Overview
PlomBOX the card game is a fast-paced game for 3 to 8 players lasting 15 to 30 minutes where you will play a proud activist in an NGO, a zealous corporate in a global company, or a simple citizen, in the context of the PlomBOX project.
Your role will be determined randomly at the start of the game, and there will always be at least one member of each team. Your role is kept secret until the end of the game.
During the game you will accumulate resources to reach a goal, different for each faction, and denounce areas for contamination in the hope to have them closed. In case you are a simple citizen, you will thrive to have the PlomBOX project completed by assigning resources cards in order to fulfill the 4 work packages in different sites (player stacks). As a corporate you aim is to develop industries to have as many industrialized sites as posible. Note however that a site too heavily contaminated can be incriminated and all the effort lost. As an NGO activist your goal will be to end the game with as few as possible contaminated sites. Note that these goals are not totally exclusive and a game may well end with different factions winning, or none of them!
Gameplay
A deck of 20 cards per player is randomized from three basic PlomBOX decks.
Each player receives 5 cards and will at every turn play one card targeting a player, and draw one card from the deck. You can target yourself.
There are 4 kinds of cards:
- resource cards, that are played hidden at any player and accumulated (hidden) in front of them (their so-called stack or site). Each provide resource for one work package of PlomBOX (1 to 4), industrial resources (marked by
) and contamination (marked by 
). They define how developed is the PlomBOX for each site, as well as the level of industrialization and contamination
- positive cards that allow you to play 2 cards in one turn (that would be 3 including the positive card if you play it on yourself, as most usually do)
- negative cards that are played on another player to make that player lose next turn
- Incrimination cards that will reveal the cards in front of the target player and will discard them if the total contamination of the area is greater than 2 (ie. 3 or more, area contaminated, everything is closed for cleaning)
Endgame
The game ends when there is no card left in the deck or when a number of Incrimination cards equals to the number of players have been played, whichever happens first. When the game ends all cards are revealed and the following is computed individually for each player (only played cards are considered):
- if there are cards of all workpackages (1 to 4) in the player stack, then its PlomBOX is done
- if the industry total is above 4 (ie. 5 or more), then the industry is considered developed
- if the contamination total is above 2 (ie. 3 or more), then the area is considered contaminated
Citizen players win if there are a more PlomBOX completed than the total number of citizen, corporate players win if there are more developed industries than the total number of corporate players, and NGO players win if there are more clean area than the total number of NGO players plus one. These are strict comparisons (ie for 3 players, 1 player of each role, the citizen player needs 2 PlomBOX completed to win, the corporate needs 2 industries, and the NGO needs no area contaminated). It is possible for multiple factions to win, or for everybody to lose.
In case of bug or suggestion, please send a report to info@plombox.org.
Tips
In order to win as a citizen or a corporate, developping the PlomBOX/industry at your site is not enough as you need more PlomBOX/industrialized sites than the number of citizen/corporate players. You therefore probably will need to assign resource cards to other player stacks. Note that you can even win without developping your PlomBOX/industry if there are enough other developped sites.
While the citizens and corporates have a similar way of achieving their goal, developping sites, the NGO player aim is usually the opposite. Of course an NGO player can contaminate on purpose a site (his/her or another one) in order to incriminate it later. Note however that if citizens/corporates guess a player is an NGO, he/she will probably be the target of most negative cards during the reminding of the game, so staying low profile is usually a good idea.
Be careful about the end arriving fast when positive cards are played. A combination of a positive card and 2 incriminations can be a very efficient way of ending the game for a player who believes he/she is in a winning situation.
Enjoy!