The idea
The nine cards in the middle are your cabin; the twelve face cards around it are zombies. You play each card you draw onto a cabin pile, and the two other cards on that line decide whether you can kill the zombie at the end of it. It's a puzzle about setting up lines for the attacks you'll need next — and it tends to come down to the last few cards.
Setup
- Take out the 12 face cards — the zombies.
- Shuffle everything else (jokers included) and deal 9 cards face up in a 3×3 grid: the cabin.
- Shuffle the zombies and deal one face down next to each of the 12 outside edges of the cabin.
How to play
- Reveal a zombie: if any are still face down, turn one of your choice face up.
- Draw and play: draw a card and put it on a cabin pile whose top card has the same value, is the same color and higher, or is the opposite color and lower. (Up in alternating colors, down in one color.) Ace is 1. A joker goes on anything, and anything goes on a joker.
- Attack: you may kill one face-up zombie next to the pile you just played on. The two other cabin cards in that line (row or column) are your support — their values must add up to at least 10.
- Kings also need both support cards to match their suit; Queens need both to match their color; Jacks have no extra condition. A joker as support counts as 0 and every suit.
Winning, losing and score
- You win
- Kill all twelve zombies.
- You lose
- You need to draw and the deck is empty, or you draw a card you can't play.
- Score
- Cards left in the deck.
Tips
- Corner piles touch two zombies, edge piles touch one, and the middle pile touches none.
- You choose which zombie to reveal, so reveal ones your current lines can actually reach.
Variants
- Harder: play with one joker (the designer's favorite), then with none.