Kaboo

Kaboo is played with a standard card deck. It can be played with 2 to 8 players with a single deck.

Card values

Ace = 1
2-10 = 2-10
Jack, Queen, King = 10
Red King = -1 (both of them)
Joker (optional) = 0

Dealing

Deal 4 cards to each player face down. Then put the rest face down in the middle. The players orient the cards in a square.

┏━┓┏━┓
┃ ┃┃ ┃
┗━┛┗━┛
┏━┓┏━┓
┃x┃┃x┃
┗━┛┗━┛

The players can look at the their bottom 2 cards once

Goal

You have to get the fewest points, whenever a player reaches 3 or less points, in the beginning of their turn, they can call KABOO and the last round begins. It's also possible to lose all the cards and auto-KABOO that way.

A Round

The player that has the turn takes a card, either from the draw pile or the top card from the discard pile. And then can either swap, or discard.

When a player swaps, they has to discard a card in front of him. They cannot look at it first.
When a player discards, they play the card directly on the discard pile, this might have a special effect.

Effect cards

7,8: The player can look at one of their own cards.
9,10: The player can look at an opponents card.
Jack: The player can swap two cards, they can't look at it.
Queen: The player can swap two cards, one of its own, and another. They can look at the card they receive.
King: The player picks two cards, any. And looks, and decides whether to swap. They has to announce that.

Getting rid of cards

Whenever a card on the discard pile matches any of the cards on table, any player can tap te discard pile. The first player to do so has to discard at least 1 matching card. However the card can come from any player's cards. Whenever a player discards a card from another player, they can place one of their own cards where the discarded card was. When a player tries to discard a non-matching card, they has to put it back, and draw a blind card and add it to their own cards.

Counter KABOO

After a KABOO has happened, a player can skip their turn and counter-KABOO instead. The point here is to get less points than the original KABOO-er.

Scoring

The player who wins, gets 0 points. A KABOO-ing player which didn't win, gets 20 bonus points. All losers receive points for their cards value, tally the points and play another round. :)

Optional rules

Matt's pears rule.

When a player ends with a pair of matching cards, these count for 0 points. Except the red kings.

dxlbnl/kaboo.md