Fat Lip

How to Play

Race your marbles round the board and into your home diamond. First to get all of them in wins. In a team game, a team wins when both partners are home.

Coming out

Roll a 1 or a 6 to bring a marble out of home onto your 1st color dot on the outer ring.

Sixes are wild

A 6 can be used as any number from 1 to 6. Only using it as a 6 earns you another roll.

Falling behind

Anyone who falls well behind the leader, you or a computer, rolls more 5s and 6s until they catch up. It keeps games close.

Moving and kills

• Roll a number, move that many spaces. You can't jump over your own marbles.
• Land on an opponent and they go back home.
• Safe spaces (no kills): the shortcut dots and the 3 color dots on the line into the middle. Your welcome mat is not safe.

The shortcut

From your 1st, 2nd or 3rd color dot, roll exactly a 6, 4 or 2 to jump to your shortcut dot (the dashed lines on the board). Then roll a 1 to drop onto the inner ring, 21 spaces from your mat.

A rolled 1 has to come up. A 6 is wild, so it doesn't: if coming up is the only thing your 6 can do, you're asked, and Stay passes your turn with the marble still safe on the dot.

If two of your marbles can reach the spot you tap, both lift up. Tap the one you want to move.

The long way

Miss the shortcut and you go all the way round the outer ring, then up your 3 color dots to your welcome mat. That doesn't let you in yet: you still owe one full lap of the inner ring.

Getting home

• Travel the inner ring clockwise back to your welcome mat, then into the diamond.
• The diamond is 4 spaces and you can go round it either way: 1 = the mouth, 2 = a side, 3 = the far space, 4 = the other side. You must land exactly on a free space.
• Once inside, marbles only move deeper, never back.

Teams

• Partners sit opposite each other (2v2, or 2v2v2 with six players).
• When you roll a 1 or 6, your partner may bring a marble out too.
• Once you're all home, you keep rolling, and your rolls move your partner's marbles.
• Partnered with a computer? Once you're all home you're asked if you want to pick its moves. Say yes and it still rolls, but you choose where the marble goes (online you get 20 seconds, then it moves itself).

Fusion (a team option)

• Partners share one color: two colors on the board at four players, three at six.
• On your roll you can move any of your team's marbles. A 1 or 6 brings one out from either base.
• Your partner's shortcut is always open to you.
• A marble can finish in either team diamond: it goes in off whichever team welcome mat it reaches on the inner ring. A full diamond? Keep going round to the other one.
• Team marbles block each other like your own: you can't land on one or jump over one, so no team kills.
• Your team wins when every marble is home.

House rules (off unless turned on: by the host online, or on the setup screen)

• Teammate shortcuts (teams only). Missed your own shortcut? Land on one of your partner's color dots and roll their 6 / 4 / 2 to take their shortcut. Roll a 1 to drop off it. You land on the inner ring where their shortcut drops, which is 9 spaces from your own mat.
• Skip Turn. Everyone gets one skip per game. Use it before you roll. Once you've rolled (even the bonus roll after a 6), it's gone for that turn.

Callouts

• REVENGE! You or your partner knock home the player who last knocked home one of you.
• DOUBLE KILL! Two kills in one turn.
• CLOSE CALL! That roll could have knocked one of your marbles home, and they chose not to. The marble that got away flashes. Only you see it, and it never fires when your side just lost a marble.
• ON FIRE! Three 6s in a row. Watch the die heat up on the way.

Computers

One level for all the computers. Tuned so a player who knows the game wins about: Easy 4 games in 5 · Medium 3 in 5 · Hard 1 in 6 · Impossible 1 in 13. Adaptive learns your level over a few games and plays harder when you're ahead, easier when you're behind, aiming for you winning about 2 in 5. It remembers you on this device. Medium and up keep their marbles on the color dots to set up the shortcut. Hard and Impossible play the same way: their best move every time, looking a turn ahead at what you could hit back. Impossible also gets luckier dice: when a roll would knock one of your marbles home or win the game and it misses, it often gets another try. That's what makes it impossible. Apart from that, falling behind is the only thing that gets anyone better dice, you included.

Those odds are for 4 players, everyone for themselves. In 2v2 (plain teams or Fusion) you and your computer partner win about Easy 19 in 20 · Medium 9 in 10 · Hard 2 in 5 · Impossible 1 in 3. No level throws the game with silly moves: easier computers make small mistakes and go after your marbles less; Hard and Impossible hunt you. Computer partners play for the team.