Komme gleich!
A tactical cardgame by Uwe Rosenberg for 2-6 players age 10 and above.
Translation and additional notes (in italics) by
Stefanie Kethers.
Game components
- 93 menu cards:
- 18 cards "soup" (orange)
- 18 cards "salad" (yellow)
- 18 cards "lobster" (blue)
- 18 cards "cheese" (green)
- 18 cards "tartelettes" (pink)
- 3 cards "baguette" (light brown, wild cards)
- 6 cards "Komme gleich" (waiter cards), showing waiters on both sides, and an "L" one the one, and an "R" on the other side.
- 11 cards "tip" with different values:
- 6 cards "1 point"
- 4 cards "2 points"
- 1 card "3 points"
- one marker for the start player
- rules booklet
Game concept
The players represent waiters trying to fulfil orders represented by
a row of menu cards. The more orders they fulfil, the bigger
their tips will be. The player with the highest amount of
tips wins the game.
Game Preparation
- Give each player a "Komme gleich" (waiter) card and remove the remaining waiter cards from the game.
- Shuffle the menu cards and place five in a row, face up, on the table. This is the current "target" menu card row. The players should sit facing the length of the card row.
- Place five menu cards face down in front of each player. As soon as every player has five cards in front of him or her, the players can pick their cards up and look at them. Important: Do not sort them or change the sequence of the cards in any way! The cards must be held in exactly the order that they were dealt, either fanned to the left, or fanned to the right. (The cards
show an "L" in the left upper corner if you fan them to the left, and an "R"
in the upper right corner if you fan them to the right).
Place your waiter card with the corresponding side (i.e., "L" if you fan your cards to the left, "R", if you fan them to the right) face up in front of you. You may not change the way you fan your cards during the game!
- Place the remaining menu cards face down on the table, so that they form the draw pile.
During the game, discarded cards will form a discard pile (face up) next to the draw pile.
- Place the "tip" cards on the table (face up).
- The player who explains the rules receives the start player marker and begins the game. Play then proceeds clockwise.
Course of the Game
Start player's turn
The start player draws a menu card from the draw pile and places this card in
her hand. There is no restriction on where she places the card. Then, she
places one of her cards face up on top of one of the menu cards in the middle
of the table, effectively changing the sequence of cards in that row. There
is no restriction on which card from her hand she uses.
Now, the start player should try to fulfil the order that is represented by the target row in the middle of the table.
To do so, she plays a sequence of three or more cards from her
hand. These cards must form an uninterrupted sequence on the player's hand,
and must correspond to an equally uninterrupted sequence of cards in the
target menu card row on the table.
Example 1:
| Menu cards in the middle of the table |
| Cheese (green) | Lobster(blue) | Tartelettes (pink) | Salad (yellow) | Soup (orange) |
| Menu cards in player's hand |
| Soup (orange) | Tartelettes (pink) | Salad (yellow) | Soup (orange) | Tartelettes (pink) |
The player can now play her middle three cards, as they correspond
to the right three cards in the target menu card sequence. After showing these cards to the other players, the start player places them
in front of her, face down. These cards are important for scoring, see below.
Example 2:
| Menu cards in the middle of the table |
| Cheese (green) | Lobster(blue) | Tartelettes (pink) | Salad (yellow) | Soup (orange) |
| Menu cards in player's hand |
| Baguette (light brown) | Tartelettes (pink) | Salad (yellow) | Soup (orange) | Tartelettes (pink) |
In this case, the player can additionally match the baguette card from her
hand with the blue "Lobster" card on the table. She can
therefore play a sequence of four cards, keeping only the
rightmost pink "Tartelettes" card in her hand. The player places then places the four
cards face down in front of her, and redraws four cards.
Note that the "Baguette" cards are wild cards, and can be
substituted for any other card. In this example, the player can therefore play four cards, using the baguette as wild card for the
required lobster. If one of the cards in the target row is a
baguette card, the player may use any card to fulfil the order.
After playing cards to fulfil an order, the player refills her hand from the draw pile,
taking one card at a time and placing it in the front of her hand, until she has five
cards. In the first example, the player would therefore draw three cards, in the second example, she would draw four, which are
placed in front of her "old" hand cards (or card, as in the second example).
Neither the sequence of the old cards, nor the sequence of the new cards may be changed!
There is no mention of this in the rules, but I certainly think that the discard
pile is reshuffled to form a new draw pile once the draw pile has been exhausted.
Other player's turn
After the start player has finished her turn, the other players
each have a turn (in clockwise order, or, for five or six players,
in any order to speed up gameplay, see "Suggestions" below) that is
different from the start player's:
The player can either
- take one of their cards and replace it at a different place in their hand, or
- draw a new menu card from the draw pile, place it in their hand
(at any position), then discard one of their hand cards onto the discard pile.
Second, the player can play a card sequence (see the description
of the start player's turn for details) and, if she played
such a sequence, draws cards to refill her hand to five cards.
After each player has had her turn, the start player marker goes
to the player on the left of the current start player. That player
is start player for the next round.
Scoring
Players score in one of two cases:
-
If the player has been able to play all her five hand cards,
matching them with the target menu cards, she immediately puts
those five cards to the discard pile, and takes a "tip" card
worth one point (see below).
- As soon as a player has 10 or more cards face down in front of her, she cashes them in for a "tip" card worth 1 point: the menu cards
go to the discard pile, and the player takes a "tip" card as
described in the following.
In both cases, it is important
that the player needs to change her "tip" cards to the next bigger
"tip" card as soon as this is possible: the first "tip" card a player takes
will be a one point "tip" card, but if she scores for the second time,
she will have to take a "tip" card worth two points (if available)
and replace her one point "tip" card, etc. This is important, as
otherwise, a player might not be able to take a one point "tip"
when they are all in players' hands. Note that the rules
do not state whether the "tip" cards are placed face up or face down
in front of the players.
End of the Game
The game ends as soon as one player takes the final "tip" card.
If more than one player would get a tip, but there are not enough
"tip" cards, none of them scores, and the game ends immediately.
The player with the highest value of "tip" cards wins the game;
if two or more tie, the player with the higher number
of face-down menu cards in front of her wins.
Sugestions
- While the start player is thinking about his move, the other players can
shuffle the "covered" cards from the target menu crad row into the draw pile.
- In a five or six player game, do not observe player order among the "other"
players (the start player still must make her move first). Instead, players should
perform their moves in any order. This reduces the downtime.