A: You must finish distributing all of the cards. The person who got the winning combo might receive a Creeper which would negate their win. Consider the consequences of playing the one card, Mix It All Up, as being simultaneous. So you only check for win conditions after all of the Keepers/Creepers have been distributed.
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Q: If my Keepers are Invisible, they’re immune to cards like Exchange Keepers, or Mix It All Up. Does that mean I can’t play those cards myself?
A: While your Invisible Keepers are immune from such Actions from other people, you are allowed to play them yourself. After all, presumably YOU know where the item you’re exchanging is, even though it’s Invisible. By contrast, other players don’t even know your Keepers are there to be Exchanged with.
Q: In Fantasy Fluxx, if Evil is attached to a Keeper which is Invisible, what happens when Mix It All Up is played?
…Mix It All Up detaches Attaching Creepers. That is clear enough from the card, but what if the Keeper is Invisible, but it has a Creeper attached (Evil is the only Attaching Creeper in Fantasy Fluxx, so we’re basically talking about just that)… Would they stick together and both “become visible” and go into the Mix? Would they be split? Or would they both be considered Invisible?
A: This is a tricky case, so I consulted with Andy. His ruling is that attachment to an Invisible Keeper renders the Evil Invisible as well, so it would not be included in the Mix. After all, as an Attaching Creeper, Evil is a modifier of the item as much as Invisibility. If a Keeper is Invisible, it doesn’t make sense that becoming Evil would suddenly render it visible again.
Q: What things can trigger You Can’t Take This Guy From Me? It seems like a really harsh card!
A: Assuming the card being taken away from someone is a character Keeper, the following can trigger You Can’t Take This Guy From Me (YCTTGFM): Mix It All Up, Trash Something, Steal Something, Exchange Keepers, Plunder, and Keeper powers that let you take someone else’s Keeper.
Cards which definitely DON’T trigger YCTTGFM would be things which take cards from your hand, like Use What You Take, or Random Tax.
We would agree — YCTTGFM is a bit harsher than average for Fluxx, but there it is. Fluxx cards can vary from harmless or ineffectual to… taking someone’s whole hand. It does tend to even out, on the whole, we feel.
If you really hate the card, feel free to take it out of your deck. Totally your prerogative! Fluxx is supposed to be fun, so if this takes the fun out of it for you, then ditch it. We want you to have fun!
Q: How does Share The Wealth (or Mix It All Up) interact with attaching Creepers?
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.
Q: For the card I’ll Be In My Bunk, does it mean that no-one can steal a Keeper, or just that they can’t cheat and look at your cards?
A: It means no-one can steal a Keeper, or a card from your hand, or trade hands with you, or whatever might alter your assets while you’re gone* (but you also would not benefit from Everybody Gets One!). We would consider not looking at someone’s hand to be baseline good sportsmanship, which does not have to be regulated.
“Don’t cheat” is kind of the first rule of every game (unless the game is really outside-the-box, in which case I’d expect it to be very explicit about what kinds of “cheating” are allowed, I guess. And if it’s allowed… is it cheating?)
* Here is a list of the cards in Firefly Fluxx which would not apply to you while you were “In Your Bunk”:
Exchange Keepers
Steal Something
Random Tax
Mix It All Up
Everybody Gets 1
Trash Something
Trade Hands
Use What You Take
Q: With That’s Mine (That Be Mine, Twist Of Fate) played out of turn, if someone is receiving a card via an Action, can I use That’s Mine to intercept it, and get that Keeper myself?
…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.
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: Can I win with All You Need Is Love if Love is the first of several Keepers I would get in a Keeper-mixup situation?
Suppose the Goal is All You Need Is Love, and someone plays an Action which causes all of the Keepers to be shuffled and dealt back out. If someone then gets Love as their first card, do they win immediately, or must they receive whatever other Keepers are headed their way before they can claim victory?
A: The latter. This is another tricky timing case in which the instant win concept collides with the principle of everything happening immediately. In this case, the Action must be completed first. The best way to play cards like Scramble Keepers or Share the Wealth is to deal everyone their new Keepers face down, with all players then revealing the cards they got all at once.
See also: Does the total effect of playing a card have to be resolved…