Rockets

"Rockets" is a card game for two or more players, the more the better.

The game was designed by Ing. Václav Semerád. Original rules and card graphics can be found on his website sw.gurroa.cz, under link Rakety at the top navigation bar (Czech language only).

Card list

There are 101 of them in total, including the Supernova. By the way, all point values are divisible by ten, so if you don't like big numbers, just ignore the trailing zero.

Rules

Goal of the game

The goal is to collect as many points as possible. That can be done by playing valuable cards - discovering star systems, planets and aliens.

Beginning

Shuffle the deck and deal four cards to each player. The one who plays first gets two more, but doesn't draw in his first turn. Remaining cards stay face-down on the table in the drawing deck.

The game

Players take turns. One player's turn looks like this:

1. Draw one card at random from previous player's hand. If there is a Crash card among them and you didn't draw it, the previous player uses it on you, cancelling one your Start card. But if you did draw it, use it the same way on the previous player. If there was no Crash present, nothing special happens - you've just drawn a card.
2. Draw one card from the drawing deck. If it's a Start, play it immediately, otherwise put the card in your hand.
3. Put your "hidden" cards (see below) in your hand.
4. Play what you can (see below - Playing the cards).
5. Now you may put up to two cards face-down on the table. They are "hidden", nobody can draw them from you.
6. Let next player draw one random card from your hand.
7. Now you must have at least one and no more than four cards left in your hand (the "hidden" cards on the table don't count in this number). If you have more than four, discard the excess ones (they are lost for the rest of the game). If you have none, it's a mistake - you must take care of the numbers during all previous steps (see further - Number of cards on hand).

Playing the cards

Each player has a "discovery" deck where he puts his played cards, face up. It's necessary not to change order of the cards (especially the planets and civilizations). Cards on the discovery decks are out of the game, we only count their point values once the game is over.

First card you need to play is a Start card - it symbolizes launching an exploration spaceship. Nothing else (except the Supernova) can be played without it. If you have more than one Start, it's OK - you can send several ships at the same time, just stack them all face up on the table and move them one by one to the discovery deck when the active one gets cancelled.

A spaceship can find a star system. Such system always consists of one Star and any number of Planets, maybe with Traces of old civilizations on them (a star can also have no planets at all). Each planet can host no more than one Traces of civilization card; of course, it's good to put them on living planets where you score more points for them. Star system must be played as a whole, no cards can be added later. The spaceship lands here and doesn't fly any further; to discover more, you must first play a new Start.

Last and most valuable thing you can meet in space is a UFO. Your ship encounters them on the fly and continues its voyage - active Start card is not cancelled (if you are lucky, you can even play more UFOs on the same Start).
A UFO can be met very soon, so if you have a Crash waiting (see below - Crash without Start) and you draw a Start and play it, you can toss UFO card on it (from hand or your "hidden" cards) before you cancel it by the Crash. But no other way of crashing allows you to do this.

Crash without Start

Sometimes you get a Crash when you have no active Start. No problem, you can stockpile Crashes the same way you stockpile Starts. When you draw a Start later, play it and immediately cancel it by one of your waiting Crashes. The only thing you can play before crashing this way is a UFO, if you have one (see above).

Number of cards on hand

At the end of turn, you must have at least one card left on your hand. That means you must have at least two before you let the next player draw from you. And if you have a Crash among them, you need at least three: one is drawn anyway, one Crash can go to him in addition and one must remain on your hand.

If you hold less than two cards and you have no "hidden" cards available, it means you either broke the rules while playing discoveries, or you got a hand full of Starts at the beginning of the game and you had to play them all. Either way you must refill your hand from your discovery deck or your stacked Starts before you let the next player draw from you.

End of game

The game usually ends when the draw deck is exhausted. During the last turn, players don't draw, everybody just plays everything they can. Then the points are counted and whoever has the most is the winner.

There is also a more hazardous way to end the game: Supernova explosion. When Supernova is played, the game ends immediately. It's good for experienced players with good memory, able to keep track of each player's score and blow it up when they are winning. Beginners can remove this card from the deck.

Making the cards

The cards are in files 1_7-*.jpg až 7_7-*.jpg (this time JPG, because scans are hard to zip). Size 1573x2205 pixels, resolution 200 DPI, one page should fit on an A4. Print them on the strongest cardstock your printer can take, maybe laminate or varnish after printing - the cards need to be sturdy and must not be translucent. Grayscale print is OK, the pictures don't contain any other colours. Exact scale or aspect ratio are not too important, just make sure they are the same for all seven pages.
Try to cut the cards out with maximum possible precision to make the deck nice and easy to shuffle.