My boyfriend and I spent the afternoon reworking the rules of Splice so it made more sense, and was more fun to play. I think, so far, we seem to have a winner. This version (a) makes a lot more sense, without all the weird "but what do we do now" problems; (b) moves fast, although it can take a decently long enough time to finish a game to be enjoyable (although it does depend on the luck of the draw); (c) is still fun and challenging, with a nice mix of having some control over your game and have a chance to thwart your opponents, and random variants that you have no control over; and (d) is a LOT of fun! We didn't want to stop playing, it's very addicting.

I'd like to try to post our new rules here, although I don't know if I'm going to have a problem due to length. It's not complicated once you sit down to play it, but it seems to take a lot of explaining to get all the details in (something the original instructions seemed to be lacking in, anyway, so I wanted to cover everything I could). I'll do my best.

We played the original version with both 2 and 3 players. Three players seemed to have potential but had so many problems that it just wasn't very fun; and 2 players was, to us, almost impossible. This version seemes to fix both of those problems, and now we can't get enough of this game. I hope it works as well for others.

I would love to know your experiences if anyone tries this - especially if you have suggestions for changes, or run into any problems we didn't foresee and have no contingency for. Or if you just really like it (or not).

Getting Started
Place the gemstone disks in the center of the table, face down, and shuffle them around. Each player chooses one randomly, and after checking his color, leaves it face down on the table in front of him. Each player knows his own gemstone color but not anyone else's. Always do your gemstone choosing first - you'll see why later.

Take out all the map pieces (only regular map pieces, not wilds), shuffle them, and place them FACE DOWN. This is the Map Pile.

Shuffle the remainder of the deck (including wild map pieces) and deal each player FIVE cards. Then place the remainder of the deck face down. This is the Draw Pile. You don't need a discard pile.

One player is chosen to go first, and play proceeds clockwise.

Card Piles
The main deck, face down, is the Draw Pile. At the beginning of each player's turn they must draw a card first, either from the Draw Pile or blind drawn from another player's hand, before doing anthing else. At the end of their turn, they must still have 5 cards in their hand. If they have played cards and have less than 5, they must draw additional cards from the top of the Draw Pile to make 5 in their hand (the end-of-turn additional cards can't be blind drawn from other players; only the first draw of your turn can be done that way). However, any new cards drawn at the end of the turn can't be played till the next turn (with the exception of the Hurricane Card; see later instructions). If, at the end of their turn, a player has more than 5 cards, they must discard by placing a card face down at the bottom of the Draw Pile to maintain 5 cards in their hand. (Discarding this way keeps a constantly replenished Draw Pile running throughout the game. You could, alternatively, use a discard pile, then when the Draw Pile is empty, shuffle the discard pile and place it face down as your new Draw Pile. We chose this way because it avoids the extra step, the Draw Pile is constantly replenished, and the cards are effectively randomized each run-through, as depending on the plays, discards, and purchases each round, you never get exactly the same order of cards twice through).

The Map Pile contains only map pieces (no wild map pieces). The map pieces should be shuffled and appear randomly in the pile. These may be purchased for 20 gold coins each. The player pays the 20 gold coins by placing his gold coin cards, including wild cards and "Double Your Gold" cards if used, face down at the bottom of the Draw Pile, then taking a map piece from the top of the Map Pile. Map pieces are taken from the top of the pile, randomly; players may not search through the pile for the piece they need. You get what you get.

See later instructions for what to do with the map pieces once you get them.

Playing the Game
A player first draws a card, either from the Draw Pile, or blind draws from another player's hand. Then the player can: (a) play sets of coin cards; (b) play a Special Card; or (c) buy a map piece.

A player can only do ONE of those three things on a turn; you can't combine plays on a single turn. If the player can't or chooses not to do any of those things, he or she simply discards one card face down at the bottom of the Draw Pile, to maintain your 5 cards, and play goes on to the next player.

Coin Cards
You can play coin cards by two of a kind (pairs) or 3-card runs (1-2-3, 2-3-4, etc.).

The total points of your sets can be used to buy map pieces from the Map Pile at a cost of 20 gold coins for each map piece. You must trade in entire sets, even if the total is more than twenty; you don't get change, and you don't get to use partial sets and put the 'extra' cards back in your hand.

