A round
Three cards a turn, and every card can be played two ways
Draw two at the top of your turn, then play up to three cards. An artist can be signed to one of your genres. Everything else — the takes, the charges, the counter that says no — either does the thing printed on it, or goes face up into your bank at its printed value.
That second option is the game. The card that takes a finished roster off somebody is also five in the bank, and your bank is what you settle demands with. You cannot have both, and you have to decide which you need before you know what anybody is about to do to you.
Ten genres, and you want three of them finished
Genres take two, three or four artists, and what they charge climbs as they fill up. A two-piece duo pays one and then two. The four-piece folk revival pays one, two, three, four. Techno is two artists and pays eight when it is done, which is why everybody wants it and nobody gets it.
A finished genre is protected: single artists can no longer be picked off it, and only one card in the deck takes a whole one at once. Finish it and you can put it on the road, and then into the arenas, and it charges seven more than it did.
The demands, and saying no to them
Charge one person, charge everybody, take one artist, take a finished genre whole. When a card is played at you it does not simply happen — you may cancel it outright with a counter, and the person who played it may cancel your cancelling, for as long as the two of you have the cards and the nerve.
There is no money in this game, only a table. If you are charged more than you can raise you hand over everything you have and owe nothing afterwards, which is what makes a demand against a bare table a real decision rather than a free hit.
What nobody can see
Hands are private and the deck is private. How many cards somebody is holding is public, exactly as it is across a real table, and what those cards are is not — so whether the person you are about to charge can refuse is the most valuable unknown in the game, and there is no way to find out but to try.
The table waits for every answer, from every target, whatever they are holding. That is deliberate: resolving instantly when somebody has no counter would announce it to the room without anybody having looked at a hand, and it would make the next demand against them free.
On the sheet
Questions people ask
Can I play it on my own?
Yes, and it is the whole game rather than a reduced one, because everything here happens between two tables. There are three stand-ins and they are not difficulty settings: Ledger banks first and asks later, Magpie signs everything and pays its debts in artists, and Bailiff would rather charge you than build. They disagree about what a card is for, which is the argument the game is made of.
Can somebody take a genre I have already finished?
Only whole, and only with one of the two cards in the deck that does it — and you can refuse that like anything else. Single artists cannot be picked off a finished genre at all. That protection is the reason finishing one matters beyond the three you need to win.
What happens if I am charged more than I can pay?
You hand over everything on your table and owe nothing afterwards. There is no debt in this game, only a table you no longer own, so a bad turn costs you your position rather than following you around for the rest of the hand.
Does anybody have to install anything to play Back Catalogue?
No. It runs in the browser everyone already has open. One person opens a room, reads out the six-character code or pastes the link into the channel, and everyone else is at the table in a couple of seconds.
Do we need accounts?
No. There is no sign-up, no password and no email address anywhere in the flow. You pick a name when you sit down, and that is the whole of it.
How many people can play Back Catalogue?
1 to 5 — best with three. A room seats up to 12.
How long does a game of Back Catalogue take?
About 20 minutes, which is the length of a coffee break rather than the length of a games night. Nobody is the host in the sense of holding the controls, so a round finishes whether or not everyone is still looking at it.
Does it work over a video call?
That is what it is for. The game is on the screen and the talking is on the call — nobody has to describe a board to anybody, and the parts that must stay private stay on the server rather than being read out.
Credit where it is due
Adapted from Monopoly Deal, published by Hasbro. The mechanics are kept whole because they are very good; the label, the genres, every card name and every word of copy are our own.