The goal
Each player brings five rats to a three-by-three board and plays one per turn, with 60 seconds to decide. When all nine squares are full, count the rats: whoever holds more of the ten wins. Five each is a draw.
If you've played Triple Triad, you'll feel at home within a move.
How a rat changes sides
Every rat has a number on each of its four sides. Place a rat next to a rival's: if your facing number is higher, that rat switches to your side. A tie changes nothing.
Flips don't chain. Only the rats touching the card you just placed can change sides, so you can always work out what a move will do before you make it.
The three elements
Sides can carry an element. Mutant beats Radioactive, Radioactive beats Mechanical, Mechanical beats Mutant. When your side's element beats the side it touches, that rival rat loses one point on all four sides, before the numbers are compared and for the rest of the duel.
The four dirty tricks
You can use one trick each turn before you place a rat, as long as you have any left.
- Super Cheese adds a point to all four sides of a rat you hold.
- A Rat Trap waits on an empty square and takes a point from the first rival rat placed there.
- The Taser locks a rat in your rival's hand for their next turn.
- Fog hides your numbers from your rival.
Six ways to win more duels
- Start in the corners. A corner rat shows two sides to the board; a centre rat shows four.
- Point your weak numbers at the walls. A number facing a wall can't be beaten.
- Keep your best rat for last. Nobody can answer the card that fills the board.
- Count every placement. Flips don't chain, so each move has a result you can work out.
- Read the elements before the numbers. One lost point on every side can turn a safe rat into a free one.
- Save your trick for the moment it hurts. A Taser on the rat they were saving beats a Taser on turn one.
Between duels
Level your rats up in the lab and roll them into the evolution chamber for new art and new numbers. Snifire's line goes all the way to Rapalm.
Try it yourself
The Closed Beta is free, and Igor's teaching duel walks you through all of this.