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: Are Plush Players eligible for the Child Bonus?
- Q: What happens if Play All is in effect, and there is also a Bonus that adds to Plays per turn?
- Q: When I play Choose A New Rule, it sounds like I’m supposed to put it in the discard…
- Q: Do the Tree promos count as The Tree in Family Fluxx, or Trees in Eco/Nature Fluxx?
- Q: For Everybody Gets 1, do I get to look at the cards before I hand them out to people?
- Q: For Actions that re/distribute Keepers and/or Creepers among the players, how are those dealt back out? Can someone win in the middle of redistribution?
- Q: When we all pass a card left or right, is that simultaneous?
Q: Are Plush Players eligible for the Child Bonus?
A: No. A Plushie is not a Child… and how does one calculate the age of a Plushie? Is it from the date of manufacture? How would you know when it was manufactured? Is it by the date it was acquired by a human? Is it the age the human was when the Plushie was acquired? Is it the age that the Plushie is deemed to be as a characteristic of its personality? It’s just impossibly unclear.
So, though we didn’t specify “human” in the phrase “youngest player” we will be updating the card on future printings to say “youngest human player.”
Q: What happens if Play All is in effect, and there is also a Bonus that adds to Plays per turn?
A: You can’t play more than All, so if you are getting a Bonus to your plays-per-turn, you still just Play All. Andy compares Play All to a sort of “Play Infinity” where, if you add 1 to infinity, it’s still just infinity. If you add 1 to “all” it’s still just “all.”
But wait – wouldn’t the existence of Play All Plus 1 mess with this analogy? For reference, the Rule: Play All Plus 1, invented for Hundred Acre Wood Fluxx, 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.
It has long been established that a Play Bonus will turn Play All But 1 into Play All. (Play All -1 +1 = Play All), so does the existence of Play All Plus 1 mean we should treat Play All with a +1 Play Bonus as if it were Play All Plus 1?
Think of the +1 in Play All +1 as tacking a mandatory Mystery Play on to the end of a regular Play All. That extra +1 played isn’t really the same as your other card plays from your hand because it’s completely random, so we don’t think it should be treated strictly mathematically as when adding a Play Bonus to Play All But 1.
Check the Bonus Analysis Spreadsheet to see which cards may increase your plays-per-turn. Also check the “Computer” Keepers tab for two more cards which increase Plays.
Q: When I play Choose A New Rule, it sounds like I’m supposed to put it in the discard…
A: Choose A New Rule says:
“Look through the draw and discard piles for a New Rule card of your choice and play it. Reshuffle the discard pile into the draw pile. (Don’t shuffle this card in – use it to start the new discard pile.)”
The New Rule you just chose is not getting discarded. You pulled it and put it into play. It’s in the middle of the table with the rest of the New Rules. The Goal is out there (if there’s a Goal). People have Keepers in play too. None of these cards in play are going anywhere.
After you use the card Choose A New Rule, however, it would normally go into the discard pile, which you are instructed to reshuffle into the draw pile. But we don’t want the card Choose A New Rule to potentially come right back up again too soon, just by chance, so we want you to leave that card out of the reshuffle, and use it to start the new discard pile.
I think the confusion comes from the reference to “this card” which might have been interpreted to be the New Rule you picked, rather than “this card” which you’re using and reading right now, i.e. Choose A New Rule.
Q: Do the Tree promos count as The Tree in Family Fluxx, or Trees in Eco/Nature Fluxx?
A: Yes! The Fruit Tree, Pine Tree, or Palm Tree all count as The Tree in Family Fluxx, or as Trees in EcoFluxx / Nature Fluxx.
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.”
Q: For Actions that re/distribute Keepers and/or Creepers among the players, how are those dealt back out? Can someone win in the middle of redistribution?
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:
|
Keepers only Share the Wealth Monster Mash Run!!! The Grand Ball Nautical Nonsense |
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 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.
Q: When we all pass a card left or right, is that simultaneous?
If it’s not, the same card could get passed all the way around the circle until it’s back with the person who played the Action.
A: Yes. Everyone is supposed to pick a card from their hand, and pass it simultaneously, specifically to prevent a single card being passed around.
For example, what would happen if only one person had a hand? If the card pass happened sequentially, there would be no change in anyone’s hand! (And how do you decide who starts?) What actually happens is that the person with a hand passes a card, and everyone else passes nothing, since their hands are empty.
A good rule of thumb is: when in doubt, assume that things in Fluxx happen simultaneously.
See also: We think we broke the game…