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

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…for example, if it is played, and the player has zero Keepers?
…if another player trashes or steals their only Keeper?
…as soon as their turn starts, and the Forest Fire burns their last/only Keeper?

A: Yes. In all of these cases the player may immediately discard Forest Fire.

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…In other cases where an Action is played, and the conditions are not right to do what it says, the Action is simply discarded without effect. Extinction doesn’t go into the discard when played, however, it is removed from the game. So should one put it in the discard pile, or take it out of the game, without having caused something to “go extinct”?

To review: the Extinction says to “Pick any Keeper in play on the table which represents something living. Take it out of the game permanently, along with [the Extinction] card.”

Playing the Extinction card under those conditions (no “living” Keepers in play) it would have no effect, and should be put into the discard pile (so it stays “in rotation” and might come up again) rather than being removed from the game by itself. Basically, it’s only removed from the game if it manages to make something go extinct.

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A: Looney Labs has donated a portion of the proceeds from EcoFluxx/Nature Fluxx to various environmental organizations since these titles were first published. Here they are, listed roughly in the order which we originally donated to them (oldest at the bottom so that the list is easier to keep up!) There are several we have donated to multiple times over the years, so the order is not exact.

Sloth Sanctuary
Living Lands and Waters
American Rivers
International Primate Protection League
National Audubon Society
Waterkeeper Alliance
Wildlife Conservation Network
National Wildlife Federation
Environmental Integrity Project
Center for Coastal Studies
EcoHealth Alliance
The Center for Ecoliteracy
Pollinator Partnership
The Nature Conservancy
Chesapeake Bay Foundation
The American Chestnut Foundation
Burgundy Center for Wildlife Studies
Bat Conservation International

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…for example a Keeper turned face down via Camouflage or, in very early versions, Government Cover-Up or Secret Data.

A: Yes, you must count face-down Keepers when you are counting your Keepers in play. Though they do not count as “in play” for purposes of using powers or winning Goals (though you can usually reveal them at any time) you still own them as generic “Keepers” for the purposes of Limits.

If you have a number of Keepers hidden under another card, however, as with the Treasure Map in Pirate Fluxx (or the Secret Stash, a Stoner Fluxx promo), those are all counted as just “one Keeper” (the one Keeper showing on the top of the other card/s).

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…For example: Spiders Eat Insects is the Goal in play. I had the Insects in play AND Poison (Camouflaged). It was my boyfriends turn and he played Spiders, whereupon I instantly revealed the poison card…

A: When we came up with those two cards, we never considered that someone might want to Camouflage their Poison! But it should be no problem to have played it the way you did. You are absolutely allowed to reveal your Poison just after he’d played Spiders to indicate that his Spiders would not be able to successfully eat your Insects, thereby preventing his win at that time.

We imagine it as a predator snapping up prey, not knowing it was poisonous, and then realizing it tastes like nasty poison, and spitting it out! Bleah! Like a bird eating a Monarch butterfly for the first time and puking. Yeah, that one Monarch died, but that one Bird didn’t succeed in eating it, either, and the overall effect is that Birds avoid eating Monarch butterflies. (The example is a bit weird with Spiders, but you get the picture.)

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

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…Population Crash says “take a card from the draw pile and place it on the discard pile,” instead of “draw a card and place it on the discard pile.” If a Creeper comes up this way, does the active player have to take it and put it in play, or does it just go on the discard pile?

A: You are not technically drawing those cards to use them. You are merely flipping them over to find the next Goal card to give direction to the Population Crash Action, so we would rule that you do not have to take Creepers revealed this way.

Also see: What happens if a Creeper comes up when Pandora’s Box is played? Noting that our intention was that Pandora’s Box be a similar card flipping, not drawing… but we messed up the wording on the most recent printing.

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A: Playing a Keeper uses one of your plays for your turn. It’s the hiding of it which is free. So, for example, if you already had a Keeper on the table, and Camouflage went into play, you could then hide it without using a play to do so. But that’s because you’re hiding a Keeper already on the table. Putting the Keeper into play it still counts as a play.

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A: Yes, they can. Camouflage doesn’t protect your Keeper, just makes it harder for people to know what it is (they might remember, they might not, or might not have seen it at all, if you played it face down in the first place). Generally in Fluxx games, Keepers hidden under other cards cannot be traded or stolen – but the card they’re under is usually still vulnerable. In the case of Camouflage, your card itself is not hidden, only its identity.

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

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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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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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…Do I get to play those cards because of Play All, or do I have to discard them because of the Hand Limit 0?

A: You must play those extra cards because of Play All. Hand Limits only apply to you when it’s not your turn, and when you played the Draw increase, you extended your turn. You need to keep playing, and would only need to comply with the Hand Limit if one of the subsequent cards you played changed or removed the Play All rule.

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…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.

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A: The box.

Well, technically, there have been a couple of different editions of EcoFluxx, so, depending on which you’re looking at there might be more differences with Nature Fluxx than just the box. But if you’re comparing the latest version of EcoFluxx (2.0), and the current version of Nature Fluxx, we made no changes between these two editions besides the title and the box art.

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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: The Forest Fire Creeper says “If you have this at the *start* of your turn, discard a Keeper you have on the table. Discard this if you have no Keepers in play.”

Looks like nothing says you get to discard it after it burns only one of your Keepers. You only get to discard it “for free” if you have no Keepers in play, in other words, until it has “burned itself out” by using up all the fuel. You might conceivably “put it out” by using some other card to get rid of it, but if you haven’t got any way to do that, then it will just burn through your Keepers until they are all gone. But then it will go away, and you can safely play Keepers again.

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A: For Actions like this where multiple things happen, all those results are considered to happen simultaneously (Except for Actions which invoke the utilization of other cards, like Draw 2 and Play ‘Em, where each card played is considered separately, though the whole thing is still considered one “Play”).

Looking back on this, Andy realized that we could have avoided this confusion by simply writing the results in the other order (Discard the Goal, then trash all Creepers in play). We hope to tweak this wording on a subsequent printing.

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A: Yes, we would count those as “something living”.

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A: One thing at a time. It is NOT cumulative.

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If I have Poison, can my predator eat my own prey?

A: Sorry, no. Poison makes ALL of your Keepers poisonous. If you have Poison, no one — not even you — can win by eating your Keepers because they are poisonous. For example, if you have Poison and Fish and the Goal is Bears Eat Fish, no one can win because those Fish are poisonous, no matter what player has the hungry Bears.

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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.

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For example, the Bats Eat Insects card states that “the player with Bats in play wins if someone has Insects on the table”.

Does this mean:
a) if the holder of the bat card also possesses the insect card, the holder of the bat card can win
b) the holder of the bat card can only win if someone else has the insect card

A: The person who has the Bat card on the table in front of them wins if ANYONE (themselves OR any other player) has Insects face up on the table (Camouflage could make the Insects face down).

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A: When the Camouflage Rule is no longer in play, no-one is allowed to have any hidden cards. The default is that no Keepers in play are hidden, and only the presence of the Camouflage card gives you permission to hide something, so when that Rule goes away, the game goes back to the default of all Keepers showing.

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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.

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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!

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…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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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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