Deal all players a deck of cards numbered 1–6. Keep the remaining cards to the side as a facedown draw pile.
Pick anyone to be the start player (“Liar”).
For a quick, light game, stop playing when one player is out of cards. The player who has the most cards wins.
For a longer, more tactical game, keep playing until only one player has cards left. They win.
Gameplay happens in simultaneous rounds.
First, the Liar states a number greater than 1.
- Everyone splits their deck of cards into that many piles, or so-called “dice”.
- You can’t have dice of only a single card, unless you have no other choice.
- You can’t look at the cards inside each dice.
Then everyone rolls their dice: shuffle every pile and secretly look at the card on top.
Starting from the Liar, in clockwise turns, players must now guess what’s on the table. This includes all dice, not just their own.
- A guess consists of two numbers: which number (1–6) and how many of them. For example: “I guess the number 5 appears 3 times on the table.”
- You must guess higher than the previous player. This means that at least one of your numbers must be greater than the previous guess. (The other number may be kept the same, but never less than the previous guess.)
- If you don’t want to do that, you challenge the previous guess and call their bluff.
When you decide to challenge,
- Reveal all the top cards of all the dice.
- Check if the previous guess was correct: at least their guess must appear on the table.
- If so, you were wrong and you lose. If not, then your challenge was correct, and the player before you loses.
The loser of a round discards all the cards from one of their dice. They become the Liar for next round.
That’s it, have fun!
Played the base game and ready for more? Or looking to tweak the game to fit your playing group better? Check out these variants and expansions!
To make the game more unpredictable, give players 6 random cards at the start.
To make the game longer (and every guessing round longer and perhaps more tense),
- Start the players with 9 or even 12 cards.
- Increase the minimum number (of “dice” into which to break your deck) to 3.
This expansion adds a tiny bit of extra material: Wildcards.
During setup: after dealing your starting cards, players swap one of them (secretly) for a wildcard. Keep all remaining wildcards in a single faceup pile.
During gameplay: a wildcard represents the number of your guess. For example, if you guessed “3 5’s”, then any wildcard rolled will also be a 5.
Finally, the loser of a round may decide to swap another card for a wildcard (secretly).
This expansion adds more material: Power Cards and numbers greater than 6.
During setup, create piles (of regular and power cards combined) per number (1 through 6), then give each player 1 of each. This ensures power cards are in the game, but they’re distributed randomly and you don’t know who has them.
How do Power Cards work?
- On your turn to guess, if you rolled a power card, you may trigger its action. (Each card can only be triggered once per round.)
- If so, simply execute the action written on the card.
Additionally, you can now guess how many Power Cards you think there are.
- You can always raise a guess by bidding on number of Power Cards …
- As long as the number you say is greater than the highest number of the previous guess divided by 2 (rounded down).
This also works in the opposite direction! By doubling instead of dividing.
- You can always raise a previous guess on Power Cards … (“Power Cards appear 2 times.”)
- As long as the number you say is greater than double the previous number. (“Number 3 appears 5 times.”)
The extra high numbers are included because some of the powers add an extra number. If triggered, all players still in play add 1 card of the next highest number to their deck. If there aren’t enough cards for all players, the active player (who triggered this action) decides who gets the extra card.