Setup

Each player picks a specific cat to play. They receive their pile of 9 cards: your lives. Place them faceup in front of you, sorted from high to low.

Put all number cards into a deck, shuffle, then deal everyone 3 cards.

Pick anyone to be the Kittyking.

Objective

The game ends when a player runs out of lives. The player with the most lives wins. (Ties are broken by hand size.)

Gameplay

Play happens in rounds. The Kittyking starts, then take clockwise turns.

On Your Turn

On your turn, you play a number that isn’t already on the table. That’s it.

Play it to the left or the right of the row on the table. If it matches suit with its neighbor, draw 2 cards.

Betting Your Life On It

But what if you can’t play a card?

Before taking your turn, you may wager a life (as often as you like).

• Place your top Life Card before you.
• Draw 1 card from the deck.
• And you must play multiple cards (a “stack”) this turn.

If you play a stack, the individual cards don’t matter, only its total! Add or subtract the numbers on the cards—however you want—to get its final number. It can’t be outside of the range 1 through 9.

All other rules remain.

• For each card that matches suit with a card in the neighbor column, draw 2 cards.
• The total number of your stack can’t already be on the table. (But the individual cards may be anything.)

End Of Round

A round can end in two ways.

• If you fail to play something. If so, only you lose a life.
• If all numbers are played. In that case, all players lose a life.

Losing a life means you discard your top Life Card, as well as all lives you wagered this round! (Otherwise, those Life Cards return to the top of your lives deck.)

Discard all cards played.

The player with the most hand cards becomes the new Kittyking. If tied, pick the player with the most lives. If still tied, Kittyking doesn’t change.

Lives

Each Life Card shows a power and hand limit. At any time, only the top card from your deck applies to you.

• Whenever your top Life Card changes, read the power out loud for everyone to hear.
• If your hand limit is reached, you can’t receive more cards.

During the game, you may always browse through your lives to see what’s coming up!

The game ends as soon as one player discarded their final Life Card. Have fun!

Upgrades

The base game rules are quite forgiving. Once you’re familiar with the game, you might want a bigger challenge. Try using the variants below.

• You’re also never allowed to play a number equal to the number of cards on the table. (Example: the current row has 3 cards. You can’t play a card or stack worth 3.)
• Wagering a life allows you to draw 1 card OR allows playing a stack, never both.
• You cannot wager your first or last life.
• The “star” suit is special: it can only be played once per round.
• Before each round, the Kittyking proclaims one suit to be “bad”. You can’t play it outside of a stack, and only draw 1 card for matching with a neighbor.

Similarly, you can shuffle the life decks.

• You can do so per cat: the lives simply appear in a different order (not strictly high to low).
• Or with all cards: your lives deck might have cards from a number of different cats!