “detach and discard” language does mean that the Creeper must be attached in order for them to discard it. Let’s use Malfunction as our example, for reasons we’ll discuss in a sec.

If you have Malfunction, and it’s not attached to anything, there isn’t anything Malfunctioning. Nothing is broken, so the Engineer has nothing to fix. Thematically this works perfectly, though it’s a bit harder to justify why the “floating possibility of a Malfunction” could prevent you from winning, but that’s the way it goes. Maybe you just have bad luck hovering over you, waiting to happen, and that’s enough to do it.

Note that it’s actually impossible to have the Doctor available to cure unattached Brain Parasites. If the Doctor is there, then the Brain Parasites will attach to him, and he won’t be curing anyone (of Brain Parasites, the only known health issue in the universe… or, well, the deck)

The following was true for the first printings of all four of the first Trek Fluxxen, but was fixed in the 2026 reprints:

Interestingly enough, in all four of the first Trek Fluxxen (Original Series, TNG, DS9, and Voyager) the language on the Engineer’s card says simply. “If you have a Malfunction, you may discard it.” With this wording, there’s no question about whether Malfunction must be attached; clearly it doesn’t have to be.

Ironically, however, without the “detach” language, technically any afflicted Keeper should be discarded with its Malfunction. However, we all know that the Engineer is supposed to fix things, not just toss them when they break, so we hope that nobody has been doing that. (So wasteful!) Just in case, though, we have an FAQ specifically for that instance.

Finally, in Cthulhu Fluxx, we have two Keepers which can remove attached Creepers. One is the Sanitarium, which says, “you can discard Nightmares and/or Madness if they are attached to one of your other cards.” Though it doesn’t mention detaching, like the Trek engineers, nobody seems to question that the Sanitarium isn’t going to kill its denizens (though this is Cthulhu Fluxx, so…).

Lastly, also in Cthulhu Fluxx, there’s The Dreamer, which says, “you can detach and discard Nightmares if they are in play.” It uses the “detach and discard” language, which we’ve clarified above. (You can only discard them if they’re attached.) What’s interesting about The Dreamer is that it’s the only card like this which would let you cure someone else’s Keepers if you wanted to. This would seem to be counter-productive, but there are, of course, Goals which call for certain Creepers, so it’s conceivable that you might want to get rid of an opponent’s Creeper.

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A: Well you can… just not until your next turn.

When a player chooses to take either of these Free Actions, the effect is simultaneous with their turn ending immediately. Most notably, this means that if you draw any Creepers with your draws from Swap Plays or Get On With It, you’re stuck with them until your next turn, even if there are conditions which allow you to trash or give them away on your turn. Your turn ended immediately with the draw, so that window is over.

For more info on when you can do what during a Fluxx turn, see the link at the bottom of the right sidebar: Order of Events in a Fluxx Turn

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A: So the process starts with the initial “All players draw 1 card from the deck.” So, if you draw a Creeper for the first card, you have to play it immediately, and redraw until you get a non-Creeper. It’s possible that you might end up getting multiple Creepers this way, but eventually you will draw 1 non-Creeper, and add it to your hand.

Once you have managed to draw a non-Creeper, assess how many Creepers you have in play. Now, you need/get to draw a total of 2 x #Creepers you have. That total includes the first card you drew.

So you continue to draw until you have gotten the correct number of non-Creepers and added them to your hand. If this draw process ends up adding yet more Creepers to your array, then you may have to adjust your total as you go.

I find that talking through the process helps me keep track:

“One… oops, a Creeper! One… there we go, a non-Creeper. But now I have one Creeper, and I need to draw a total of two cards, so that’s one more… dang! Another Creeper! Okay, now I have TWO Creepers, and I need to draw a total of FOUR cards, so that’s THREE more. Okay… two, three, four. Whew! Okay, done!

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A: No. This is a business exchange, and you can’t make the “deal” if you don’t hold up your half of the bargain.

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A: Yes, you must finish drawing the rest of your cards for your turn – you might draw another Creeper which would prevent your win. You must accept any and ALL Creepers acquired during your initial Draw phase before assessing win conditions.

Consider the initial Draw phase to be all one simultaneous thing. Think of it this way: not everyone draws one… card… at… a… time. Some grab the total number for the Draw, add them to their hand, then deal with Creepers at that time, putting them immediately into play, and drawing to replace. Differences in draw style should not affect the outcome of the game.

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A: If your Transporter is Malfunctioning, no, it will not get you all the Crew in play. You will get the same effect from Beam Us Up as if you had no Transporter.

(Note that in Star Fluxx, it’s called a Teleporter, and the Keepers which are Beamed Up are Beings, not Crew, but this question could still arise if Beam Us Up is played with a Malfunctioning Teleporter)

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… 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.

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A: Although the attachment of attaching Creepers is almost instantaneous (happening even before something like the Elder Sign or Necronomicon can protect itself from the Creeper) the intent of Surprises is to nullify the targeted card play as if it hadn’t happened, or, in the case of the Keeper-nullifier, as though you had played the Keeper directly to yourself instead of your opponent playing it to themselves.

“Out of Turn: When another player plays a Keeper, it goes in front of you instead of them…”

So, in this case, it’s as though the Keeper being hijacked would technically not hit the table in front of your opponent at all, and therefore it is not possible for any of their Creepers to attach (or be covered, in the case of the Elder Sign).

