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.

Back To Top

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

Back To Top

…for example, for the Goal Enemy Alliance that requires Romulans and Klingons, if I have both the TNG and TOS versions of the Romulans Creeper, does the second Romulans count as an extra Creeper which prevents my win, as mentioned in this FAQ? Or is it just more of what I need to win?

A: Since the Goal specifically mentions Romulans without specifying one of the other, they’re effectively identical, and both count towards the Goal and not against it, and it doesn’t matter that you have a superfluous one. It’s more like what’s described in this FAQ.

Back To Top

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.

Back To Top

…The Here Humans! Action states: “If this is a two player game, only take one of that player’s Human cards.” (Human is singular)

A: I checked with Andy on this, and he says that Here Humans! should be absolutely able to steal an opponent’s Humans In Black. Though it uses “Human” in singular, you can’t really separate them as a group, and they would be just as susceptible as other Humans to whatever you’re using for Human-attractant (some sort of audible call? “Hay-bay-bee!” Or maybe a scent-based attractant: cinnamon rolls, or those candied almonds they sell at the mall? Or maybe it’s a visual thing: a billboard for some irresistible deal or “free money!”)

In fact, they count as Humans for anything referencing them, even The Humans Are Revolting, for example. The only real difference is that they’re not Creepers, and have the special power to nullify the Creeper-aspect of other Humans.

Back To Top

A: No, you don’t HAVE to use it immediately. You MAY use it immediately if you want to, however.

Back To Top

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.

Back To Top

…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.

Back To Top

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.

Back To Top

… We were playing Cthulhu Fluxx, and what complicates things is that my wife had the Secret Cultist, so she would win if the UnGoal overrides the Goal, but my son would have won with the Goal if that overrides the UnGoal. [Note from Looney Labs, in Cthulhu Fluxx, a simultaneous Goal and UnGoal could arise from either Double Agenda or The Stars Are Right. Zombie Fluxx and Martian Fluxx could also generate this condition since they both have Double Agenda and an UnGoal. Zombie Fluxx also has the Zombie Boss Rule which can make a player win in the case of the UnGoal being met.]

A: Well, this IS a doozy. Andy and I had to think this through carefully.

But in the end, the answer seems obvious: on the rule sheet itself, at end of the first page in “Notes” is the ruling for ties:

“The game doesn’t end until there is a clear winner. If for some reason two of more players meet the winning conditions simultaneously, the game continues until a single winner emerges.”

So, for your situation, the answer is actually fairly simple: there were two players meeting winning conditions simultaneously, so keep playing until a clear winner emerges. Note that the “clear winner” need not be one of the two originally tied. It could happen that someone else manages to break the tie and win instead of either one of them.

What got a little tricky for us, is that we also wanted to rule in cases where the Cultist/Secret Cultist/Zombie Boss wasn’t invoked, which is to say when there is one player winning, but the conditions for “all players losing” is also met. How could that be? Would we rule that there is only one player winning? Or would we rule that there is “no clear winner”, since that player should simultaneously be both winning and losing?

We went with the latter: If a Goal and UnGoal are met simultaneously, then, even if there is not an actual player that can claim victory in the case of the UnGoal conditions, having the UnGoal met is like having the “forces of evil” be the winner. So if a player meets the winning condition, they are actually tied with “the forces of evil” , thus play would continue until a clear winner emerges.

In a way, all that the Cultist/Secret Cultist/Zombie Boss does is make an actual player represent those forces of evil, thereby claiming that victory.

Back To Top

…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.

Back To Top

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).

Back To Top

A: Sorry for the lack of clarity! You are not missing any cards from the deck. Those are symbols which appear on Goals to make it easier to designate a class of cards. You’ll see a little more info about them at the top of the second page of the instructions.

