Cadaver is a card game where players play as Necromancers!
The aim of the game is to reanimate as many corpses as you can. The Necromancer who has the most corpses raised by dawn wins the game!
To raise your corpses, you need the right amount of resource cards. These are received through drawing cards from the deck on your turn, gaining accomplices who help you to gain one particular resource from the spare parts decks in the center of the table or trading with your fellow Necromancers.
However, within the game, there are certain cards that will help or hinder you on your journey to becoming the master Necromancer. These cards may help you to steal corpses off other players or they may cause your cadavers to be locked up!
Setup:
· Remove a single and double of each resource cards (Brains, Potions and Scrolls) and place them in the center of the table in three resource piles separated into resource types. These are the spare part decks.
· Shuffle the rest of the deck and deal each player 5 cards.
· The remaining cards go back into the box (which is like a grave) and becomes the draw pile.
· The player who is closest to death goes first! That’s got to be the oldest player, right?
Different cards:
· Corpses: These are your corpses that you need to reanimate. They tell you on the card what they need in order to be risen.
· Resource cards: Needed to raise your cadavers.
· Accomplices: These can be used to gain a resource from the spare parts deck instead of drawing from the draw pile.
· Ghouls: These enable you to steal unrisen cadavers from your fellow players.
· Amulets: This can be used to stop other players stealing your cadavers or as a wild resource card.
· Coffin Lids: You can lay this on top of a cadaver, accomplice or spare parts resource pile. The coffin lid stops players from using that card until it is removed.
· Keys: Key removes coffin lids!
· There is one accomplice and one corpse card within the deck that are special cards. The special accomplice card allows you to take any resource from the spare parts decks. The corpse card which is Frankenstein scores you 5 points in the end.
Gameplay:
Each player has 3 actions to take during their turn.
· Laying: Players can lay up to 2 cards on their turn. They can be any of the cards I have mentioned above.
· Drawing: If after the laying action, a player has less than five cards in their hand, they may draw up to 5. They can do this from the draw pile or from the spare parts pile if they have an accomplice card in play. You are allowed to have more than 5 cards in your hand if trading has occurred on a turn.
· Trading occurs after drawing and laying. This is the part of the game where you need to be tactical. It’s the part I most enjoy. You may tactically play a coffin lid on top of another player’s cadaver and trade them a key you may also have in your hand in return for the resources you need to raise a cadaver.
· Discarding: You can discard on your turn but this costs you one laying action. I don’t tend to use this action.
· The game ends once the last card is drawn from the draw pile and players will then have one last turn.
Scoring:
· Corpses are arranged into sets.
· A set of three identical corpses is worth 10 points.
· A set of three different corpses is worth 5 points.
· An individual corpses is worth 1 point.
· The special corpse card (Frankenstein) is worth 5 points on its own.
· The winner is the person with the most points!