5 Tofu Card (one in each player color) Rules

- The game is divided in 5 rounds. Each round

It’s All Chinese to Me! consists of 4 phases:
1) Look at the menu
Martin Ethier 2) Place orders
3) Receive meals
___________________________________________________ 4) Clean-up the table
5 summary Cards (one in each player color)
You are starving. You are in the middle of Chinatown 1) Look at the menu
and only one restaurant is open. Oh no! The menu is
- Secretly and simultaneously, each player must play
written only in Chinese. You only know 5 Chinese
from 1 to 3 Meal cards face down in front of him.
characters, one for each meal type. However, for each
Next, players are allowed to keep 1 card hidden if
Chinese character you know, you are hesitating between
they played more than 1 card. Each player reveals
two meal types. You will have to try to order using your
all his other Meal cards.
very limited knowledge of the language. The waiter,
- The Tofu card is a wild card and can be played
slightly confused, will bring you what he thinks the Setup instead of the Meal cards. However, a Tofu card
majority wants. The player who successfully orders the
must be played alone and can never remain hidden.
most meals will score the most points and win. They will - All Meal cards are shuffled and each player draws 5 for his
do this by predicting which meal type is the most starting hand.
abundant in a common pile of Meal cards. To help them, - Deal 10 Meal cards face up in the middle of the table and
they will be able to add Meal cards to the pile. However, sort them by type.
the more cards they add to the pile, the fewer predictions - The draw pile is made with the remaining Meal cards and Yellow Green Red Blue
they will be allowed to make. To win, a player will have place face down near the game area.
to balance memory, risk-taking and bluffing. - If there are less than 5 players, 2 Meal cards per
missing player are dealt face down in the middle of
Components the table and half of those cards are revealed and
the other half remain hidden.
50 Meal Cards (10 of each Meal type)
2) Place orders

- Each player may play 1 to 3 Order cards or pass.

However, the total number of Meal cards and Order
- Each player receives a set of Order cards of a color, a cards played by each player this round must not
Summary card and a Tofu card. exceed 4 (e.g. if a player played 2 Meal cards, he
- Each player shuffles his Order cards and places them face can later play only 1 or 2 Order cards).
Lamb Fish Beef Vegetables Chicken down in front of him and draws 4 that are added to his hand.
The Tofu card is also added to his starting hand.
50 Order Cards representing 5 Chinese characters each - Once every player has had time to see the face up Meal
with 2 possibilities (10 in each player color) cards in the middle of the table, the cards are turned face
down into a single pile.

Left: Green thinks that there is more Beef than Vegetables.

Right: Green thinks that there is more Vegetables than Beef.
- If a player played a Tofu card, he may later play a
maximum of 2 Order cards.
- A player may play two Order cards with the same
meal type or with the same Chinese character.
- Once every player has played their Order cards, the
cards are revealed simultaneously.
3) Receive meals
- All Meal cards in the middle of the table and in front
of the players are revealed.
- Meal cards are grouped according to their types.
- Each player who played a Tofu card chooses, in
decreasing order of age, which type of meal his Tofu
card will be. Tofu cards are then placed with the other
Meal cards of the chosen type. Tofu cards, once
played, are lost.
4) Clean-up the table
- Tofu cards played this turn are discarded into the game
box. Successful Order cards are discarded into the game
box. Unsuccessful Order cards are placed under that
player’s draw pile of Order cards.
- Meal cards in the middle of the table are shuffled and
placed under the draw pile of Meal cards.
- Each player draws cards to bring his total to 5 Meal
cards and 4 Order cards. If a player does not have
enough Order cards, he draws as many as possible. The
Tofu card does not count towards the 5 Meal cards hand
size limit.
- 10 Meal cards are dealt face up in the middle of
the table and sorted by type. Players are given time to
memorize the cards. The cards are then turned face
down into a single pile and the next round begins.
End of the game
- After 5 rounds, the winner is the player who scored
the most points.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following people in
no particular order: Pascal Blais, Sylvain Fétiveau, Jean-
Daniel Grob, Sébastien Landry, Julie Plourde, Michael
Shaver, Martin Villemaire and Marc de Vleeschauwer.

- Each player now determines how many of their orders

were successful and scores points according to the
table below.
- Each Chinese character will mean one and only one of
the 2 possible meal types, which are on either side of
that character on the front of the Summary card. Of
the two possible meal types, the character will mean
the meal type, which is found the most in the middle
of the table. In case of a tie for 2 meal types of a given
character, no orders for that character will be
successful. The number of points obtained depends on
the number of orders played and the number of orders
successful. Points are shown in the table below:
Scoring Example: Successful orders are shown in green and unsuccessful orders in red. Blue’s first order is unsuccessful
No. of Order cards played as there are more fish cards than beef cards. His second order is also unsuccessful as there is a tie between chicken cards
3 2 1 and vegetable cards. His third order is successful as there are more vegetable cards than beef cards. According to the table
above Blue gets zero points as he got only one successful order out of three orders played. Red’s two orders are successful
None 0 0 0 because there are more Chicken than Lamb and more Fish than Lamb. Red gets five points because he got two successful
successful
No. of

orders out of two orders played. Green’s first order is successful as there is more Fish than Beef. His second order is
orders

1 0 2 3
unsuccessful as there are more Chicken than Lamb. Green gets two points because he got one successful order out of two
2 3 5
orders played. Yellow’s only order is unsuccessful as there is a tie between chicken cards and vegetable cards. Yellow
3 8 gets zero points because is got no successful orders.