TLDR: If you Surprise a Keeper-play of someone with a Creeper that could accompany the Keeper, you are not forced to take the Creeper. You just get the Keeper.

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A: “On your turn” means every time your turn comes around (assuming favorable conditions apply).

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A: No. In order to use the powers of a Keeper or Creeper in play, it must be in your possession. “You/your” in this case refers to the owner of the card only.

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A: Keeper powers do not usually destroy or take the Keeper out of play to use them – unless they specifically say they do.

A couple say you’ll have to pick the Keeper up and put it back in your hand when you use its power, and one or two say to insert the Keeper into the middle of the draw pile. Only a couple will cause destruction of the Keeper being used. In any case those requirements will all be specified on the Keeper in question.

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…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.

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A: The first answer is very easy: No. Draw 3, Play 2 of Them (D3P2) (or Draw 2 and Use ‘Em: D2UE, or Fizzbin) does not technically go in the discard pile until you are completely done executing everything on the card.

You also seem to be asking whether the card you don’t play from D3P2 is in the discard pile, available to pull out and with one of the other cards.

Technically, you should execute the instructions on D3P2 in the order stated: Play 2 of them, and [then] discard the last card. D2UE and Fizzbin don’t involve any discarded cards, so that point is moot where they’re concerned.

All other cards that you play in the process of executing these cards, however, go into the discard pile in the order they are used, and are available to be pulled and used by subsequent cards.

Cards which allow you to pull an Action from the discard pile are:
New Rule: Let’s Keep Doing That
Action: Let’s Do That Again
Action: Time Portal (which ends your turn immediately as soon as you use it)

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A: The Holographic Projection / Hologram card clearly says you can WIN with Keepers owned by other players. This means it’s power works with respect to the win conditions only. There’s nothing there about it being able to mimic the special powers of those other Keepers. I can’t use a hologram of your Doctor to cure my crewperson of Brain Parasites.

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A: Some versions of the rules deal with this explicitly, and some don’t, so we’re answering this here in the FAQ, just in case there is any confusion.

Creepers may not be held in your hand, so if you get a Creeper as part of your dealt hand, you put it on the table in front of you (play it pre-game, essentially) and draw to replace. If it’s another Creeper, continue until you have a starting hand containing zero Creepers.

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… – For example: The Spock’s Beard Goal requires Spock and the Mirror Universe. If I had Spock, but the Mirror Universe is attached to Uhura, do I still win? Or does it have to be attached to Spock in order to win with that goal?

A: No, the Creeper does not have to be attached to the Keeper it goes with for the Goal.

This is sort of the corollary to this question: If my Attaching Creepers are not attached to the Keepers I need to win…

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A: If you play Let’s Keep Doing That (LKDT) and there aren’t any Actions in the discard pile to attach to it immediately, then whatever Action next hits the discard pile is what will be attached. It’s possible that LKDT might sit empty for several turns.

If it happens that several Actions go into the discard simultaneously (as from a Hand Limit, or Discard and Draw, for example) then whoever causes those multiple Actions to be discarded gets to choose which will be attached to Let’s Keep Doing That.

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…One player would have been winning on their turn due to the Holographic Projector imitating another Keeper, except that they also had a Keeper-With-Attached-Creeper. At the end of their turn, the Keeper Limit compelled them to discard a Keeper, and they discarded the one with the Creeper, so they were no longer prevented from winning… but was it no longer their turn, so the Holographic Projector was no longer imitating the other required Keeper?

A: In this case those two things are considered to happen simultaneously: the discard of the Creeper (via the Keeper Limit) and the “turning off” of the Holographic Projector. Execute both things, and THEN evaluate whether anyone is meeting the win conditions. That player essentially goes instantaneously from not-winning because of the Creeper, to not-winning because their Hologram isn’t working. A sad story for them.

For more details, see this Order of Events in a Fluxx Turn

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A: To refresh, the wording varies slightly on Move a Creeper, depending on what version/expansion it’s in, but all versions have you move a Creeper in play to “another player” or “any other player.” The Mind Control Transmitter (Keeper) in Martian Fluxx also uses this kind of wording.

Creeper Reassignment says pretty much the same thing, but adds “If it’s currently attached to a Keeper, detach it before moving the Creeper. You must attach it to an appropriate Keeper (if possible) after moving it.”

In both of these cases “other” means someone other than the person who had the Creeper to begin with. So you can move it:
1) away from yourself to someone else
2) from someone else to you
3) from one opponent to another

Unfortunately, this does mean that if your opponent is the only one with a Creeper, and it’s a two-player game, and you’re forced to play this card, then – sorry – the only player you can move it to is yourself. Sometimes Fluxx is like that.

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…or are you supposed to choose one Action card when you put the Rule into play and then that Action stays assigned?

A: The latter. The Action you place on Let’s Keep Doing That does not go away. Whoever plays that Rule gets to decide what the one Action is that everybody has the opportunity to use once on their turn.

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A: While one of the most obvious ways to get rid of a Creeper attached to one of your Keepers is to trash or move them both, there are some versions which include cards which let you detach the Creeper before you get rid of it.

