Collectible

Rules

The winner is the player with the most valuable collection at the end of the game.

A collection is a set of cards in your gallery that share a theme.

Each art card has three themes along the bottom. Beside each theme is its rarity in points. The rarer the theme, the more points it’s worth. The total value of an art card is the number in its bottom right corner – the sum of its themes’ points.

Setting up

1. Give each player a card stand. That is their gallery.
2. Each player will start with one character card and four art cards in their gallery. So, separate the ten character cards, shuffle them, and deal one to each player face-down. Then shuffle the art cards and deal four to each player face-down.
3. Then shuffle the character and art cards together, and put them into a face-down pile in the middle of the table. This is the talent pile. Leave space beside it for a discard pile. Cards will go into the discard pile face-up.
4. Give each player five coins.
5. The youngest player chooses who goes first. Take turns clockwise.

Game play

As the game goes on, you will collect cards. You’ll keep up to five in your gallery, and up to five in your auction.

Don’t show your gallery to the other players during the game.

Cards you put in your auction will go onto the table in front of you, facing the other players.

Each player’s turn has three steps: collect cards, send cards to auction, then reveal or pass.

1. Collect cards.

   To collect cards, you may draw a card from the talent pile or bid for a card in anyone else’s auction. You can’t ever bid for cards in your own auction.

   Whoever’s auction that card is in becomes the auctioneer. You bid in coins. In turn order, other players (except the auctioneer) can also bid for that same card by offering more coins than the last bid. The highest bidder pays their coins to the auctioneer, and puts the card into their gallery.

   Remember that it can be as important to stop someone from buying a card they need as it is to buy the card you need. You will have to choose wisely when to use your coins!

   If the talent pile is ever empty, turn the discard pile face-down, shuffle it, and it becomes the new talent pile.

2. Send to auction.

   You may move cards between your gallery and your auction. This is your only chance to decide which of your cards to put in your auction, and which to keep in your gallery.

   You can have up to five cards in your gallery, and up to five in your auction. Put the extras in the discard pile.

   If you would discard a character card this way, instead shuffle it into the top seven cards of the talent pile, without looking at the cards in the talent pile.

3. Reveal or pass.

   If all five cards in your gallery have a single theme in common, you may reveal your collection to everyone! Or you can choose to keep that a secret, and try to improve your collection until a future turn.

   If you do choose to reveal your collection, the game is over, and it’s time to see who won!

   If you didn’t, pass the turn to the player on your left.

Determining the winner

When someone reveals a five-card collection, the game is over and it’s time to determine the winner!

Each player reveals their gallery, and chooses a collection of cards in it that share a single theme.

If a player has only, say, three cards that share a theme, they’ll choose those three.

Then, for each player, add up the total points for their collection – the number in the bottom right of each card.

They don’t have to choose their biggest collection. They might choose a smaller collection that’s more valuable. For example, if you have four ‘Animal’ cards that total 40 points, and three ‘Hat’ cards that total 50 points, you can choose the ‘Hat’ collection, to get a final score of 50 points.

The winner is the player with the most points for their chosen collection.

If you’re the only player with a five-card collection, there’s a very good chance that you win, because you’re getting points for all five cards. But it is possible that someone with fewer matching cards still has a more valuable collection, and they win instead! So it’s always a difficult choice whether to reveal your collection, or to keep playing so that you can make it more valuable.

Character cards

Character cards are not art cards. They are people in the art world. Character cards can’t be in a collection, but you can keep them in your gallery, and they can be in auctions where you bid for them. When you bid for a character card, you’re hiring them to work for you.

When you play a character card, read it to everyone, then do what it says on the card. Then, it does not go to the discard pile. Instead, shuffle it into the top seven cards of the talent pile, without looking at the cards in the talent pile.

You can play character cards after any step, before the next step starts – even during someone else’s turn. For example, you can play a character card after someone puts cards up for auction, or before someone bids, but not during an auction while players are bidding.

If more than one character is played at the same time, their effects happen in turn order. If one player plays two or more characters at the same time, that player chooses the order of their effects.

Two-player rules

For a two-player game, set up an extra auction, as if there was a third player – a phantom auctioneer who doesn’t take turns or have a gallery. Either player may bid for cards in that auction, and the other can bid against them.

Put three cards in that auction, and every time a card leaves that auction, fill the gap from the talent pile, so that there are always three cards there.

The highest bidder pays their coins to the phantom auctioneer. So, unlike in a multiplayer game, those coins don’t go to another player.

To earn coins back from the phantom auctioneer, before your bidding step on your turn, you may discard cards from your gallery or auction and then take one of their coins for each card you discarded.

The art

The art on most of the cards is in the public domain, usually because it’s old. And look how beautiful and fun and surprising it is! Finding all the art was a wonderful journey.

You’ll see each artwork’s title and creator (or a similar note) at the bottom of the card.

I’m grateful to many wonderful sources, where I found art or inspiration or background information.

• Artvee, which provides fabulous curation of high-quality art, with interesting bios and easy download.
• Public Domain Review, which provides wonderful curation and fascinating articles.
• The Rijksmuseum, which has a wonderful user experience.
• The Internet Archive, for their extraordinary work digitising and making accessible so much creative work.
• The Flickr commons.
• The Wellcome Collection.
• The MET.
• MoMa.co.uk, for their incredible list of public-domain-image sources.
• The National Gallery of Art.
• Europeana.
• Museo, a super little open-source tool for searching many collections at once.
• The Minneapolis Institute of Art.
• The Art Institute of Chicago. What a gorgeous site, with great write-ups.
• The Lootwijk Scope, a lovely personal blog of interesting images.
• The Los Angeles County Musem of Art.

And many others I couldn’t note as I toured the work of art lovers everywhere.

About

I’m Arthur. I created Collectible to be a game that my friends and family, including my young son, would enjoy playing together. In a great family game, anyone can win, and your fun depends on the spirit of play, not just whether you win. And it should take as long as you want it to take. You can play Collectible for twenty minutes, or you can spend hours crafting your galleries.

I also love searching through public-domain artworks for gems: sometimes wonderful, sometimes horrifying, and often surprising. The cards here are many of my favourites.

I’m still prototyping and play-testing Collectible. If you’d like to get in touch about it, email me.

Also, see my other games and game pieces at The League of Masks.