The Survivor Variant for Fuji Flush

(Originally posted on BoardGameGeek.)

tl;dr: After every play, immediately draw a card. Keep survivor cards face-down in a score pile. Five survivors wins.

Ok, so my group doesn’t enjoy the endgame dynamic after a miss (where you play your last card – that 19 or 20 – and the rest of the table manages to take you down, and then you spend the rest of the game top-decking). It’s great for tension and planning, because of the stakes, but is almost player elimination afterwards.

This variant switches that dynamic to one where people behind have to play smart to catch up. You don’t get any stronger in the lead, but the politics of teaming is complicated. It also plays faster, because the options keep scoring opportunities open.

In the variant, you always have a hand of five cards, no matter the player count. If you ever look at your hand and realize you have less, draw back up to five. (This is a nice change from people forgetting to redraw after being flushed – which happened every so often in our fast-playing games.)

When you get flushed, just toss the card. When your card survives ‘til your turn (or a temporary-teammate’s turn), score it instead of discarding: turn it face-down. Splay scored cards so the table can tell how many points you have.

The moment you score your fifth point, you win. Shared wins are very possible – much more so than in the normal game.