Cards that let you separate the two:
In Star Fluxx, and the various Star Trek Fluxxen, the Engineer (or version-specific named Engineers) can fix a Malfunctioning piece of equipment.
In Star Fluxx, the Doctor can cure Brain Parasites.
In Cthulhu Fluxx, the Sanitarium can cure Nightmares or Insanity, and the Dreamer can cure Nightmares.
In Anatomy Fluxx, It’s Contagious! allows all players to detach and move Bacteria or Viruses to another player, while It’s Cured! causes all Creepers to be discarded, detaching from Keepers first, if they are attached.
The Action: Creeper Reassignment, found in all Trek Fluxxen and Cat Fluxx, lets you move a Creeper, detaching it first if it is attached.

Anything else, unless it specifically says you can detach the Creeper, is going to affect both cards if they are attached.

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…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?

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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!)

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A: It’s true, the Creeper card does say “immediately draw another card to replace it” but this doesn’t mean you replace the Creeper on the table, discarding it. This means “replace the Creeper in the number of cards you drew.” If you needed to draw 3 cards, and you drew them and one of them was a Creeper, you play the Creeper and draw another card, because that Creeper doesn’t count as one of the 3 cards you needed to draw (neither does it count against the number of cards you get to Play on your turn), so you have only drawn 2 cards, so you still need to draw a third.

You’re not replacing the Creeper from it’s place “in play” (i.e. on the table). You’re just replacing the card “lost” as part of your draw count because it was a Creeper. The idea is that Creepers go into play automatically, whether you want them to or not. They’re usually a problem for you, and you have to work to get rid of them (though sometimes you need them for Goals, otherwise, they hinder you).

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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:

Order of events in a Fluxx turn

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A: We’re very careful not to include cards that don’t play well together in a deck. So, for most decks with Creepers, we use Mix It All Up (or one of its analogues, like Crawling Chaos) instead of Share The Wealth. Star Fluxx doesn’t have either card (Share The Wealth OR Mix It All Up). The only deck with Creepers that has Share The Wealth is Pirate Fluxx, which does not have attaching Creepers, and Crawling Chaos (in Cthulhu Fluxx), which includes Creepers but specifically says that you do detach Creepers to mix them up, so that should be clear.

Mix It All Up is clear in its wording that it will detach Attaching Creepers, in that it says to gather them all, and when redistributed “Creepers that attach are attached to a new Keeper…” We don’t want a “memory condition” to exist where you have to remember what a Creeper was attached to when you mix them all together.

If you’re encountering Share the Wealth with Attaching Creepers, it would only be if you were mixing decks, in which case, please treat it as if it were a Mix It All Up card: detach all Creepers, and mix them all in with the Keepers to deal out. If you’re just playing Pirate Fluxx, it should not be an issue to play Share The Wealth as written, i.e. not including Creepers.

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A: Whoever caused it to go away gets to choose which Goal stays in play, and which get trashed.

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For example, if I play Recycling, could I throw away a Keeper to draw 4 cards instead of 3? Or when I play Draw 3 & Play 2 Of Them, can I draw 4 and use 3 of them because I have The Computer?

A: No, that’s not how those cards work. The promo card Inflation would cause all of these numbers to increase as you’ve described, but Keepers like The Computer that give bonuses like this only apply to the actual Draw, Play, Hand Limit, and Keeper Limit rule cards in play, not to any other circumstances that might cause you to do any of these things.

Here’s a list of all of the “Computer-like” Keepers that give you bonuses that this question might apply to.

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A: You may notice that Attaching Creepers are usually something which modifies the qualities of the Keeper itself. The idea is that they become as inseparable as one object. You don’t have a Doctor and a Brain Parasite, you have a Sick Doctor; you don’t have a Poet and Insanity and Metamorphosis, you have an Insane Mutated Poet; you don’t have a Holodeck and a Malfunction, you have a Malfunctioning Holodeck; you don’t have a Bacteria and Liver and Heart and Thyroid, you have one giant Liver-Heart-Thyroid Infection (yipes!); you don’t have Spock and the Mirror Universe, you have Mirror Universe Spock, and so on, and so on…

That’s the whole point of the “stays together until discarded” wording. Anything that you could do to the Keeper will also happen to the Creeper which is attached to it, and vice versa. In Star Fluxx, when you use the Laser Sword or Laser Pistol to attack a Keeper with a Creeper attached, you are attacking the afflicted Keeper, and the whole point is that it’s a way to get rid of the Creeper.

In the Star Trek Fluxxes, the Phaser is similar, but the language states that you are targeting the Creeper (because the Trek Fluxxes include non-attaching Creepers as well, it makes the Phaser more useful against ALL Creepers, not just attaching ones). When you destroy the Creeper, then if it is attached to a Keeper, the Keeper will be destroyed too (it’s not possible to shoot just the Mirror Universe aspect of Mirror Universe Spock, you have to shoot the dude as a whole…)

You can Trash a Keeper, Exchange Keepers, or discard it because of a Keeper Limit. All totally valid ways to rid yourself of annoying attached Creepers! (If you Trash Something to discard the Creeper, the Keeper it’s attached to will also be trashed, of course.)

You can even Recycle it (bonus!) and the attached Creeper will go into the discard pile with the Keeper. “Oh, this thing is messed up and useless to me now. In fact, it’s a hindrance!… I don’t want it anymore. But hey! At least I can recycle it!”

