Components

• 52 Cards
• Instructions

Object of the Game

Collect the entire deck of ratty cards.

Setup

Shuffle and deal out the whole deck. Hold your cards in a pack, face-down, in one hand. Don't be a rat and look at your cards!

Game Play

The deck consists of two kinds of cards:

• Random Rats - cards showing a couple of rats doing random ratly things.

  
  
  

• Big Fat Rats - bigger, single rats with cheese numbers from 1 to 4.

  
  
  

The player to the left of the dealer goes first, and play goes to the left around the table. On your turn, lay the top card from your pack face-up in the center of the table.

If you played a Random Rat, your turn is over.

The next player then plays a card on top of yours. But! If you played a Big Fat Rat, the next guy has to play another Big Fat Rat or else you win all the cards on the table!

Any Big Fat Rat beats any other Big Fat Rat, regardless of their numbers. The numbers tell how many cards you can play to try to come up with a Big Fat Rat when you need to.

Example: The guy ahead of you plays a Big Fat Rat with a "3".

That means you can play up to three cards to see if you can come up with a Big Fat Rat.

If you play three cards and don't play a Big Fat Rat, the guy who played the Big Fat Rat takes all the cards on the table. At this time, you will be likely to say, "Rats!"

If you do come up with a Big Fat Rat, you don't have to play any more cards, and the next player now has the designated amount of chances to beat your Big Fat Rat. If he beats it, play continues, if he doesn't, you get all the cards on the table.

When you win cards, don't bother to shuffle, just pick 'em up and add 'em to the bottom of your ratpack.

The player who wins the cards re-starts play.

The Ratslap

At any point during the game, if two matching cards are played one on top of the other, slap the card pile! If you're first, you get all the cards!

End of the Game

Whoever collects the whole rat-infested deck wins the game! It's Rat-Simple!

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