Mushroom Walk

Full rules

1. Overview
2. The cards
3. Setup
4. Your hand
5. Playing a turn
6. After every turn
7. The poison mushroom
8. End of the game
9. Tips for beginners
10. Variants

Overview

Mushroom Walk is a card game for two about a walk in the woods. A line of eight face-up cards is the forest; after every turn one card drops out at one end into the decay pile and a new card appears at the other end. You gather mushrooms from the forest. Cook three or more of a kind in a pan to score points – butter and cider make the dish even better – or sell two or more of a kind for walking sticks, which let you reach cards deeper in the forest. When the forest is empty, the player with the most points from cooked mushrooms wins.

• Players: exactly 2.
• You need: two standard 52-card decks with 4 jokers, and about 30 coins (or chips or matches) as walking sticks.

Mushroom Walk is our own adaptation for ordinary decks, inspired by Morels (Brent Povis, Two Lanterns Games, 2012), known in German as Fungi. It has not been playtested yet.

The cards

Each rank from 2 to 10 is one kind of mushroom. The rarer the kind, the more it is worth:

The other cards:

Building the decks: put the two decks together. Take out one card of each rank from 2 to 9 – these 8 cards are the night pile. From the rest take the mushrooms as the table says (for example 7 of the 2s, 3 of the 10s) and all the Aces, Jacks, Queens, Kings and jokers: that is the forest deck of 81 cards. The suits of the mushrooms don't matter. Keep 2 of the spare cards as starting pans; the rest go back in the box.

Setup

1. Each player puts one spare card face down in front of them: their starting pan. The area in front of you, where your pans, dishes, baskets and night cards lie, is your display.
2. Shuffle the forest deck and put it face down at one side of the table as the draw pile. Lay the top 8 cards face up in a line leading away from it: the forest. Leave room at the far end of the line for the decay pile, and somewhere else for a discard pile.
3. The two forest cards next to the decay pile are at your feet. The other six are the deep forest.
4. Shuffle the night pile and put it face down. Put the coins in the middle as the supply of walking sticks.
5. Deal 3 cards to each player from the draw pile. A basket goes straight into your display (don't replace it). A moon goes on the discard pile and you take the top night card instead. A poison mushroom goes on the discard pile and is not replaced.
6. Decide who starts.

Your hand

• Your hand limit is 8 cards, plus 2 for each basket in your display. You may never go over it; you can't take cards that don't fit.
• Night cards are special mushrooms: each counts as two mushrooms of its kind, for cooking and for selling. Keep your night cards face up in your display, apart from everything else. They count as hand cards: they use up your hand limit, and you cook and sell them together with your hand cards.
• Baskets, poison mushrooms and walking sticks never count as hand cards.

Playing a turn

On your turn you must do one of these five actions. You may not pass.

1. Take a card from the forest. A card at your feet is free. A card in the deep forest costs walking sticks: the first card after your feet costs 1 stick, the next 2, and so on up to 6 for the card furthest away. Pay the sticks back to the supply. Take the card into your hand – except:

• a basket goes into your display: from now on your hand may hold 2 more cards;
• a moon goes on the discard pile, and you take the top card of the night pile;
• a poison mushroom goes into your display (see below).

2. Take the whole decay pile. Take all its cards (1 to 4), deal with baskets, moons and poison as above and take the rest into your hand. You may do this only if everything fits within your hand limit; baskets in the decay pile count first.

3. Cook. Put 3 or more mushrooms of one kind (a night card counts as 2) into a pan: either an empty pan in your display, or a pan card that you play from your hand together with the mushrooms. You may add, at the same moment, from your hand:

• one butter for each 4 mushrooms, and/or one cider for each 5 mushrooms – a mushroom counts for only one of them. With 8 mushrooms you may add 2 butter, with 9 one butter and one cider, with 10 two cider.

The dish stays in your display until the end: you can't add to it later, and the pan can't be used again. Only one kind per turn.

4. Sell. Discard 2 or more mushrooms of one kind (one night card alone is enough) and take as many walking sticks as their sell values add up to. Only one kind per turn.

5. Put down a pan. Put a pan card from your hand empty into your display, ready for a later dish.

Stuck? If you can't do any of the five actions, your opponent takes turns one after another until you can act again. Watch your hand limit so it doesn't happen.

Example: Anna holds two 9s and a night 9 – four 9s in all – plus a red Queen and a pan. She cooks: she plays the pan with the three cards and adds the butter. At the end the dish scores 4 × 4 = 16 points plus 3 for the butter: 19. Ben sells three 8s and takes 3 × 3 = 9 walking sticks.

After every turn

Whatever the action, finish your turn with these steps:

1. Move the forest card next to the decay pile onto the decay pile. Spread the decay pile a little so that all its cards can be seen. The decay pile never has more than 4 cards: if a fifth card comes, first put the 4 old cards on the discard pile.
2. Slide the forest cards towards the decay pile to close the gap.
3. Refill the forest to 8 cards from the draw pile, at the end furthest from the decay pile. When the draw pile is empty, the forest simply gets shorter.

The poison mushroom

When you take a poison mushroom – from the forest or with the decay pile – put it in your display. Immediately discard hand cards until you have only 4 cards plus 2 for each basket (night cards count). If you already have that few, you may not discard any. This lower limit lasts until the end of your next turn; then put the poison mushroom on the discard pile and your normal limit is back. Sometimes it's worth taking it on purpose to get rid of useless cards.

End of the game

The game ends immediately when the forest is empty – when its last card is taken or drops into the decay pile.

Each player adds up their dishes:

• each cooked mushroom scores its cooking points – a night card double;
• each butter +3, each cider +5.

Cards in hand, walking sticks and empty pans score nothing. The higher total wins. If it's a tie, the player who cooked more mushrooms (night cards count 2) wins; if that is equal too, it is a draw.

Tips for beginners

• Pans are precious. Without an empty pan you can't cook – pick up pans early.
• Sell the cheap kinds. 3s bring 2 sticks each and 8s 3; with sticks you can reach the 10s deep in the forest.
• Watch the decay pile. It can be a bargain – or a trap full of cards you don't need.
• Keep room in your hand. A full hand leaves you with few actions; baskets help.
• Big dishes pay twice: a dish of 5 or more earns cider on top.

Variants

All optional – agree before you start.

• Original numbers: with a third deck you can build the forest deck with exactly the numbers of Morels: 10 of the 2s, 8 of the 3s, 3 red Queens (butter), 3 red Kings (cider), 5 black Queens (baskets), 5 black Kings (poison) and 11 pans – 84 cards.

Deviations from Morels: the original's day deck has 84 cards; ours has 81. With two decks there are only 8 cards of a rank, so the cheapest mushrooms are fewer (7 instead of 10 and 7 instead of 8), and to fit the suits there are 4 butter and 4 cider (original 3 each), 4 baskets and 4 poison mushrooms (original 5 each) and 12 pans (original 11). Night cards lie face up in your display instead of in your hand, and the starting pans are spare cards instead of tokens. All values are those of the original.