In fact, if you’re trying to acquire a certain Creeper to meet a Goal, you can Steal a Keeper (or Steal Something), and you’ll get the whole Keeper/Creeper combo. see: If a Goal requires a Keeper and Attaching Creeper…

Your Hologram or Holodeck is not duplicating just a Robot, it’s duplicating an Evil Robot… for better or for worse, as the case may be! see: If the Holographic Projector/Holodeck is used to imitate a Keeper with a Creeper attached…

There are some exceptions, and they’re usually very explicitly worded to let you know they are exceptions. see: …Are there exceptions to this rule?

Or they follow directly from qualities of the Creeper (i.e. things which would take the Keeper up into someone’s hand, but it has a Creeper attached, will result in the Creeper being “spat out” in front of the person who took the combo up into their hand.
see: If someone plays Beam Us Up, and one player had a being/crew member with a Creeper attached…
see: What happens if I use Zap a Card on a Creeper/Keeper combo?

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A: The Keeper and Creeper would get sucked up into that person’s hand… but a Creeper can never be in your hand, so the Creeper is then immediately played back to the table by that player. It would either then reattach to some other Keeper if possible, or hang around for as long as it takes for a new Keeper of the right type to show up to attach to.

Once you understand what’s happening with Beam Us Up in the normal case, you can figure out what will happen if someone has the Teleporter or Transporter in play. The Creeper won’t be left behind with the original owner, it is attached to the Keeper which is Beamed up, and when taken up into that person’s hand it’s then “spat out” in front of that player… not the person the Crew Member was taken from.

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Say I have a Robot with Evil attached to it. If my girlfriend plays the Holographic Projection and then the Robot Uprising Goal, does she win?

A: Yes. Your girlfriend wins.

Think of an attached Creeper as being simply an aspect of its host Keeper, something that transforms the whole rather than just riding on top. The Holographic Projection copies the whole thing, and if that’s all you need for victory, you win. On the other hand, if you need just the Keeper, but it has a Creeper attached, then suddenly you also have the Creeper, which will probably prevent your win.

If all you needed was the Creeper from the Hologram, and you have the other half of the Goal yourself, you could also win. For example, if she had the Starship, and you had the Robot with Evil attached, she could Hologram the Evil Robot, and win with the Goal Imperial Destroyer (Evil and the Starship).

Note, however, that if you need the Keeper to win, but not the Creeper, if you Holographically imitate the Keeper, you’ll also “acquire” the Creeper, which will prevent your win if it’s not the exact Creeper needed for the Goal.

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I must admit it seemed illogical to me (Alison), but Andy and I recently debated this again. The wording on the card says that if you have the Holographic Projection in front of you, it’s as though you have the imitated Keeper were in front of you AND NOT them (emphasis added). So you have it INSTEAD of them.

When I protested to Andy that you having a holographic projection of something that I have shouldn’t negate my having the actual thing, he argued that he’d prefer to stick with the original wording, as it is actually clearer in terms of gameplay (as opposed to calling it a tie, in which case you’d have to keep playing until a clear winner emerges, which, by the way, is the rule for any situation in Fluxx where there appear to be dual winners. Except for the APTWE. Of course).

Moreover, Andy had this logical workaround: the holographic projector is SO GOOD that if you have a holographic projection of something duplicating it, it’s as though you’ve swapped with the other person, and they suddenly realize they don’t have the original/s any more at all:

“OMG! How long has this doctor been a hologram???”

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For example, in Star Fluxx, can you get the Captain and immediately use him to take the Scientist. Can you then immediately use the Scientist’s special power to steal, say, the Energy Crystals?

In the Back to the Future Card Game, can you play the Dust Jacket, and immediately use it to steal the Almanac?

A: Yes, you can chain Keeper/Item stealing-powers like this. It is a thing that can happen. While some feel this is overpowered, we don’t feel that it breaks the game, though. Not all of the cards are always out at the same time, and, of course, sometimes you might get screwed over mid-chain by the Surprise It’s A Trap (in Star Fluxx), or You Can’t Take This Guy From Me (in Firefly Fluxx). In the Back to the Future Card Game, of course, there’s only one Item that lets you steal another in this way.

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A: No, the Hologram can only be one Keeper at a time. It’s already a very powerful card – if it could be any TWO Keepers at once, it would be ridiculously overpowered. Now, it is possible, when combining certain Star Trek Fluxxen, for there to be TWO Hologram analogues in the game (Holodeck/Holosuite.) So, if a player has two, one of them could imitate one Keeper owned by another player, and the other could imitate a second Keeper owned by another player.

It is possible to win with one Holographic Projector even if you don’t have either of the required cards yourself only if the win conditions include a Creeper or Creepers which are attached to a single Keeper owned by another player. In that case, the Holographic Projector only needs to be one Keeper, but it also mimics the associated Creeper properties. A few examples of Goals for this type of win would include Imperial Destroyer, Evil Computer, Evil Brain Parasites, Robot Uprising, The Power Of Evil, and Malfunctioning Transporter.

See also: Can the Holodeck count as both itself AND someone else’s Keeper…

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A: If you are using the Teleporter in Star Fluxx, then yes. Whatever Creeper or Creepers are attached to the Keeper teleported will move as well. That’s one of the ways you can get rid of Creepers in front of you: to teleport the Keeper they’re attached to to some other player.