While a player can only make one play on each turn (for example, play coin cards OR buy a map piece OR play a special card), if you choose to play coin cards, there is no limit on the number of sets you can play in that turn (other than the natural limit imposed by the number of cards in your hand). In other words, you are not limited to 'one' set of coin cards per play. You could for example play a pair of 2s and a pair of 6s, or a pair of 5s and a 2-3-4 run. You can also play Double Your Gold cards at this time.

When you trade in coin cards, Double Your Gold cards and/or wild cards to purchase map pieces, those cards go on the bottom of the Draw Pile.

Double Your Gold cards can be played at any time, whether you have any coin sets in play or not. Of course, playing a Double Your Gold card when you have no coin sets in play accomplishes nothing until you lay down some coin sets to double, and subjects your Double card to piracy (see later instructions). But sometimes, if you don't want to discard anything else, this play can be useful.

You can also play Double Your Gold cards while you are playing other gold coin sets. Or, you can play a Double Your Gold card as your entire turn, even if you have no other sets to lay down that turn.

If you have only one coin set in play, and a Double Your Gold card, and someone takes your gold coin set by Piracy, your Double card remains in play in front of you, and applies to any future gold coin sets you lay down.

Of course, Wild Cards can still be used to replace any coin card in a set.

Special Cards
Special Cards are played in the center of the table, or directly on another player by placing face-up in front of them, and after their effect is completed, they are placed face down at the bottom of the Draw Pile. If you play a Special Card, that is your entire turn, and you can't do anything else on that turn.

Piracy
When you play the Piracy card, you can take plunder from another player - either one set of their played coin cards (for example, one pair, or one three-card run - but only one; you can't take all their coin cards); one "Double Your Gold" card (but only this and nothing else); or one of their map pieces, which you must choose "blind" from their face down pile. If you take a player's Double Your Gold card, and they have no other Double card in play, then all their played gold coin sets revert to normal value, while all of your gold coin sets, both currently in play and those laid down subsequently while you still have the Double card in play, are doubled in value. Any Double Your Gold or gold coin sets taken from another player by the Piracy Card must be immediately played in front of you; they can't be held in your hand to play later. If you take another player's map piece, it goes face down in front of you, following the later directions for 'map pieces.'

Skull Card
When played on another player, they must return their entire hand of cards to the bottom of the Draw Pile, and draw five new cards from the top. After they have done so, the Skull Card goes facedown on the bottom of the Draw Pile.

Trade Certificate
When you play the Trade card, you call out the color gemstone disk you want. If another player has it, they have to trade their gemstone disk for yours. If it's in the unused disk pile, trade your disk for the one you want, leaving your disk facedown in the unused pile.

Black Spot
When played on another player, they lose their next turn, after which the Black Spot card is placed face down on the bottom of the Draw Pile.

Hurricane Cards
Rather than being held by a player and played at their discretion, in this version the Hurricane Card when drawn by any player at any time must be played IMMEDIATELY, and immediately stops all other play. If you have drawn the Hurricane Card at the beginning of a turn, you lose your turn. Drawing Hurricane Cards at other times does not forfeit your turn. All of which is explained better below.

If a player draws a Hurricane Card on the initial draw at the beginning of his or her turn, they immediately drop it face up in the middle of the table. Then all the players (including the one who drew the Hurricane card) place their gemstone disks and any unused disks in the middle of the table face down, they are shuffled around, and each player draws a new one randomly and places it facedown in front of him or her (you can look at it first of course). Any unused disks are again placed to the side. The Hurricane Card is placed on the bottom of the Draw Pile, and play resumes with the next player. The drawing of a Hurricane Card at the beginning of your turn causes you to lose that turn, and play moves on.

If a Skull card is played on a player, and when they draw their whole new hand it contains a Hurricane Card, as soon as they have drawn they drop the Hurricane Card in the center, and the gemstone disks are shuffled and replaced as above. Then the Hurricane Card is placed at the bottom of the Draw Pile, and the player having drawn and played it must draw one additional card to get back to 5 cards in their hand. Once this is complete, play continues to the next player in line (the one to the left of whoever played the Skull card in the first place). If the next player in line is the one who had the Skull card played on them and drew the Hurricane Card, they do not lose this turn.

