Boil Over

Full rules

1. Overview
2. The cards
3. Setup
4. Playing a turn
5. End of a round
6. Winning the game
7. Tips for beginners
8. Variants

Overview

In Boil Over you take turns adding cards to three pots in the middle of the table – one for hearts, one for diamonds, one for clubs – and say the pot's new total out loud. Spades are poison: they can go into any pot. Whoever pushes a pot over 20 makes it boil over and has to take all the cards that were in it. At the end of a round, every card you took costs you points – unless you took more cards of a suit than anybody else, in which case you may throw that suit away. Poison always counts double. After one round per player, the lowest total wins.

• Players: 3–6; best with 4–5.
• You need: one standard 52-card deck, and paper and a pen for the scores.

Boil Over is our own adaptation for ordinary cards, inspired by Friday the 13th, also published as Poison (Reiner Knizia, 2005). It has not been playtested in this form yet.

What is different from the original: the original has its own 50 cards: three colours of 14 potions each with the values 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7, eight poison cards worth 4, and a limit of 13. A normal deck can't copy those values, so Boil Over uses the cards Ace to 10 of three suits and eight spades, and the limit is 20 instead of 13. A quick computer simulation of random play showed that this gives about the same number of cards per boil-over as the original (about 3 on average). The poison cards count their face value instead of a fixed 4. How to play and how to score are the same as in the original.

The cards

Take these 41 cards out of the deck:

• The three pot markers: K♥, K♦ and K♣.
• The ingredients: Ace to 10 of hearts, diamonds and clubs (30 cards). Each card counts its face value; the Ace counts 1.
• The poison: the 2 to 9 of spades (8 cards). They count their face value too.

The other cards (J and Q of every suit, A♠, 10♠, K♠, jokers) are not used.

Setup

Lay the three Kings face up in a row in the middle of the table. Each King marks the place of its pot: the heart pot, the diamond pot and the club pot. The Kings themselves count nothing.

Choose a dealer. The dealer shuffles the 38 ingredient and poison cards and deals them all out, one at a time, face down. The first players may get one card more than the others; that's fine. With 3 players, deal a fourth hand as if there were a fourth player; it stays face down and is not used this round.

Pick up your cards as your hand and don't show them to anybody. The player to the dealer's left starts.

Playing a turn

On your turn, play one card from your hand face up on a pot:

• A heart goes on the heart pot, a diamond on the diamond pot, a club on the club pot. You can't put a card on the pot of another suit.
• A spade (poison) may go on any of the three pots, even an empty one.

Overlap the cards so that everybody can see the values in the pot, and say the pot's new total out loud.

• 20 or less: nothing happens. The next player to the left takes their turn.
• More than 20: the pot boils over. Take all the cards that were in the pot before your card – ingredients and poison – and put them face down on a pile in front of you. The card you just played stays and starts the pot again. Then the next player takes their turn.

Example: The heart pot holds the 7♥ and 5♥ (12). Ben adds the 6♠ – poison – and says "18". Carla has only hearts left, so she must play on the heart pot. Her 4♥ makes 22 – over 20. Carla takes the 7♥, 5♥ and 6♠; her 4♥ stays in the pot, and the heart pot now stands at 4.

End of a round

The round ends when all hand cards have been played (a player who has run out of cards is simply skipped). The cards still in the pots don't count for anybody. For the next round, gather all 38 cards again – including those in the pots and those the players took – shuffle and deal anew.

Now everyone sorts the cards they took by suit and compares them with the others:

• Majority: for each of hearts, diamonds and clubs, the player who has more cards of that suit than every other player throws all their cards of that suit away – they cost nothing. If two or more players tie for the most, nobody throws that suit away.
• Every heart, diamond or club you still have costs 1 point, whatever its value.
• Every spade (poison) costs 2 points. Spades are never thrown away.

At the end of a round, the players have taken these cards:

Example: Anna has the most hearts and throws them away; Ben has the most diamonds and throws them away. Anna and Carla tie for the most clubs, so nobody throws clubs away. Anna scores 1 + 3 + 2 × 2 = 8, Ben 2 + 1 + 1 × 2 = 5, Carla 3 + 2 + 3 + 3 × 2 = 14 and Dan 1 + 1 + 2 = 4.

Write down everyone's points. The deal passes to the left.

Winning the game

Play as many rounds as there are players. Then the player with the lowest total wins. Players with the same total share the win.

Tips for beginners

• A majority wipes out a whole suit. If you already have many cards of one suit, taking more of it can even help you.
• Low cards are useful late in a round: they let you add to a nearly full pot without making it boil over.
• Poison is best played on a pot that is already high – the next player will probably have to take it.
• Watch which suits the others are collecting, and don't hand them the majority cheaply.
• Remember what has been played: with only Ace to 10 in each suit, you can often work out whether the next player can still add to a pot safely.

Variants

• Four rounds: always play exactly four rounds, whatever the number of players – as in the Friday the 13th edition of the original.
• Tighter pots: play with a limit of 19 instead of 20. The simulation suggests this is even closer to the original.