Note that the Transporter in Star Trek Fluxxen has a different function, however. Rather than moving a Keeper from one player to another on the table, it takes any Keeper on the table up into the hand of the player who has the Transporter. In those cases, it’s more like a repeatable, personal Beam-Us-Up-with-Transporter. In those cases, think of it this way: both cards get sucked up into the hand of the person with the Transporter, and then the Creeper, which can’t be held in your hand, goes back onto the table in front of the person who took the Keeper.

See also What happens if Beam Us Up is played with the Teleporter/Transporter in play, and someone has a being/crew member with a Creeper attached to it on the table?

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Distress Call states that “All players draw 1 card from the deck,” and then that “Anyone with a Creeper then draws additional cards until they have drawn 2 cards for each Creeper they possess.” Is the first card drawn by this action included in the cards drawn for Creepers? That is, if I have one Creeper, do I draw 2 total cards or 3 (one from the first part and two from the second)?

A: The first card you draw is included in the total of cards you draw if you have Creepers. So if you have 1 Creeper, you draw a total of 2 cards.

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A: Yes. In Star Fluxx, the use of the word “beings” in that card’s instructions indicates only those cards with the Living Being icon (the brain). In either of the Star Trek Fluxxen, the use of the phrase “Crew Members” indicates cards with the Crew Member icon (the starfleet badge). In Star Trek: DS9 Fluxx, this is extended to also include Keepers with the “Visitor / Other Personnel” icon.

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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”.

See also: 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)?

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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?

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Or to cancel City Of Thieves in Adventure Time Fluxx, or Fantasy Fluxx, or Crime Happens in Batman Fluxx, or the Rule of Acquisition in various Star Trek Fluxxen

A: Yes. That’s what it was originally designed for!

(Note that if you stop Acquisition from happening, you don’t get to take a card from the Acquiring players hand either. The entire card play is canceled.)

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A: In the vast majority of cases, you cannot win if you have Creepers not specifically required by the goal.

Exceptions:
• Do your extraneous Creepers say that they keep you from winning? (Almost all Creepers do, but if they don’t then go for it.)
• Is there a Rule in play that lets you win even if you have Creepers? (There are a couple of these, depending on which versions you have.)
• In Batman Fluxx, if the Goal requires a Villain, Villains don’t prevent you from winning. However, if the Goal does NOT require a Villain, then Villains ANYWHERE prevent you from winning.

See also: The… Goal requires a Keeper and either of two Creepers…

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A: If a Creeper is drawn by the active player, they must take the Creeper (play it in front of themselves) and draw to replace, such that all the cards they have drawn for whatever the Action indicates will contain no Creepers.

For example, if I play Everybody Gets One, then I, as the active player, am the one drawing cards. As such, I have to take all the Creepers I draw, redrawing until I’m holding enough non-Creeper cards to give 1 to each player including myself. In a deck with a lot of Creepers, anything that makes you draw cards is a liability!

There are a few cases where a card instructs you to discard Creepers encountered, in which case you do that, but the default is that the active player must accept them until the appropriate number of non-Creepers has been drawn.

There are also a few cases where it’s not necessarily clear, and we have FAQs that give rulings on those:

Q: What happens if a Creeper comes up when Pandora’s Box is played?

Q: Population Crash doesn’t use the word “draw”… does the active player have to keep any Creepers that come up?

Q: The Enchiridion allows me to look at the top three cards of the deck. What if one or more is a Creeper?

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…I drew three Creepers in a row. I say I should redraw just one card, but my husband says it should be three, since three Creepers were drawn. Who is right?

A: For practical purposes, you are correct. If you have laid down three Creepers in a row like that, you are left needing to draw 1. After your draw phase, you should end up having drawn just 1 non-Creeper for your Draw 1.

If anyone is having a hard time wrapping their head around why this is, here’s a blow-by-blow description of what happens when you draw three Creepers in a row while trying to Draw 1.

You Draw 1. It’s a Creeper.
It goes in front of you, and you draw to replace it, hoping for a non-Creeper to satisfy the current Draw rule.
Your “draw to replace” is… a second Creeper.
It goes in front of you with the first, and you draw to replace it, hoping for a non-Creeper to satisfy the current Draw rule.
Your “draw to replace” is… a third Creeper.
It goes in front of you, and you draw to replace it, hoping for a non-Creeper to satisfy the current Draw rule.
Your “draw to replace” is… finally a non-Creeper, which you add to your hand, and you have successfully followed the current Draw rule, which is Draw 1.

As you can see, in some ways, your husband is right… but the thing is, the three cards that were “drawn to replace” did happen… they’re just over as soon as you draw 1 non-Creeper.

Now, it’s going to look very different if it’s a multiple Draw, and you draw all of your cards at once. Let’s say it’s Draw 4:

You Draw 4. Three of them are Creepers.
The non-Creeper goes towards your Draw count, and the 3 Creepers go in front of you. At this point, you’ve only drawn 1 non-Creeper, and it’s Draw 4, which is why you’ll now find yourself drawing 3 cards for the 3 Creepers, as you try to achieve the required 4 cards Drawn.
You’d continue like that: Let’s say your draw to replace includes 2 Creepers.
The non-Creeper goes into your hand, and goes towards your Draw count. Now you’ve drawn 2 non-Creepers, and you are still going for a total of 4. Which is why you draw 2 to replace those 2 Creepers you just drew.

This continues until you have drawn 4 cards to your hand. Creepers can’t be held in your hand, so they don’t count as part of your Draw (neither do they count against your Play number, since you didn’t have any choice about whether to play them or not).

