Fickle

About this board game

Fickle is an inverse set collection card game for 3–5 players that plays in about 30 minutes. Across five rounds, build the strongest fairy alliance and compete to win the Queen’s crown.

Before playing, choose five fairy suits from the 22 suits included in the box. Each card represents one fairy from one of these families, and every family has a unique power that can improve your alliance or thwart your opponents.

At the start of each round, each player receives three cards, secretly arranges them into a stack, and passes that stack to another player. When you receive a stack, reveal its top card and decide whether to keep it or discard it for the next card. You may discard that card as well, but then you must take the third. This creates a compact press-your-luck decision shaped by another player.

Once everyone has a fairy card, players add their chosen card to their alliance tableau and resolve its family power. Effects are resolved in order, beginning with the player who played the card with the highest favor. Since fairies can move between alliances, your tableau may change dramatically before the game ends.

After the fifth round, score every fairy suit in each alliance using Fickle’s unusual inverse scoring curve:

• One card scores its favor value.
• Two cards score 0 points.
• Three or four cards lose points equal to that suit’s highest-favor card.
• Five or more cards score the summed value of all cards in the suit.

With fairies that are anything but dependable, every choice matters. The player with the highest favor score wins.