The rules of BLOBS
How to Play
A Turn in Detail
Players are taking turns in clockwise order until the end of the game is reached. During a turn a player performs actions from blobs in his/her room and plays a blob from his/her hand. Other players may optionally play a blob in response. A player’s turn is explained in more detail below. Whenever the draw pile (the lab) becomes empty, shuffle the discard pile (chemical waste) and put them in a new face-down draw pile.
The player that performs his/her turn, is considered the active player. The active player executes four phases:
- Phase 1: Start actions
- Phase 2: Play a blob
- Phase 3: End actions
- Phase 4: Replenish hand
Phase 1: Start actions
All actions of blobs with the Start keyword in the room of the active player are performed. The actions are mandatory unless otherwise specified in the action itself. If multiple blobs have a Start action, the order of the actions is chosen by the active player.
If during this phase a new blob with a Start action is played in the room of the active player, that Start action is also performed.Example: Linn has Greedy and Forecaster in her room. She decides to perform the Start action of Greedy first. She draws the top card of the draw pile. Then she performs the Start action of Forecaster and decides to play the blob from the draw pile. She discards a card to the discard pile. In phase 2 of her turn she takes the top card of the draw pile, places it in a room and performs the action of that blob.
Phase 2: Play a blob
The active player chooses a card from his/her hand and plays the blob in his/her own room or in a room of another player. The player in whose room a blob is played, becomes the owner of the blob. The actions of the blob are mandatory and are performed by the active player as much as possible. This doesn’t apply to Start, End and Response actions as they are performed at another time. Due to the effect of the blob’s action, other blobs may be played in the turn by the same or other players. In the exceptional case that a player doesn’t have any cards in hand, this phase is skipped.
After a blob is played, but before the action is performed, other players have the opportunity in player order to play a blob with a Response action. The player playing the blob cannot play a Response action in response to it. A blob with a Response action specifies the condition when it can be played. Each player can only play one blob with a Response action in response to a given blob. Actions of Response blobs are performed first and then the action of the blob being reacted to is completed. The blob with a Response action can be played in any player’s room. Note that a blob with a Response action can also be played directly for its action in a player’s turn instead of in response to another blob.
Example: Steven plays Avenger in his room and chooses Sneak Preview in Sièna’s room. Sièna doesn’t want Sneak Preview to be removed, so she play’s Second Chance in her room as Response action. Sneak Preview returns to Sièna’s hand and the action of Avenger has no effect.
Some additional remarks when playing blobs
- The cards represents blobs when they are played or when they are in a player’s room. In any other case it’s just a card.
- The actions of the blob card are only in effect when the card represents a blob.
- The base value of a blob is the value in the upper left corner of the card. For * this is 0.
- Protoblobs are blobs that have no actions or colors. When a blob is turned into a protoblob, its card is put face-down in the room.
- When a blob is played from the draw pile (the lab), the top card is played.
- When a blob is played from the discard pile (chemical waste), the player playing the blob may choose any card in the discard pile.
- Actions of a blob are not performed when a blob is moved to another room.
- When a color is changed into another color, multicolor blobs lose the color that has been changed.
- When a blob refers to blobs in the same room, it refers to the room where that blob is located.
- When a blob copies an action with a card name in it, that card name now refers to the name of the card that has the copied action.
Phase 3: End actions
All actions of blobs with the End keyword in the room of the active player are performed. This may include blobs that are played this turn. The actions are mandatory unless otherwise specified in the action itself. If multiple blobs have an End action, the order of the actions is chosen by the active player. If during this phase a new blob with an End action is played in the room of the active player, that End action is also performed.
Example: Vic has Hot Blobtato in her room. She performs its End action and chooses Orange. She looks at the top card of the draw pile and it happens to be orange. She reveals the card, returns it to the top of the draw pile and moves Hot Blobtato to Joost’s room.
Phase 4: Replenish hand
The active player replenishes his/her hand to five cards. When the active player already has five or more cards, then no cards are drawn. In the same way, if the active player has less than four cards, multiple cards are drawn to refill the hand to five cards.
End of Game
The game ends immediately after the turn in which the active player has eight or more blobs in his/her room at end of turn. The player with the most victory points in his or her room is the winner. If multiple players have the same number of victory points, then from those players the player with the most blobs wins. If also the number of blobs are equal, than there are multiple winners.
The easiest way to count victory points is to first add up the base values and then apply the permanent actions that affect victory points. For example: Green Panic subtracts one victory point for every green blob in your room and Dancing Blue adds one victory point for every blue blob in your room.