How to Play – Night of the Ninja

How to Play:

Each round in Night of the Ninja consists of several short phases, most of which are listed on the back of your Ninja Standee.

Start of round -

Shuffle all of the House cards and deal one out to each player facedown. These can be looked at by each player but should remain hidden from all other players as it represents your House for the round.

Draft –

Shuffle and deal 3 ninja cards (the larger, tarot sized ones) to all players. Whereby you will draft until you have two cards then discard the remaining facedown. For those unfamiliar with drafting, you will look at you three cards, choose one to keep and pass the remaining to the player on your left. Then take two from the player on your right, select one to keep and discard the remaining one.

Night –

The night phase is when your ninja cards will be played and is separated by the different card types. If two or more players play a card in the same round then the number on the right hand size dictates whose triggers first, starting with 1 and going to 6.

To play a card, pick a card matching the phase you are currently on (e.g. Spy cards can only be played in the spy phase) and play it face up in front of you. Once everyone has done this, those cards will then trigger in numerical order before moving onto the next phase.

Initial cards such as the Spy and Mystic cards have less of a gain impact but give the player information regarding the other players at the table. The cards played later such as Blind

Assassin and Shinobi have the ability to kill other players but remember, the longer you have to wait to play your cards, more time other players have to mess with you or even kill you off!

Reveal –

At the end of the night all players reveal their house card. Of those still alive, the house with the best ranked survivor wins (the best being 1). In case of a tie it then goes to the second best ranked survivor.

Once the winning house has been established, every member of that house, alive or killed, gains one random honor token and keeps it face down in front of them. They may look at the token but shouldn’t reveal it to others,

If you survive as the Ronin then you will automatically gain a honor token regardless of which house won. Again, don’t reveal it!

How to Win!

Although in each round you play as part of a team, the winner is the individual that obtains honor tokens totalling 10 or more come the end of a round. If you do, reveal them and take the victory. If two people get to 10+ at the end of the same round then it is the player who had the most honor.

Points to remember –

· When you are killed, knock your ninja standee over to signify you have been killed without revealing your house card (until the reveal phase). You cannot play any remaining ninja cards.

· Although Ninja cards can only be played in their specific phases of the night phase they do not have to be. You will not have another opportunity to play this card.

· Tricksters are the only cards that contain different abilities to one another. The phase still plays the same as others with cards triggering in numerical order.

Key details:

Setup Time – Less than 5 minutes before you are up and running.

Ease of Learning – Very simple to learn and the ninja cards each explain what they do. I have found that the easiest way to teach new players is to play a practice round so that players can see how the cards interact with the phases of the rounds. Each round takes 5-10 minutes so is very quick to do.

Play Time – 15-30 minutes depending on player count.