Looney Tunes Trading Card Game Rulebook Table of Contents What You Need Overview Setting Up Building the Storyboard Playing the Game Step 1: Drawing Cards Step 2: Building the Storyboard Step 3: Playing Actors and Special Effects Step 4: Scoring Scenes After Scoring Winning the Game Rules for More Than Two Players Credits Welcome to the Looney Tunes trading card game. It's a game about making cartoons, stealing scenes, and having fun. Each player uses his or her personal deck of trading cards, filled with cartoon characters, Scenes, and Special Effects. You will also use a main deck, called the Movie deck, which contains more Scenes to play. What You Need The Looney Tunes starter set contains the following: • Rulebook • One 50-card Movie deck • Four 15-card booster packs • Playmat You need nothing else to play. You can, however, buy more booster packs to add to your collection of personal cards. Each booster pack contains fifteen cards of common, uncommon, and rare cards. Any booster pack might also contain one of ten super-rare collectible cards. In all, the set contains 210 different cards. To make a great deck, collect them all! Overview You and your opponent will make movies using the Actors, Scenes, and Special Effects in your decks. Each time you play a Scene, one Actor will "steal" the Scene and score it. The first player to collect 40 points worth of Scenes wins the game. Setting Up This (two-player) game involves a total of three decks of cards: a main deck, called the Movie deck, which is the source of most of the Scenes you will play; and two personal decks, one for each player. Each personal deck contains the Actors, the Special Effects, and any Scenes that player wants to use. You can create your personal deck out of any assortment of cards. If this is your first game, you'll do just fine using two of the boosters from your starter set. (Your opponent can use the other two.) To start the game, shuffle the Movie deck. Each player also shuffles his or her personal deck and draws a hand of six cards from it. Building the Storyboard The Movie deck contains fifty Scenes from classic Looney Tunes cartoons, like "Transylvania 6-5000" and "What's Opera, Doc?" On the table next to the Movie deck, you will build a storyboard of four Scenes, which are waiting to be shot. The storyboard is sometimes also called "the board." To start building the board, take the top four Scenes from the Movie deck and lay them out side by side. Playing the Game You play the Looney Tunes trading card game in rounds. At the beginning of the game, randomly decide who is the "active" player by flipping a coin or playing Rock-Paper-Scissors. The active player gets to decide which Scene to do and goes first for that Scene. Each round, a player will "score" a Scene from the board. The other player then becomes the active player for the next round. Each round consists of four steps: * Draw cards. * Build the storyboard. * Play Actors. * Score the Scene. Step 1: Drawing Cards If the active player has less than six cards in his or her hand, he or she draws from his or her personal deck until he or she has six cards. If you draw the last card from your deck, the game is not necessarily over. You can keep playing as long as you have cards in your hand. You lose, however, if you are required to play an Actor and can't. Step 2: Building the Storyboard If the storyboard has fewer than four Scenes on it, the active player brings it back up to four by adding Scenes to it from the Movie deck or from his or her hand. If the storyboard already has four or more Scenes on it (this may happen if Special Effects cards add extra Scenes to the storyboard), you don't add any new Scenes--but you don't discard the extra ones, if there are any. If you ever draw the last card from the Movie deck, reshuffle the Movie deck's discard pile and use it as the new Movie deck. The Movie deck probably won't run out of cards in a two-player game. Step 3: Playing Actors and Special Effects The active player plays Actors to one of the Scenes on the board. You may either send any number of Actors from your hand face down to the Scene or "roll" the next Actor from your deck. To roll an Actor to a Scene, discard cards off of your deck one at a time until an Actor comes up, then send that Actor to the Scene face up. In addition to playing Actors, you may also play one Special Effect face down if you send an Actor of the same color as the Special Effect to the Scene from your hand. Special Effects say on them what they do, and their effects happen when you turn them face up. Here are some tips and restrictions: * If you play Actors from your hand, none of them can have the same name. You can't play two cards named Bugs Bunny, for example. * Rolling Actors is very risky. But it can be your best option if the Actors in your hand are all terrible or if you have no Actors in your hand at all. * If a Special Effect tells you to do something you can't do, you can't play it. After the Active player plays his or her cards for the Scene, the second player plays Actors (and possibly a Special Effect) to the same Scene. The second player, like the active player, chooses to either send Actors from his or her hand or roll them to the Scene. Step 4: Scoring Scenes Once both players have sent Actors to a Scene, score the Scene: 1. Both players reveal the cards they played for the Scene. 