On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... a card game completely for free!
The 12 Days of Christmas is a new holiday card game for 3 to 5 players. It was invented by James Ernest and Mike Selinker, who were absolutely amazed to discover that no one had done this game before. It's a simple deck of cards with 12 drummers drumming, 11 pipers piping, and so on (plus a couple of Clauses). Players take 12 rounds capturing point cards and building a perfect hand of gifts for the final scoring round. It's charming, simple, unique, family-friendly, and available right now as a free PDF.
In our efforts to sell this game to game publishers, we were amused that no one wanted a game they could "only sell at Christmas" despite the common knowledge that 60% of all game companies' sales are during Christmas anyway. So, since no one bought it, our current plan is to create a spiffier version of this game and publish it through Kickstarter in the Spring of 2012.
Meanwhile, we invite you to download and print this version completely for free. Note that you can build a deck for this game from standard playing cards (though it takes a few decks) so you don't have to print the cards if you don't want to. They just make it prettier.
Here is what you need to play The 12 Days of Christmas:
- 12 Days of Christmas Rules Sheet (1.05 MB)
- 12 Days of Christmas Cards (With black outlines, 7.04 MB)
- 12 Days of Christmas Cards (Alternate, with crop lines, 9.4 MB)
- 12 Days of Christmas Card Backs (For Gift Deck, 2.8 MB)
- 12 Days of Christmas Alternate Card Backs (For Holiday Deck, 3.0 MB)
ArtsCow Decks:
ArtsCow is a print-on-demand shop in Hong Kong that makes fairly decent playing cards. This game is so large that it takes up most of two decks, and (unfortunately) the decks can't have mixed back designs, so you'll have to sort the Gift Deck from the Holiday Deck by using the fronts. (It's not that hard). That being said, here are links to the TWO DECKS you'll need to print if you want to make this project at ArtsCow.
- 12 Days Deck (Odd cards and some of the 12s)
- 12 Days Deck (Even cards minus some of the 12s)
As a reminder, we make no money directly from anything you order from ArtsCow. If you like the game, please remember to donate to Cheapass Games. We appreciate your support and it helps keep us in the mood to release more awesome new games. Also, be sure to follow us on Facebook because we try to announce every time that ArtsCow runs special deals on their playing cards.