Though they are not marked with a specific symbol, any card with “Human” or “Humans” in the title… has humans. That would be almost all of the Creepers (except for The Army and Germs) and one Keeper (Humans In Black). We felt that putting a “human” symbol on every single human card would be a bit redundant, since they all literally say they are humans. We did much the same thing in Zombie Fluxx, using a sort of skull symbol to designate “any Zombie” when we needed to indicate that for Goals, but we didn’t put that symbol on every Zombie Creeper in the deck. These things take up space!

There is actually a female symbol on all of the Humans which should be considered female for purposes of the Goals.

Likewise, you may find mention of hats on one of the Goals. We didn’t make a special symbol for “having a hat” either. If the human looks like they are wearing a hat, they are, and we made sure the Beauty Queen clarified her headgear, as she was the only one we felt was a bit ambiguous.

Hope that clears things up! If you do want to check the card list on line, just in case you are actually missing anything, it’s here:
http://www.looneylabs.com/lists/martian-fluxx-card-list

Back To Top

…or can I only put one in per turn each time my turn comes around?

A: You can grab all your Humans and stick them in the Abduction Chamber all at once, if you want. You can take them out at any time, but they can only be hidden on your turn.

Back To Top

A: You may notice that Meta-Rules have different backs from the rest of the cards. They are meant to not be shuffled into the deck at all, and the different back facilitates finding and pulling them if you accidentally shuffle them in. You just decide at the beginning of the game whether you want to play by those permanent rules or not. It’s like they are a house rule which all players decide on before starting.

This page has a short list and descriptions of all the MetaRules, with a little commentary.

Back To Top

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

Back To Top

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”.

Back To Top

A: Our call would be that you could win if you have both, since both are mentioned on the same Goal, and the rule regarding winning with Creepers is that it’s possible if the Goal specifically requires that Creeper. Another way to think of it is that it’s not an “exclusive or” (XOR) it is an “inclusive or” (and/or). An exclusive or would mean one or the other, but not both, whereas an inclusive or means one or the other or both.

This is true for any Goal which requires any subset of a group of Creepers. If the Creeper is shown on the Goal, it will not prevent the win, but if the person in question has any Creepers NOT shown on the Goal they’re trying to win with, then those excess unrelated Creepers will prevent the win.

It would be difficult to find all of them to list them here, but we will tag various applicable Goals as they are brought to our attention.
Terrifying Inspiration (Cthulhu Fluxx)
Q Who (Star Trek TNG Fluxx)

Back To Top

A: The card alone is moved or trashed. The Humans inside are revealed and they remain with the player who used to have the Chamber.

Back To Top

A: Although the wording is vague, our intention was that this should work similar to other cards like it which allow you to hide a Keeper or Creeper. You can take them out at any time, but you can only hide them on your turn.

Back To Top

For example in the instance where Goals were going to be played in succession during a Play All, can it be assumed that the player with the Abduction Chamber has as much time as they need between Goal plays to either show or cover their Humans as needed to meet the Goals that come up?

A: Yes and no. It is stated on the Abduction Chamber card that a player can reveal Humans from it at any time. Though it does not specify when a player can hide them, we intended for this card to work similarly to others like it: you can only put Humans into the Abduction Chamber on your turn. See Can Humans be moved in and/or out of the Abduction Chamber at any time…

When a series of Goal cards is played in succession, there must always be a check to see if anyone wins with each one. During that check, the player with the Abduction Chamber may choose to reveal their Humans, with the understanding that they cannot be put back in again. Of course, if they’ve been revealed to achieve a win, that point is fairly moot.

We would rule that the player who owns the Abduction Chamber is capable of checking to see its contents without choosing to reveal them, so they would really ONLY let their Humans out if it was to win the game.

Back To Top

To review: the Martian Zookeeper requires a Cow and a male and female Human, but ties are broken by whoever has more total Humans. So if player A is all set to win when they play the Goal, but B also meets the conditions, with more Humans, but they’re hidden in the Abduction Chamber, can player B reveal their Humans and win?