If at the end of your turn you are drawing new cards to replace any played cards to maintain 5 in your hand, and you draw a Hurricane, the same rule applies - immediately drop it in the center, the gemstone disks are shuffled as above, the Hurricane Card is placed at the bottom of the Draw Pile, the player having drawn it draws a new card to replace it and maintain 5 in his or her hand, and play continues on to the next player. You don't lose a turn for having drawn the Hurricane Card at the end of your turn.

If you are dealt a Hurricane Card in the first deal, drop it in the center, and after all cards are dealt players immediately shuffle the gemstone disks, you place the Hurricane Card at the bottom of the Draw Pile and draw a new card to take it's place. Play resumes from there. If you would have been the first player to go, you lose your turn, and the player to your left goes next. (If by chance you dealt the initial deal before choosing your gemstone disks, just put the Hurricane Card back at the bottom of the Draw Pile and have the player replace it with a card off the top, and ignore it for that time. If you haven't chosen disks yet, you have nothing to shuffle and switch, so it doesn't matter.)

If a player has blind drawn a card from you, when their turn is complete and you draw your first card to replace the one they drew, if it is a Hurricane Card, again shuffle and replace the gemstone disks, then place the Hurricane Card on the bottom of the Draw Pile. Then the player takes a new top card to replace the blind drawn card. If it was that player's turn next, they forfeit their turn, and play proceeds to their left. If it was not that player's turn next they merely take a new card to replace the one taken from them, and play proceeds to the left of the player who originally made the blind draw and started the whole mess.


The Point Of It All - Treasure Maps
The point of the game is to collect four matching map pieces to complete a whole treasure map which matches the color of your gemstone disk. You can use wild card map pieces to complete any color map, but you can only use two wild cards in any complete map, and they must be the proper wild card piece to make a complete, proper map picture when all laid out together (i.e., each piece lines up with the ones beside it). Remember, wild card map pieces do not go in the map pile, they are randomly drawn from the Draw Pile.

You purchase map pieces for twenty gold coins each, from the gold coin sets you play in front of you. When you make a purchase, the gold coin cards go on the bottom of the Draw Pile, and the map pieces are drawn from the top of the Map Pile. If you are going to purchase map pieces, this is the only thing you can do in your turn; so if you play gold coin sets totalling twenty in one turn, you must wait till your next turn to use them to purchase a map. And during that round, you may be robbed of part of your hoard by someone playing a Piracy card on you!. But that's the breaks - you can't hold gold coins in your hand, wait till you've saved up twenty coins worth, then play them and spend them to buy a map all in one turn.

All of your map pieces are placed face down on the table in front of you, next to your gold coin sets. You don't keep them in your hand as part of your 5 cards, and you don't leave them face up, so no one knows what you have but you.

You can only have FIVE map pieces total at any time. You can of course have less, but you can't have more. So if you make a purchase that gives you more than 5, you must choose which one or ones to discard. Discarded map pieces go face down at the bottom of the Map Pile. If you already have five map pieces, you may purchase one or more additional pieces when you've played enough gold coins, but then you must choose one (or more) to return so that you only retain five. If you have four map pieces, and have enough gold coins to purchase two, you can do so, you're not limited to only one - but you must then select one to discard to the bottom of the Map Pile.

Even if you know you will be exceeding your limit and must discard a map piece, you still must purchase any new map pieces. Once you reach your limit of five, you cannot merely trade map pieces evenly, placing one of yours at the bottom of the pile and taking one from the top in return. You must first play enough coins to make your purchase, then buy the map piece and see what you have and what you want to keep, then discard map pieces to the bottom of the Map Pile to retain only 5 face down on the table in front of you. Sometimes you may amass 20 gold coins and purchase a map piece, only to find it's one you don't even need, and have to simply discard the one you just bought. That's the way it goes sometimes.

Play proceeds by playing gold coin cards, attempting to amass twenty gold coins so that you can buy map pieces. You accumulate map pieces by buying them, or taking they by piracy from another player. (You can take map pieces when you already have 5, but again you must discard one to the bottom of the Map Pile when done so you never have more than 5).

When you have a complete treasure map, either by having all four pieces of one color, or by having a combination of the proper color map pieces and one or two wild card map pieces that fit your map in your hand, you can win the game ... maybe. You can't play your completed map until your next turn - the playing of a completed map constitutes one full turn. Also remember, you must draw first on every turn ... so if you're getting ready to go out but you draw the Hurricane Card on your next turn, all the gemstone disks change, and you no longer have a completed map of the right color to match your gemstone disk, so you can't go out on that turn.

