1000 Miles

The aim of the game

To cover exactly one thousand miles before your opponents do.

The game is scored in points. Every mile you cover is a point, and further points come from certain cards you play and from the way you win a round. A match runs over several rounds and ends when someone reaches the score limit the table owner sets beforehand. The highest score wins.

Players and teams

• On your own: two to six players.
• In teams: four, six, eight or nine players.
• Seven players will not work. It is above the limit for solo play, and it does not divide into equal teams.

In team play the whole team drives one car. The miles are shared, the breakdowns are shared, the safeties are shared, and the bonuses are counted once for the team. But each player keeps their own hand, which their team-mate neither sees nor plays from. And you do not attack your own car.

The possible team layouts:

• Four players: two teams of two.
• Six players: two teams of three, or three teams of two.
• Eight players: two teams of four, or four teams of two.
• Nine players: three teams of three.

Teams are formed by choosing. You are shown the names of the others and pick who you want with you, one at a time, until your team is full. The choice then passes to another player who is not yet on a team. You are only ever shown the names nobody has taken.

The cards

The deck holds a hundred and twenty one cards in four kinds.

Distance cards

These move your car, and they are worth their mileage:

• 25 miles: ten cards.
• 50 miles: ten cards.
• 75 miles: ten cards.
• 100 miles: twelve cards.
• 200 miles: four cards.

Attack cards

Played on an opponent's car of your choosing:

• Red light: stops the car. Five cards.
• Speed limit: bars 75, 100 and 200, but does not stop the car. Four cards.
• Out of gas: stops the car. Three cards.
• Flat tire: stops the car. Three cards.
• Accident: stops the car. Three cards.
• Counterflow: turns the car around, but does not stop it. Six cards.

Defense cards

Each attack has exactly one card that cures it:

• Green light: against a red light, and also what starts your car at the beginning of a round. Fourteen cards.
• End of speed limit: six cards.
• Gas: against out of gas. Six cards.
• Spare tire: against a flat tire. Six cards.
• Repairs: against an accident. Six cards.
• End of counterflow: nine cards.

Safety cards

Four cards in the whole deck, one of each:

• Right of way: protects you from red lights and speed limits, and spares you the green light for the rest of the round.
• Extra tank: you never run out of gas.
• Puncture proof: your tyres are never punctured.
• Driving ace: you never have an accident, and nobody turns you around.

Setting up a round

• The deck is shuffled, each player takes six cards, and the rest becomes the draw pile.
• Every round begins with your car stopped. The first thing you need is a green light, and until you play it you do not move.
• Each new round, the advantage of going first passes to the next player.

How a turn works

1. Your turn begins with six cards in your hand.
2. You draw a card and hold seven. Drawing is the first thing you do, and no card is accepted from you before it.
3. You play one card, or discard one if you would rather not play, and your hand is back to six.
4. The turn passes to the player after you.

• You may discard whenever you like, even when you are holding something you could play.
• When the draw pile runs out, drawing stops and everyone keeps playing out the cards in their hands until they are empty.

Driving and arriving

• Exactly a thousand miles, not one more. You cannot play a card that would take you past a thousand. At 900 miles a 200 card will not be accepted.
• Only two 200 cards per round. In team play the count belongs to the car, not to the player.
• A speed limit keeps you moving, but only on 25 and 50, and it ends with an end of speed limit card rather than a green light.

Attacking your opponents

When you play an attack card you choose which car it lands on. Only the legal targets are offered to you, each with its mileage. If there is only one target, the attack lands on it directly.

• The same attack does not repeat. You cannot puncture the tyres of a car that is already flat.
• A player who has played a safety is out of your reach for that kind of attack until the end of the round, and will not appear in the target list.

Attacking a stopped car

The table owner decides this with the accumulation of problems option:

• Off, which is the default: a stopped car cannot be attacked at all. That includes the start of a round, before anyone has played a green light.
• On: you may attack any car in any state, problems pile up on it, and it does not move until every one of them is solved.

