Evil Vendetta Pie Fight™
Flagpole Edition
Rules and Clarifications
A Blood and Cardstock Game
by Joan Wendland
© 2008
OK, so you’re all evil magic wielding nightmares from the human psyche and you hate each other’s guts. Your union won’t let you actually hurt each other, so the only way to settle this like, well not like men, is to have an…Evil Vendetta Pie Fight. Now clearly these aren’t normal pies, they’re magical pies that you conjure up. And as such they have unique properties:
- Certain pies are more effective against certain adversaries
- Pies cling to the site they hit, and render that site useless
- Pie throwing is a “free” spell – you don’t need to use your hands to do it
Now that pie throwing is established as a spell, lets talk about spells. Spells also occur in a certain order because they take time to cast – and the time is directly proportional to the difficulty of the spell. Here’s the order things happen in:
- Purely physical actions – Duck/Dodge/Wipe
- Easy spells
- Pies
- Hard spells
All cards are marked for the phase they happen in. All cards are considered actions and you only get one action per round. Some actions require the use of a hand, or your head, or even your torso – they are clearly marked. If the required body part is covered in pie you can not perform the action. Actions are resolved in the phases shown above. All actions within a phase are considered to happen simultaneously. When pies hit they stick unless a spell prevents them. If all 6 regions of your body are covered in pie you’re out. Last thing standing wins!
Oh, did I forget to tell you how to play? Shame on me.
Setup: Pick which thing you are by selecting the six cards your body is made out of – one card for each limb, your torso, and your head – and put them face up in front of you. They are numbered one through six for the purposes of targeting. Arrange them to look body shaped if you like – it’s not necessary. Pick a color to represent you. Place a colored token on your head card so everyone knows what color you are. Give each player a set of targeting tokens – one of each color represented by the players. These are in addition to the one on your head. Deal 5 cards to each player from the action deck.
Play: Each player selects the one action they will do each round and plays it face down. Then each player will place one colored token in his closed hand to signify who the action is aimed at. Defensive actions should be aimed at yourself, offensive actions aimed at others. Defensive actions will have a big D on their cards. Everyone count to three together, yell PIE FIGHT, drop your target token onto your card, then flip the card face up. Resolve the actions in phase order. This means that if the Werepoodle throws a pie (phase 3) at the Vampire who played a dodge (phase 1) it misses because the Vampire has already dodged. Hopefully this will be straightforward. If a pie strikes your head in phase 3 and the spell you wanted to cast in phase 4 needs a clear head it will fail because your head has pie on it by the time you try the spell. If you are completely covered in pie after phase 3 you are out – no phase 4 spell will complete. After resolving all actions everyone draw one card to replace. You always draw one card, even if the result of play adds or removes cards from your hand.
All cards played during a round are discarded except for pies that stuck to players. The first time through the action deck discard all phase 1 cards into a separate discard pile. If you run out of cards to draw, shuffle only the phase 2, 3, and 4 cards to make the new draw pile. During the second pass, discard all the phase 2 cards into a separate pile. If necessary, only shuffle the round 3, and 4 cards into the next draw pile. It has never gone that far, but if you really must, discard the round 4 cards next time around and only use pies until someone wins.
Pies: Oh yeah, how pies hit. There are three kinds of pies: Random Pies, Directed Pies, and Nemesis Pies.
- Random Pies hit random regions based on a d6 die roll. Rolling a 1 will place a pie on region 1 (the head) etc.
- Directed Pies hit wherever the player who threw it SAYS it hits.
- Nemesis Pies are Directed pies against one character. They are Random if aimed at any other character. That doesn’t mean you can’t throw it at another character, it means it will be a Random pie except when thrown against the being with a weakness against it. Pies are marked to show which beings will be direct hit by them.
Random Pies are resolved first, then Nemesis Pies, then Directed Pies since they require more concentration. If a Nemesis Pie is throw at its special being, then mirrored, sliced or otherwise redirected, it will become random since it is no longer targeted against the player most affected by it. Conversely, if you can redirect a Nemesis Pie at the player who has a weakness against it, you may direct the hit. Redirecting Directed Pies allows the redirecting player to direct the hit.
Unless the appropriate defensive spell is used, a pie that is aimed at you sticks. Place the card on the region it hit and leave it there unless you play a card that can remove it. The first, and second pies that hit a region stick. Place the cards on the region. If a pie is targeted to a region that already holds 2 pies it’s too gunky to stick there now so it will slide. Pies slide by the numbers so a pie that was rolled to land on region 2 will slide to region 3. The slide will continue if the next region is “full” until it reaches a region has less than 2 pies on it, then sticks. This includes sliding from region 6 to region 1. Please don’t get fussy about gravity – these are MAGIC pies. (Sliding rule credit: Mark Morgan)
Reset rule: If you don’t like your hand, play any card face down but use ALL of the targeting tokens when you target. This indicates you will take no action this turn except throwing away all your cards and drawing 5 cards to replace them.
End game: The moment all your regions are covered in pie you are OUT. Remove the pies from your body and put them in the discard pile. Put the cards from your hand into the discard pile as well. Pout for a bit, then cheer as others are pied out. When there are only two players left, you enter sudden death. In sudden death if you have a pie you MUST play it. If you play any other type of card in sudden death the other player may insist on seeing your hand to prove there are no pies in it. You may use the reset rule in sudden death if you like.
Clarifications: Limbs are arms and legs, not your head or torso. A region is any one of the six body regions. You are all ambidextrous. Projectiles include all the pies, and the pie plates as well. It is possible to have simultaneous pie hits that end the game with no winner.
Try not to over-think your play – this is a fast paced fun game. Ganging up on someone IS fair. Throwing pies is NOT violent; please tell your local PTA etc. to calm down and have some fun.
Let the pies fall where they may – Joan
Copyright: © Joan Wendland 2008