Five Stands

🌺 Main Match 3: Five Stands 🌺

Manage your cards and visit the five stands on the meadows to get some gold.

You have a hand of cards. Each meadow has a minigame in which you can play your cards to get gold. Cards with duplicate numbers cancel each other; the remaining cards earn gold for their owners depending on the minigame for the meadow. You can move meadows at the end of every round, and the goal is to get the most gold.

RULES

Your meadow in this game is not fixed. You will be able to change your meadow every round, see below. Each meadow features a different minigame.

The game uses a deck of 90 cards. Each card has a color and a value. The possible colors are the meadow colors: white, blue, black, red, and green. The possible values are 1-9. Each possible color/value combination appears twice in the deck.

🀄 At the start of the game, each player is dealt 8 cards randomly from the pool. The remaining 2 cards are removed from the game without being revealed. Cards in hand are tradable freely.

The game is divided into 4 rounds.

💎 At the start of each round, if you are in a meadow with no other player, you earn 1 bellflower.

🧠 Each round, you may play any number of cards in your hand to the minigame in your meadow. However, you may only play cards whose color either matches the meadow or is an allied color (its meadow is adjacent to your meadow). For example, in Green Meadow, you can play green, white, and red cards, but not blue or black.

🧠 💎 In addition, for Rounds 1-3, you also decide which meadow you will go to for the next round. You may stay in your current meadow or move to an adjacent meadow for free. To move to an opposite meadow, you must either discard one card of that color, or pay 2 garnets. (In Round 4, you will not be given a chance to move to another meadow.)

At the end of the round, the cards are evaluated. Each meadow is evaluated separately.

First, if several cards have the same value (regardless of color), all the cards are canceled; they earn their players no gold, and they don't count for the minigame rules.

The remaining cards earn gold depending on the minigame rules:

White Minigame ⚪ : Each card earns as much gold as the number of cards with value 1-3 played here.

Blue Minigame 🔵 : Each card earns as much gold as the lowest card value played here.

Black Minigame 🟣 : Only the highest played card earns gold, equal to its value.

Red Minigame 🔴 : Each card earns as much gold as the difference with the card value directly lower than it. The lowest card earns gold equal to its value.

Green Minigame 🟢 : Each card earns gold corresponding to its ranking: the lowest card earns 1 gold, the next-lowest card earns 2 gold, and so on.

🎭 Examples for all five minigames:

White Minigame ⚪ : Submitted cards are 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 6. The 2's cancel. There are two cards valued 1-3 (1 and 3), so the 1, 3, 5, 6 all earn 2 gold each.

Blue Minigame 🔵 : Submitted cards are 1, 1, 4, 7, 7, 9. The 1's and 7's cancel. The lowest value is 4, so 4 and 9 earn 4 gold each.

Black Minigame 🟣 : Submitted cards are 2, 5, 6, 8, 8. The 8's cancel. The highest card is 6, so 6 earns 6 gold, while 2 and 5 don't earn anything.

Red Minigame 🔴 : Submitted cards are 5, 6, 6, 8, 9. The 6's cancel. The cards in decreasing order are 9, 8, 5. Then 9 earns the difference 9-8 = 1 gold; 8 earns the difference 8-5 = 3 gold. As the lowest card, 5 earns itself, i.e. 5 gold.

Green Minigame 🟢 : Submitted cards are 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9. The 4's cancel. The cards in increasing order are 3, 6, 7, 9. They earn 1, 2, 3, 4 gold respectively.

💎 In addition, if you play the lowest non-canceled card of the meadow's color, you earn 1 garnet. Canceled cards are completely ignored and cannot earn garnets.

Once all the cards have been processed and gold awarded, players are then sent to their chosen meadows to begin the next round.

⚠️ Note that there is no time to discuss the results with your current meadow. Once the results are revealed, all players are sent to their new meadows.

📡 In each meadow, all played cards and who played which card are announced to the players in that meadow. This includes canceled cards. However, this announcement is only to the meadow; other meadows don't know what happens.

👑 📡 The game ends after 4 rounds; all remaining cards in hand are useless. At the end of the game, the amount of gold obtained by each player is revealed.

👑 The player with the most gold becomes the winner and receives two Tokens of Life. They also get the power to decide the meadow assignment of all players for MM4.

👑 The player with the least gold becomes the Elimination Candidate.

🧬 Rules about winners and losers:

• If there are 2-8 players tied for the most points, each of them becomes a winner and receives one Token of Life.
• If there are 9-11 players tied for the most points, nobody becomes the winner, and nobody receives any Token of Life.
• The meadow assignment power is only awarded if there is a sole winner. If multiple players are tied for the most points, nobody receives the meadow assignment power, and the meadow assignment for MM4 will be purely random.
• If there are 2 or more players tied for the least points, each winner votes for one of the losers. One random loser with the most votes becomes the Elimination Candidate.
• If there is no winner (due to there being 9-11 players tied for the most points), then there is no vote cast, and one random loser becomes the Elimination Candidate.

ADMINISTRATION

📌 🀄 Player items

You start the game with 8 cards. Cards may be freely traded.

You earn gold from minigames. Gold cannot be traded.

📌 ⏰ Timing

Each round lasts for approximately ⚠️ 48 hours. The deadline of every round is at 3pm UTC ( your local time); allow a few minutes for updating.

📌 🧠 Submission

Your submission consists of:

• What cards you are playing for the current meadow.
• Which meadow you want to go to for the next round. (This doesn't apply in Round 4; in Round 4, you cannot move to another meadow.)
• How you will pay the cost of moving. (The cost is either one card from your hand of a matching color, or 2 garnets. This only applies if you are attempting to move to an opposite meadow; staying in the same meadow or moving to an adjacent meadow is free.)

If your submission is invalid or missing, it will take default values. The defaults are:

• You are not playing any cards.
• You are staying in the current meadow.
• If you are moving to an opposite meadow, you are paying the cost of moving with 2 garnets.

If your moving cost is illegal (you don't have the card or you don't have 2 garnets), you will stay in your current meadow.

📌 📡 Information

This game has the following pieces of information, along with how and when they are revealed to the players, if at all. If a piece of information is not in this list, it is likely not known to anyone, but feel free to clarify.

🔺 Publicly announced, at the end of every round

• Which player goes to which meadow. (This is always public information, but it's worth repeating.)

🔺 Announced to each meadow, at the end of every round

• What cards are played, and who played each card.

--- Therefore, how much gold each card and each player earns.

🔺 Publicly announced, at the end of the MM

• How much gold each player has.

--- Therefore, the winner(s) and the loser(s) of the MM.

🔻 Explicitly only known to you

• What cards you start with.
• What cards you are holding.

📌 💎 ORG items

You can gain ORG currency in these ways:

• At the start of each round, if you are alone in your meadow, you get 1 bellflower.
• At the end of each round, if you submitted the lowest (non-canceled) card of the meadow's color, you get 1 garnet.

You can spend garnets in this way:

• When submitting which meadow to move to for the next round, you may pay 2 garnets to move to an opposite meadow. (This is one possible way to pay the cost of moving. The other is to discard a card of a color matching the meadow. Note that there is no cost for staying in the same meadow or moving to an adjacent meadow.)