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A: Creeper cards say “You can’t win if you have this unless the Goal says otherwise.” This means that having a Creeper in play in front of you prevents you from winning whether it is attached to one of the Keepers needed for the Goal or not.

Creepers occur in many versions of Fluxx, but only in a relatively few versions do they attach to specific Keepers. So the question of attachment does not affect the general behavior and limitations of Creepers.

This is sort of the corollary to this question: If a Goal requires a Keeper and an Attaching Creeper…

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My friends think you can add it to you hand, and play some other card from their hand.

A: You are correct, your friends are incorrect. You pull the top card off the deck, and immediately play that card. You do not get to add it to your hand, or play any other card from your hand.

Note that you may be seeing this FAQ because your deck has a version of this card with a different name. There are so many analogues for Mystery Play that you should simply check the Fluxx Comparison Chart. Highlight the row for the Rule: Mystery Play, and scroll across to the deck you have to find the card this question refers to.

Note that there are a couple of Keepers which grant the owner the personal ability to do a Mystery Play. Those are also listed on the Fluxx Comparison Chart, below the Rules, Actions, and Surprises.
Jumanji has The Game
Marvel has The Infinity Gauntlet
Star Trek: DS9 has The Wormhole

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When I’m dealing them out, who do I start with? Are they face up or face down? Do the recipients put them in their hands or on the table in front of them?

A: This question addresses situations where you’re mixing up and redistributing cards in play, either Keepers, Creepers, or a mix of the two. After being redistributed, they remain in play (i.e. they do not go into players’ hands).

They 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, if your group wants to, feel free to implement a house-rule that the active player gets to decide whether to start with the person on their left or themselves.

• 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. Again, feel free to implement a house rule giving the active player the option of starting with the person on their left or themselves.

The cards thus distributed are considered to all come into play simultaneously. This means that win conditions are not checked until after all cards have been dealt out – one can’t achieve victory in the middle of card distribution. If people have difficulty with this concept, you can deal them out face down, then have everybody reveal what they got all at once, as long as nobody gets confused and puts these in their hand.

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.

Here’s a list of redistributing cards, and their types:

Scramble Keepers, which is only in early versions of “Basic” Fluxx (1.0-3.x) is the precursor to Share the Wealth. While that Action also has you shuffle up the Keepers and redistribute them randomly back into play again, they weren’t dealt out evenly. Instead each player received the same number of Keepers they had before. When Andy 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 and maximizing player engagement. Scramble Keepers was retired, replaced by Share the Wealth for all subsequent versions.

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For example, if the Goals were He Bravely Ran Away (requires the 3-Headed Giant) and Rabbits of DOOM (requires the Killer Rabbit).

A: No, not if they are two different Creepers like this. The 3-Headed Giant you need to win with He Bravely Ran Away prevents you from winning with Rabbits of DOOM, while the Killer Rabbit you need for that prevents you from winning with He Bravely Ran Away.

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For example, if an attaching Creeper is played when there is no appropriate Keeper to attach to, does it stay unattached forever (or until the Action Creeper Reassignment is played), or does it attach to the next available Keeper which accompanies it in play? In other words, does it only attach if there are (appropriate) Keepers in play when it goes down on the table, or will it attach to Keepers played later?

A: The text on attaching Creepers states “If you have any [appropriate Keepers] in play, you much choose one to attach this to.” This property is not limited to the moment when the Creeper is first played. If there is no appropriate Keeper to attach to when it is played, it will attach to the first appropriate Keeper that arrives.

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Or can it replace the single Goal in play, leaving a spot empty?

A: Yes, if there is an empty slot for a Goal because of Double or Triple Agenda, the next Goal played must fill that spot, and not replace the a Goal already in play.

See this answer in a video!
Little Answers

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A: The special powers referred to on Creepers that can be canceled out are found in the paragraphs describing any special abilities or qualities of a given Keeper/Creeper in play. There’s nothing special about the card type, title or something like Doom/Anti-Doom or other category symbols which grants inherent powers or abilities which could be negated.

If there’s something specific about being impaired, it will be mentioned in that descriptive text.

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A: No, none of the regular four Surprises can stop you from being Plundered, though you could stop someone from playing the Plunder Rule initially with Avast! (Veto!) you couldn’t do anything about it once it’s been in play for a while. Note that Plunder analogues include City of Thieves (Fantasy Fluxx, Adventure Time Fluxx), Crime Happens (Batman Fluxx), and Acquisition (Star Trek: TNG Fluxx, DS9 Fluxx).

There is, however a pirate-themed promo card we produced called Skullduggery, which does exactly that: it can stop a Plunder.

See also: Can you use the Skullduggery promo…

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Also, could I use a Surprise that was part of the subturn to cancel the attacking Surprise, and if so would that count as one of the plays?

Example:
Player #1 plays “Draw 3, Play 2 Of Them” and gets an Action, a Keeper, and a Surprise.
They play their Action and Player #2 plays Belay That [Avast, Stop That] to cancel it.
–> can Player #1 use the Surprise in their mini-hand to cancel that Surprise,
–> and if so do they still get to play their Keeper afterwards?

A: Yes, you can use a Surprise from your main hand to cancel a Surprise played in reaction to a card in your subturn.