Defending and recovering

• A breakdown takes two steps. After gas, a spare tire or repairs your car is still stopped, and it needs a green light to move.
• A restriction takes one. After an end of speed limit or an end of counterflow you carry on at once, because your car was never stopped.
• Repair before you start. A green light is not accepted from you while a breakdown is unsolved.
• A player who has played right of way needs no green light afterwards, so repairs alone put them back on the road.

Safeties

A safety card does three things at once: it cures the current problem, it prevents that problem for the rest of the round, and it gives you an extra turn in which you draw a card and play another. It is worth 100 points.

• Do not rush to play it. A safety held in your hand is worth 400 points if you wait until somebody attacks you, as the next section explains.
• The exception is right of way. If you are stopped and holding no green light, playing it starts your car at once and spares you the green light for the rest of the round.

The dirty trick

When an attack lands on you and you are holding the safety that answers it, you may play it immediately, even when it is not your turn. The attack is then cancelled entirely, as though it had never landed: no breakdown to repair and no green light to wait for. You score 400 points, a hundred for the safety and three hundred for the trick.

• The window is short. Your chance stays open until the next player draws or plays. If they get there first the trick is gone, and you must deal with the attack the way anyone else would.
• Your own draw closes it. With two players, the next player after the attack is you. Draw your card out of habit and the trick is over, and your safety is worth only a hundred.
• After a successful trick you take a full turn, drawing and playing, and the game then continues from you. Anyone sitting between you and the attacker may lose their turn.
• In team play, the safety in your team-mate's hand protects both of you, so the trick may come from their hand rather than yours.

Counterflow

An attack that does not stop your car but turns it around. While it is in effect, every distance card you play is subtracted from your total instead of added to it, and you lose the same number of points.

• You never go back past the start. At 50 miles, playing a 100 card leaves you at zero and costs you only the fifty you had actually covered. A car on zero loses nothing at all.
• Discard your distance cards instead of playing them while you are turned around, until you find an end of counterflow. That way you lose no miles.
• A 200 card played backwards is still a 200 card. It counts against your two and it costs you the bonus for arriving without one.
• Listen carefully here. Counterflow and its cure share the same sound on purpose, so you may think somebody has saved you while you are in fact driving backwards. Check the state of your car.

How a round ends

A round ends in one of two ways:

• Somebody reaches exactly a thousand miles, is declared the winner, and the bonuses are counted.
• The draw pile runs out and then every hand is played out, in which case the round may end with no winner and no bonuses.

The reshuffle option

The table owner decides this, and it is on by default. With it on, the spent cards are gathered and shuffled into a new draw pile whenever the old one runs out, so the round only ends when somebody reaches a thousand. With it off, the pile really does run out and the second ending above becomes possible.

• Safety cards never return to the pile, whether the discards are reshuffled or not.

Scoring

These are counted as you go:

• Every distance card gives you as many points as its mileage.
• Every safety you play: 100 points.
• Every successful dirty trick: 400 points.

And these go to the winner of the round:

• Arrival: 300 points for completing the thousand.
• Coronation: 300 points if the draw pile was empty when you arrived.
• Hood: 500 points if you arrived and no opponent moved a single mile. Every opponent must be on zero, not merely one of them.
• No 200s: 300 points if you completed the thousand without playing a single 200 card.

In team play these bonuses are counted once for the car, not for each player.

What the table owner chooses

• Score limit: the number that ends the match. The lowest is a thousand and the highest five hundred thousand; five thousand is usual. Scores are checked at the end of each round.
• Accumulation of problems: whether a stopped car may be attacked.
• Reshuffle the discards: whether spent cards return to the draw pile when it runs out.
• Play in teams: only asked with four, six, eight or nine players, followed by how many teams when the number allows two layouts.

Controls and shortcuts

The iPhone gesture is always the Android one with three fingers instead of two.

Worth remembering

• Miles and points are not the same number. Miles are your place on the road, they reset every round, and they stop at a thousand. Points are your total for the whole match and never reset. That is why your score can pass a thousand while the round is still going: safeties, dirty tricks and bonuses are points that move no miles.
• Count the safeties. If you hold one and have seen two played, the fourth is in somebody's hand, and attacking them with what it answers invites a dirty trick.
• The target list shows each car's mileage, so aim your blocking cards at whoever is closest to a thousand.