Overview

Matchstick Tycoon is a ladder climbing game for 👤2players to 👤8players players. It's played with a deck of 56 cards representing 7-segment display style hexadecimal numbers (ranging from 0 to F, the deck containing 4 copies of each value). A unique addition to the genre is introduction of matchsticks that can be used to modify the numbers by filling empty segments.

Gameplay

At the start of the game, the deck is distributed as evenly as possible between the players, and each player receives 1 matchstick. Then, players in clockwise order take turns playing a number of cards of the same value from their hands to the table. There are 2 possible cases:

• 🎴 If there are no cards on the table, current player must play 1 to 5 cards of any single value.
• 🎴 Otherwise, current player must follow with the same number of cards of stronger value than the previous player, or pass.

Default card strengths at the start of the game are increasing with value, with F being the strongest card.

When playing a card, it's possible to rotate and/or place matchsticks on it to make it look and act like another value.

When passing, a player takes another matchstick from supply. If everyone except the player who played the last cards passes, all cards are removed from the table.

If a player whose turn it is doesn't have any more cards in hand, but still has matchsticks, he/she must instead discard one of the matchsticks.

Revolution

Any time 5 cards are played simultaneously, a revolution happens, causing reversal of card strengths (if previously the strongest value was F, 0 becomes strongest, and vice versa). Then, the play continues as usual with the next player, who can cause a new revolution in the same way by following with another 5 cards.

Game End

The game continues until all players except a single one go out by getting rid of all their cards and matchsticks. The players are ranked according to the order in which they went out.

Expansion

An expansion to the game adds two new card values, H and G. It's possible to choose, whether to add 2 copies, or 4 copies of each new card to the deck.