Scout

The Golden Rule: You cannot rearrange your hand.

Scout is the Spiel des Jahres nominated masterpiece from Oink Games. It is a clever "ladder-climbing" card game that turns a standard mechanic on its head with one simple restriction: the order in which you are dealt your cards is the order they must stay in!

The Concept

Cards are dual-indexed (they have different values on the top and bottom). At the start of the game, you pick up your hand. You can choose to play with the "top" numbers or flip your entire hand upside down to play the "bottom" numbers—but once you choose, the order is locked.

Play or Scout?

On your turn, you must make a tough choice:

1. Play (Show) Play a set of cards from your hand (Pairs or Runs) that is stronger than the current set on the table.

• The Catch: The cards you play must be adjacent to each other in your hand.

2. Scout If you can't (or don't want to) beat the current set, you "Scout."

• Take a card from the active set on the table.

• The Magic: You can insert this card anywhere in your hand and in any orientation.

• Why do this? Scouting allows you to connect split numbers in your hand to form massive combos for later turns.

The "Scout & Show"

Once per round, you can use your special chip to do both: Scout a card to fix your hand, and immediately Play a set to stun your opponents.