Man the Boats

Full rules

1. Overview
2. Card order and colours
3. The parts of the layout
4. Setup
5. Playing a turn
6. Flooding
7. End of the game
8. Scoring
9. A turn (worked example)
10. Difficulty
11. Tips for beginners
12. Variants
13. Differences from SOS Titanic

Overview

Man the Boats is a cooperative patience: you play it alone or as a team, and you win or lose together. (A patience, also called solitaire, is a card game in which you sort a shuffled deck by fixed rules.) The cards are the passengers of a sinking ship. They wait in queues on the ship, and you must bring them into four lifeboats in the right order – each boat takes one colour, from Ace up to King. Every time you fail to place a passenger, water floods another compartment of the ship. When the last compartment floods, the ship sinks, and everyone still aboard is lost. The more passengers you save, the better.

• Players: 1–5
• You need: one standard 52-card deck without jokers, 10 coins as compartments (13 for the easy level) and 2 small tokens (buttons, matches) as lifebelts (3 for the easy level; failed rescues bring more, so keep a few spare).

Man the Boats is our own adaptation for an ordinary deck, inspired by SOS Titanic (Ludovic Maublanc and Bruno Cathala, 2013). It is new and not yet playtested. It keeps the queues, the lifeboats and the sinking ship of the original, but replaces its special cards, crew roles and ship booklet with coins, tokens and a short list of orders (see "Differences from SOS Titanic").

Card order and colours

The Ace is low: A – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – J – Q – K. ♥ hearts and ♦ diamonds are red, ♠ spades and ♣ clubs are black. The colour is the passenger's class: red and black never mix, neither in a queue nor in a boat. The suit within a colour doesn't matter – a 5♦ may go on a 6♥.

The parts of the layout

• Sections 1–6: the ship, from the bow (section 1, on the left) to the stern (section 6, on the right). Each section has room for one queue.
• Queue: a column of cards, spread downwards. The last card, nearest to you, is the front card. In a queue, cards are built downwards in the same colour: a card goes on a front card that is one rank higher and of the same colour (a black 8 on a black 9).
• Compartments: the coins lying above the sections. Each coin is a dry compartment. When water comes in, you take a coin away.
• Lifeboats: up to four piles above the ship. A boat is launched with an Ace and filled upwards in the same colour: the next card is one rank higher (on a red 4 comes a red 5). Cards in a boat are safe and never leave it.
• Stock: the passengers still below deck – a face-down pile.
• Waste: a face-up pile beside the stock for drawn cards you don't use.
• Lifebelts: tokens that belong to the team; you spend them on orders.

Setup

1. Shuffle and deal face down into the queues of sections 1–4: 4 cards to section 1, 6 to section 2, 8 to section 3 and 10 to section 4. Turn the front card of each queue face up. The queues of sections 5 and 6 start empty.
2. Put the other 24 cards face down above the ship as the stock. Leave room for the waste and for four lifeboats.
3. Put the compartment coins above the sections: 3 on section 1, 3 on section 2, 2 on section 3, 1 on section 4 and 1 on section 5 – 10 coins in all. Section 6 gets none.
4. Put 2 lifebelts beside the ship.
5. If you play as a team, choose who begins; play goes clockwise.

Playing a turn

Your turn has two parts: first you move passengers (as often as you like), then you take action (exactly once).

1. Move passengers (optional)

You may make any number of these moves, in any order:

• Queue → queue: move the front card of a queue – or several face-up cards from the front that form a run going down in the same colour, such as 9♠ 8♣ 7♣ – onto another queue whose front card is one higher than the highest card you move and of the same colour. You may split a run and move only its lower part.
• Queue → empty queue: an empty queue (in a section that hasn't flooded) takes only a King, alone or with a run below it.
• Launch a boat: an Ace at the front of a queue starts a new lifeboat.
• Queue → boat: a front card goes onto a boat of its colour whose top card is one lower. To move a run into a boat, move it card by card, lowest first.

Whenever a face-down card becomes the front card of its queue, turn it face up. That often opens new moves.

2. Take action (compulsory)

Choose one:

Rescue passengers. Say how many cards you will draw – 1, 2 or 3 – and then draw them from the stock together (you can't look at them one by one). Can any of them be placed – on a front card, into an empty queue (a King), as a new boat (an Ace) or on a boat?