You can also use a Surprise from your sub-hand, to cancel another player’s Surprise during your Draw 3, Play 2 Action. Furthermore, playing a Surprise to cancel a Surprise is a free action, and doesn’t count as a play, so yes, you would get to play the third card if your second card is a Surprise that you use to counter a Surprise being used to stop your first card.

Using Goal Bonanza also results in the play of a “sub-hand” while the rest of your hand is put aside, and the same things would apply there as well.

In the case of Fizzbin, you don’t have the option of using any of the cards in your temporary hand, since you have to play them blind, in random order, so any Surprises that are in that temporary hand won’t be useful to you – but you can still use Surprises in your set-aside hand to counter Surprises played against cards played as part of your Fizzbin action.

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A: When the Action is chosen to go with Let’s Keep Doing That, it becomes what is essentially a Rule-that-gives-a Free Action, so the counter-Action Surprise* can not be used to stop it.

It CAN, however, be stopped by the Surprise called No Free Lunch! (found in the More Surprises pack) which counters the use of any Free Action. Depending on what the Action is, if it allows the moving or stealing of  Keepers, some other Surprises may also be viable, like Skullduggery, It’s a Trap!, or You Can’t Take This Guy From Me.

* Stop That, Avast! Halt!, Belay That!, The Stars Are Wrong.

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…Someone used “Steal Something” to take a Creeper, which would have allowed them to win. Another player used the Surprise Not Your Problem which works when someone “Draws or Receives” a Creeper. The first player argued that they didn’t “receive it,” they “took” it. We argued that nobody ever “Receives” a card, by the wording on every card it is just placed or put in front of you. So if “Steal Something” takes a card from one player and places it in front of you, you have received that card.

A: You are correct: when we say “draw or receive” a card, we are referring to any & all game actions, which could result in you gaining the card. This includes stealing it as well as being given it by another player or a randomizing game action. So, yes, Not My/Your Problem can be played to stop a player from gaining a particular Creeper.

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A: No. Surprises can only be played for an out-of-turn effect when there is an effect to be had. You can’t just play a Surprise for no effect just to burn it.

When used for their in-turn effect, of course, they behave much the same way as Actions, and, as such, may or may not have an effect.

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A: No, the Surprise you draw via Mystery Play* cannot be used to stop the previous Canceling of your play. It’s far too late. Whatever card you played has been Canceled, and that’s that. With no Surprise available, you could not stop the Surprise, so you have moved on and taken your next game action: choosing to use Mystery Play.

Since choosing to use Mystery Play will always disrupt the immediacy required for a reactive Surprise play, any Surprise drawn via Mystery Play would have to be used for it’s in-turn function.

Note that you may be seeing this FAQ because your deck has a version of this card with a different name. There are so many analogues for Mystery Play that you should simply check the Fluxx Comparison Chart. Highlight the row for the Rule: Mystery Play, and scroll across to the deck you have to find the card this question refers to.

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A: It depends which Surprise you have, and when you play it.

If you have the promo No Free Lunch, found in the More Surprises pack, you can play it to prevent someone from utilizing Mystery Play (or any of its analogues, see below). The trick is, you’d have to play No Free Lunch when they declare they’re using Mystery Play, but before they reveal the card – you can’t wait to see whether it makes them win to declare you’re using No Free Lunch.

On the other hand the card that is drawn and played because of Mystery Play is affected by any of the “standard” Surprises. So if the winning card played because of Mystery Play was a Goal, then Canceled Plans would be able to prevent the win, since it cancels Goals. If the card played was a Keeper, you’d need to use the That’s Mine in order to stop the win.

Of course, you can’t cancel any of these if YOU are the one who is using Mystery Play.
See Can one ever use the “out-of-turn” function of a Surprise during one’s own turn? (spoiler alert: no)

*Note that you may be seeing this FAQ because your deck has a version of this card with a different name. There are so many analogues for Mystery Play that you should simply check the Fluxx Comparison Chart. Highlight the row for the Rule: Mystery Play, and scroll across to the deck you have to find the card this question refers to.

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…For example, if they’re using Steal A Keeper, or Exchange Keepers, can I get the Keeper they’re acquiring?
Or if they’re Plundering a Keeper, can I take the Keeper they’re Plundering?
Or if someone plays Mix It All Up, or Share the Wealth, can I get a Keeper that’s being dealt out to someone else?

A: No, No, and No. You can only use the out-of-turn* function of That’s Mine when someone else is putting a Keeper into play in a situation where it was previously NOT in play. You can’t use it to intercept a Keeper being allocated, traded, stolen, or acquired in any other way.

In most cases it’s an Action, or possibly a Free Action, for which there are Surprises you could use – but they wouldn’t gain you the Keeper which is in transit. They would only stop the Action or Free Action from happening, preventing the Keeper from changing hands in the first place.

There are, however, some situations besides normal playing of a Keeper from someone’s hand, where wording on another card does actually include the word “play” in the way a Keeper is acquired. See this FAQ about cards played via the Free Action Wormhole (AKA Mystery Play). Or this FAQ about Actions which allow you to take a Keeper out of the discard pile and play it.

* Of course you could use your That’s Mine card on your next turn, for it’s in-turn function which is essentially the same as Steal a Keeper, so you’re really not in a bad place, even if you couldn’t get that Keeper in the middle of the results of an Action.

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A: No. You can’t use the out-of-turn function of a Surprise during your turn. Note that the Canceled Plans card specifically says it is used to stop a Goal which another player has just played.

