Art of Karthik

Overview

Welcome to the swashbuckling world of 'Touché Turnip Returns'! This is a scrabble-style strategy game for 2-5 players, with the goal of crafting the most elaborate pirate insults.

Setup:

1. Each player is given 1 ‘Arr’ card which can be used in the beginning or end of a sentence.

2. The deck of insults is shuffled.

3. Each player draws 7 cards from the deck to form their initial hand.

4. Place the remaining cards face-down to form the draw pile.

5. Create a designated area where players will build their insults.

Gameplay

1. Players take turns forming insults on a table, starting from the center of the playing area (usually a table).

2. To form an insult, players must connect their cards to existing cards on the board, creating a pirate-style grammatically correct sentence.

3. Players may begin each turn by discarding any number of their cards atop a discard pile, once, and drawing an equal number of cards from the draw pile, and then form an insult. The discard pile does not rejoin the game.

4. Each player may leverage or extend existing insults on the board to create new ones. When an existing insult is extended, players get points for the full sentence. Sentences beginning or ending in ‘Arr!’ cannot be extended further.

5. If words from one sentence touch words from another sentence, they must continue to form meaningful sentences. If not, the most recent sentence must be removed.

6. After forming an insult, players draw tiles from the deck to replenish their hand after making an insult (to a total of 7 cards).

7. Connectors, such as "and" or "but," can be used to link multiple parts of an insult together. For example, "Yer cooking be + feeble + and + ye sing + like a + sore throat."

8. Players score points based on the number of tiles used in their insults. Longer insults earn more points.

9. Opponent players can challenge the grammatical pirate-ness of a sentence. If the verdict is that the insult is not grammatically correct, the insult is withdrawn, and the player can try forming another insult or skip their turn.

Scoring

Points are awarded based on the number of tiles used in an insult. When an insult is built by extending another player’s insult, all tiles in the sentence are considered for points. Longer insults earn more points.

End of the Game

The game ends when

• one player reaches 40 points, or

• the draw pile is empty, and one player uses all their cards, or

• all players pass (don’t form an insult) for two consecutive rounds, or

• there is no space left on the table to make further insults!

The first player to reach 40 points, or the player with the highest total score at the end of the game is the best pirate insult swashbuckler and wins the game!

Download

Download the game and play it for free here.

Printing Instructions

1. Download the PDF and print it out in black and white. The PDF is printable in in both A4 ( 8.3’’ x 11.69’’) and US Letter (8.5’’ x 11’’) sized card-stock. Regu- lar printer quality paper should work just fine. For higher quality, 65 lb or above card-stock can also be used.
2. Cut the cards using a paper cutter
3. Store the cards in a box until you’re ready to play!

Terms of Use

Thanks for downloading and playing this game!

Touché Turnip Returns is free to use under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA License.

Terms of Copyright

Attribution: If you distribute this game, please credit @artofkarthik for the content.
Noncommercial: This game or any subsequent derivative is only intended for personal use and cannot be sold for money.
Sharing: If you modify and/or distribute this game, you must use the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA License.

Above all else, be good to each other, and play more games together!

Inspiration

This game was inspired by Scrabble, Oh sir the insult simulator, and insult swordfighting from Monkey Island 2 & 3.