However, you can use the Trade Certificate if you have it to then - on your next turn, since playing a special card is a turn by itself - request a trade back to the color disk you need. But when you get it, you still can't play your full map and 'go out' until your following turn - only one type of play on a turn (including laying down your completed map). Meanwhile, astute players may notice your request to change colors, assume you are about to go out, and have an entire round of play to try to thwart you - by playing Piracy cards on you and taking one of your map pieces, hoping it's part of your completed set; or by playing the Black Spot card, causing you to skip your next turn, and hoping someone can thwart you before your turn comes around again. Then again, no one may have a Black Spot or Piracy card in their hand at the moment, and your scheme may work. Never can tell!

You can also continue building on map sets you've already begun even after a Hurricane, if you have, or want to gamble you'll get, the Trade card to then trade for the proper gemstone disk when you have completed your 'wrong color' map. But again, it's a gamble ... you may pull it off, but you may get pirated right out of your map pieces, or have your Trade card blind-drawn from you, before you can pull it off.

Additional Notes
We chose to remove one Hurricane card from the deck, only leaving one in play, because we found that the Draw Pile is recycled fairly quickly with these rules, and Hurricane Cards were coming up way too often. It can be fun and quirky to have them come up so often, but later in the game when people were beginning to compile large chunks of maps, it mostly just got frustrating. It can also make the game take a really, really long time. However, that could be player's choice, you could do it either way.

We have only played these rules with 2 and 3 players; we haven't had 4 people together for it yet. We initially started dealing 7 cards, as the original instructions stated, but when we had three players, dealing 7 cards each left the Draw Pile pretty bare; then as people amassed coin set plays, but hadn't cashed them in yet, we were running dangerously low on Draw Pile cards. Without Draw Pile cards, you have no way to draw new cards to continue the game, or replenish your hand if another player blind draws from you, and it would stagnate play. It was also one of the complaints I had about the original version of the rules, so we wanted to avoid this at all costs.

We discovered that by dealing only 5 cards, our Draw Pile stayed healthy, play moved along well, and it seemed a good balance between challenging but very do-able to play well, have fun, and make the game winnable. We decided we liked 5 cards better even if there were only 2 players, and have stuck with that. You shouldn't have a problem with your Draw Pile getting too thin even with 4 players, unless people are playing large quantities of gold coin sets in the first few rounds, but not cashing them in yet to buy maps. If you run onto that problem, let me know - if you think of a fix for it, let me know that too. I haven't had a chance to experiment with 4 players yet.

In one of our 3-player games, we had one player who insisted on amassing played coin sets far exceeding the amount needed to buy several map pieces, but just not bothering to buy them (apparently thinking it was cooler to amass gold). This can cause a problem, since in my opinion Splice didn't come with quite enough cards in the first place, you need those coin cards circulating back through the Draw Pile to keep from running out of cards, and to keep play moving. I didn't make any "rule" about "having to" buy map pieces as soon as you have twenty gold coins played, and hopefully most players will realize it doesn't make much sense otherwise ... hoarding played gold coins doesn't get you map pieces, which is how you win the game; hoarding gold opens you up to having it easily pirated by other players with a Piracy card; and if more than one player was hoarding gold without buying map pieces and recycling the gold through the Draw Pile, eventually the game would stagnate and be unplayable. So, duh. Don't hoard gold!

Lastly, I know I referred to "Double Your Money" cards as "Double Your Gold" cards all the way through here. Once I realized my error, I didn't feel like going back and trying to change every one. You know what I mean.

Although it's technically possible, we never had a problem of having all the map pieces bought and no one winning - someone always won before all the map pieces were bought. If that happened, you could call it a draw, and start a new game; or declare the winner whoever had the most map pieces that matched their gemstone disk; or let players start buying map pieces from each other instead of the Map Pile; I'm not sure how that would work, fortunately the situation never came up. Maybe it'll be extremely rare.

I knew I really liked this game, or would if it was made more playable, and I'm really happy with these new rules. We played 4 or 5 hands and didn't run onto any problems or situations not addressed here.

I hope these 'new rules' are as useful and fun to others as they have been to us, and again, if you run onto a snag, let me know (hopefully I can come up with a fix!) or if you already have a fix, post that too.

Rayne of Tara