• Yes: place exactly one of them (your choice). Put the others face up on the waste.
• No: the rescue has failed. Put all of them on the waste, flood a compartment (see below) and, as a small comfort, take one lifebelt.

If the stock is empty when you want to rescue, shuffle the waste, lay it face down as the new stock and flood a compartment – this time without a lifebelt. Then draw. If the stock holds fewer cards than you named, just draw what is left. If stock and waste are both empty, a compartment floods and your turn ends.

Give an order. Spend lifebelts for one of these:

Talking

Talk as much as you like and plan together: this is a team game. But on your turn you decide.

Flooding

When a compartment floods, take away one coin from the lowest-numbered section that still has coins – the ship sinks from the bow.

When a section loses its last coin, it is flooded. Its passengers flee towards the stern: take all cards of its queue, face up and face down, shuffle them with all cards of the queue in the next section, and lay them face down there as one new queue. Turn its front card face up. (If the flooded queue is empty, the next queue stays as it is.) The flooded section can't be used any more.

Example: Section 1 has lost its third and last coin. Its queue (three cards) is shuffled with the seven cards of section 2 into one face-down queue of ten cards in section 2; its new front card is turned up. The run 9♠ 8♣ you had built in section 2 is mixed up again – that is the price of the water.

End of the game

• All saved: all 52 cards are in the lifeboats. A triumph!
• The ship sinks: the last coin has been taken away. The game ends at once.

Scoring

Add up:

• the number of passengers saved – that is the sum of the top cards of the four boats (A = 1, J = 11, Q = 12, K = 13),
• 1 point per coin still on the ship,
• only if all 52 are saved: for each colour, the longest run of cards of the same suit lying directly on one another in one boat (e.g. 4♥ 5♥ 6♥ 7♥ = 4 points).

Example: The ship sank. The boats show a red 9, a red 6, a black J and a black 4: 9 + 6 + 11 + 4 = 30 points. No coin is left, so that is the score – heroes of the night.

A turn (worked example)

The start shown above; Anna plays alone. She launches a boat with the A♣ from section 4. Behind it she turns up the 6♥ and moves it onto the 7♥ in section 1 (red on red, one lower). Section 4's next card is the J♠; she moves it onto the Q♠ in section 2. Now she takes action: she chooses to draw 3 cards and gets the 2♣, 9♦ and 5♠. The 2♣ fits on the A♣ boat, so she places it there; the 9♦ and 5♠ go on the waste. Had none of the three fitted, she would have taken a coin from section 1 and a lifebelt.

Difficulty

The budget: every coin is one failed rescue or one reshuffle of the stock. The stock starts with 24 cards; drawing 3 at a time, you go through it in about eight rescues, and each new pass costs a coin. A rescue places only one card, so most passengers must reach the boats through the free moves – by uncovering the queues.

A quick computer simulation (3000 deals, a simple player that always draws 3 cards and only makes obvious moves) saved on average about 20 passengers on Easy, 18 on Normal and 15 on Hard and Expert; it saved all 52 in about 8%, 5% and 1% of the games. Thinking players should do clearly better. If you save everyone often, go up a level.

Tips for beginners

• Dig in the long queues. Cards deep in sections 3 and 4 are locked away – every card you turn up there opens new moves.
• Draw fewer cards when many things fit. Drawing 3 gives more chances, but it runs through the stock faster, and a reshuffle costs a coin.
• Watch the bow. The queue of section 1 will be mixed into section 2 first. Don't spend your best work there, and empty it early if you can.
• Keep Kings in mind. Only a King can start an empty queue. An empty section 5 or 6 is valuable – don't fill it with a lonely King you don't need.
• Save "Call a passenger" for the Aces and 2s that start or feed a boat.

Variants

All optional – agree before you start.

• Open queues (easier): deal the queues face up.
• Own lifebelts: each player keeps the lifebelts they took and only they may spend them, as with the action cards of the original.

Differences from SOS Titanic

SOS Titanic uses 60 passenger cards in two classes (1–13 and 1–17), 20 action cards, 10 crew members with their own powers and draw limits, and a ring-bound booklet whose pages are turned as the ship sinks. Man the Boats uses the 52 cards of a normal deck as passengers in two colours, coins instead of the booklet, lifebelts and four fixed orders instead of the action cards, and the same draw limit (1–3) for everyone instead of crew members. The anchor symbols of the original are replaced by runs of one suit. The order list, the coin layout, the levels and the score table are our own.