A: It’s going to depend on how quickly player B realizes they could prevent the win by releasing their Humans. The Abduction Chamber can be accessed at any time, but it’s not retroactive. I might choose to set my Humans free during another player’s turn, but I’d better be prepared for the possibility of the Martian Zookeeper Goal coming up, since BOTH of us have the win conditions, and it’s going to come down to a head-count of our Humans. I’ve got to release them right away so they can be included in the tally.

If player B realizes they need to release their Humans after they realize player A has won, then they realized too late.

Back To Top

A: No, it has to be someone you can reach from where you are sitting during the regular course of the game.

Back To Top

A: Three.

Back To Top

A: Only Keepers on the table can be discarded during this Action. If you are supposed to discard a Keeper and you don’t have any on the table, you don’t discard anything, even if you hold Keepers in your hand.

Back To Top

To review: The Retreat! UnGoal says “If Germs and the Army are on the table, and all players have at least 1 Creeper, the game ends with no winner.” Do Germs and the Army count as “at least one Creeper” or do those players have to have at least 1 Creeper in addition to Germs and Army?

A: No, they don’t need an additional Creeper beyond Germs or Army to cause everyone to lose. Both those cards DO count as generic Creepers in addition to their specificity.

Back To Top

Suppose I have the Telepathic Translator on the table and decide to play Use What You Take. Can I first look at the players hand, then play one of the cards as I see them? Or would the player be allowed to “shuffle” their hand after I’ve read their mind, thereby randomizing the card I take?

A: Yes, the other player can (and should) shuffle up their hand before allowing you take a card for Use What You Take. You can of course use the Telepathic Translator to see if that player has anything good in their hand before playing Use What You Take, but the card you get with that Action is to be chosen at random.

Back To Top

meaning that possession of the Space Suit would prevent you from winning with The Army Called In Sick?

A: The Space Suit says you CAN give away germs, but it doesn’t say you must, so, no, it’s not mandatory. (Just because you have it doesn’t mean you’re wearing it.) So, no, having the Space Suit does not prevent you from winning with The Army Called In Sick.

Keep in mind, however, that if you have both in play, having decided to keep Germs despite having the Suit, you won’t be able to give Germs away until your turn, when you infect someone else. (Once you’ve gotten sick, you’ll have to let the disease run its course before you can get better.) After that, you can reject someone giving you BACK the Germs, unless you want to declare once again, that, despite having the Suit, you’re still not wearing it. (Some people never learn!)

Back To Top

A: If you already have Germs when you play the Space Suit, then it’s too late for the Suit to protect you from the Germs – they’re already in your system. In that case you just have to wait for enough time to pass for you to be able to give the Germs away. After that of course, you can’t be given the Germs again, because then the Space Suit will keep the Germs out.

Back To Top

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.

Back To Top

Do I have to set my hand aside so that card doesn’t mix with it, and play that card exactly, or does this just add to my total play, so I can add the extra card to my hand, and play whatever cards I want, increasing the number of plays I have?

A: “Draw and Play 1 extra card per turn” just increases your total draws and total plays for the turn by 1, so whatever card you draw that is “extra” just gets added to your hand like all the other cards you drew, and you can play whatever cards you want from your hand up to the play quantity plus 1.

Unless the card says you have to set aside your hand, you don’t, and you’re not required to play the specific card you drew card unless the option you’re invoking specifies that.

Back To Top

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!

Back To Top

…I say it’s 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.

Back To Top

Does it count as one of your plays for your turn to do this thing?

A: No. That’s the whole point of it being “free”. It does not use one of your plays. Depending on the game we’re talking about (there are cards like this in Chrononauts and Back To The Future, in addition to many in Fluxx editions), you might only be getting one play per turn, and whatever this thing does won’t use up your play for the turn.

Back To Top

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.

Back To Top

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…

Back To Top

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.

Back To Top

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:

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.

Back To Top

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.”

Back To Top

See this answer in a video!
Little Answers

A: Yes. For a brief moment in between your turn and your extra turn it is technically not your turn, and you must comply with all Limit rules at that time.

Back To Top

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

Back To Top