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…Example:
Player A plays a Hand Limit
Player B and C discard down to the hand limit
Player A plays Veto to cancel the Hand Limit for themselves.

Is this allowed?

A: Well, it all depends how Player A was trying to play the Veto. Every Surprise has two different instructions on it. One for when you’re using it to interrupt someone else’s play, and one for if you play it out of your own hand as a regular card on your turn.

First case (the out-of-turn function):

If Player A was trying to use the out-of-turn function to cancel the play of their own card, that’s not allowed. It’s their turn, so they can only use the in-turn function. See also: Can one ever use the out-of-turn function of a Surprise on their own turn?

Note that even if it were another person playing out-of-turn to cancel the card (let’s call them Player D) the Surprise should be played immediately after the card one wants to cancel: in the case of a Hand Limit, that would ideally be before anyone has discarded anything.

Moreover, even if everyone decided to cut imaginary Player D some slack about the timing, and they did let Player D play the Veto after some people had discarded, canceling the Rule would “prevent it from ever taking effect” and everyone would get to take all their cards back as though the Hand Limit had never been played. Long story short: you can’t Veto a rule just for you. The Rule applies to everyone, so when you Veto it, it’s Vetoed for everyone.

Second case (the in-turn function):

If Player A still had a play left on their turn after playing the Hand Limit, they could simply play the Veto for its in-turn function. What it does in this case is let them “discard [their] choice of up to 2 New Rules currently in play”. The Rules discarded don’t even have to be ones that were recently played.

In this case, those rules are not being “canceled” without ever having taken effect, they’re just being discarded. The Rules were played, they took effect for as long as they were in play, and then they were discarded. So if Player A did that, they could simply trash the Hand Limit before their turn ends, thereby avoiding having to discard down at all. Of course, this uses up one of their plays for their turn.

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A: Only the Goal just played.

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Player #1 contends that he won the game because the rules say that as soon as a goal is achieved the game is over and no other actions/cards can be played. Player #2 says that no, the Surprise card overrides the general rule and cancels the playing of the goal and therefore the game does not end. Which is true?

A: Yes. If the Canceled Plans card played is played immediately, it cancels the Goal and play continues to the next person. That is the intent of the card.

It works the same way for That’s Mine. If the winning play is a Keeper, That’s Mine can be used to cancel that play, preventing the win.

Again, Surprises are meant to be able to work this way… but you have to be using the correct Surprise for the type of play you’re canceling – and you must play your Surprise in a timely manner: say, within a few seconds of the player playing their card.

For more nuanced suggestions about how to resolve some tweaky timing issues, check
When a player is allowed multiple plays on their turn, are there any guidelines for timing between plays?”

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For example, Play 3 is in effect at the start of a turn, the current player plays Play 4, but another player plays Veto – what is the current play limit; 3, 4, or the default 1?

A: A: The newly played and Vetoed New Rule is canceled, so the old New Rule stays in play.

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In this scenario Player #1 has the Trade Hands and Stop That, and Player #2 is being forced to trade hands.

A: No. If the Surprise were in Player #2’s hand, then Player #2 could use it to stop the Action, but if the Surprise is in Player #1’s hand, then Player #2 does not have access to the card until after the Trade Hands Action has been resolved, by which time it’s too late to be stopped.

If you think about it too hard, you’ll realize it can ONLY work this way. If it worked the way you described there would be a paradoxical loop:

You used the Stop That you received in Trade Hands to stop Trade Hands, so you didn’t trade hands, so you didn’t have the Stop That, so you couldn’t use it, so you traded hands, but then you had the Stop That, and you used it to prevent the Trade Hands, but then you didn’t have it, didn’t use it, but then you traded and had it…

…and so forth to insanity.

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Or must you discard a Goal/Action if you have one, and a random card only if you don’t?

A: Players get to choose. They may either look at their cards and select a Goal/Action to give up, or they may select a random card from their hand to give up. Of course, if they don’t have any Goals/Actions, they can only opt to lose a random card.

Note that random means RANDOM. They don’t get to decide which card they give up in this case. They can do this either by mixing their own hand face down, and pulling one out without looking, or they can have you pull one from their hand as they hold it up facing themselves.

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A: Those are not considered “Actions” in the sense that they are not Action cards, and Stop That (or Belay That) is intended to cancel out the playing of Action cards specifically. Nor will Veto! which cancels the playing of Rules stop these types of Free Actions. The Surprise you’re looking for is one found only in the More Surprises pack, and it’s called No Free Lunch.

There are a couple of other more broadly worded Surprises that prevent some types of Free Actions, however. For example, Skullduggery, It’s A Trap and You Can’t Take This Guy From Me are written so that they prevent “any game action” which causes Keepers to change hands. This can include the results of Action cards, Free Actions from Rule and Free Actions from Keepers or Creepers. It’s a Trap is in Batman Fluxx and Star Fluxx, You Can’t Take This Guy From Me is in Firefly, and Skullduggery is a promo card which can be found in the More Surprises pack linked above.

There might be some confusion on using the Action attached to Let’s Keep Doing That, since there is an Action card permanently in play, but it is intended to act as if it were a New Rule that grants a Free Action, so in functions like any other Free Action, and is covered by the first paragraph.

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A: No. There is no limit to the number of Creepers you can have in front of you.

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