2. Resolve any Special Effects. The active player's Special Effect happens first. 3. Add the Ranks of all of the Actors you sent to the Scene together. Most Scenes have a color and a Rank. For example, Long-Haired Hare is a red 5. The best Actors sent to the Scene steal, or "take," the Scene. In general, the best Actors for a Scene are those whose color matches that of the Scene and whose Rank is closest to, but not more than, the Scene's Rank. The perfect Actors in the case of the Long-Haired Hare are red Actors of Rank 5. 4. The player with the best Actors at the Scene takes the Scene: * If each player's group of Actors has a total Rank equal to or lower than the Rank of the Scene, check the colors of those Actors. If all of one player's Actors are the same color as the Scene and the other's aren't, the first player takes the Scene. * If each player's group of Actors has a total Rank lower than the Rank of the Scene and both either match or don't match the color of the Scene, then the player closest to the Rank of the Scene takes the Scene. If there is a tie for total Rank in this case, the active player takes the Scene. * If a player sends an Actor to a Scene with a lower Rank than the Actor, the Actor is "overacting." Such a player can take the Scene only if one of his or her opponent's Actors is also overacting. When both players' Actors are overacting, the player whose Actors have the highest total Rank takes the Scene. In case of a tie, the active player takes the Scene. Example: Take our red 5 Scene above--Long-Haired Hare. Remember that you want to get as close as possible to "red 5" without going over. So a red 5 Actor is the best play. (Remember that if you play more than one Actor, add those Actors' Ranks together. They only count as being the right color if they are all the right color.) * If you play a red 4 Actor and your opponent plays a blue 5 Actor, you take the Scene because your Actor is the same color as the Scene and your opponent's isn't. * If you play a blue 1 Actor and your opponent plays a red 8 Actor, you take the Scene because you did not go over the Scene's Rank and your opponent did. * If you play two red 2 Actors and your opponent plays a red 3 Actor, you take the Scene because your Actors' total Rank is closer to the Scene's Rank than your opponent's Rank. (This works the same way if you both play Actors that aren't red.) * If you play a red 9 Actor and your opponent plays a red 8 Actor, you take the Scene, because both players have Actors that are overacting and your Actor has the highest Rank. After Scoring Whoever takes the Scene adds that Scene card to his or her score pile, a stack of all of the Scene cards he or she has won. Discard all Actors that both players sent to the Scene; they go face up to the discard pile of the person who played them. Whoever lost the Scene becomes the active player for the next round. Winning the Game Each Scene is worth a number of points. If you get 40 points worth of Scenes into your score pile, you win the game! Rules for More Than Two Players A Looney Tunes game with more than two players works a little differently than with two players, but most of the basic rules are the same. These are the differences: Turn order: The active player each round is always the player to the left of the previous round's active player. Sending Actors to a Scene: After the active player chooses and sends Actors (and plays any Special Effects) to a Scene, everyone else does the same, just like the second player in the two-player game, starting with the player to the left of the active player and going clockwise. Scoring: As in the two-player game, the player whose Actors have the same color as the Scene and a total Rank closest to the Scene's Rank without going over takes the Scene. If two or more players tie, no one takes the Scene. Winning the game: The number of points you need to win is lower with more than two players. For three or four players, you win with 35 points. For five or more players, you win with 30 points. If the Movie deck runs out of Scenes (including the recycled discard pile), then the game ends as follows: The turn on which the last Scene card comes out of the Movie deck is the last turn of the game. At the end of that turn, everyone compares scores, and the player with the most points wins. Credits Game Designer James Ernest Assistant Game Designers Jeff Vogel, Joshua Howard, Mike Selinker, Paul Peterson Playtesters Carol Monahan, Cathy Saxton, Dave Howell, Elizabeth Marshall, Rick Fish, Toivo Rovainen, Tom Saxton Brand Manager Ryan Miller Project Manager Dave Schwimmer Editor Jessica Beaven Color Corrector Allison Agostinelli Typesetter Steve Nashem Graphic Designers Blake Beasley, Kate Irwin Production Manager Karen Greene