Object of the Game:
In The Simpsons trading card game, you take a star of The Simpsons show and try to take over a scene. The first player to get 7 points wins the game. Players score points by using their Characters to complete or trash Scenes.
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Bart Simpson
Use this Bart Simpson theme deck to score points by cleverly placing Characters in famous (and infamous) Springfield locations. It’ll take some devilish cunning, and that’s what Bart’s all about. But watch out for the Action cards! |
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Homer Simpson
Use this Homer Simpson theme deck to score points by skillfully placing Characters in famous (and infamous) Springfield locations. Pull a Homer and you may be able to bumble your way to sweet victory. . . . Mmm. Sweet victory. . . . But watch out for the Action cards! |
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Lisa Simpson
Use this Lisa Simpson theme deck to score points by strategically placing the Characters of Springfield in famous (and infamous) locations. You’ll need some wits and skill. Fortunately, that’s what Lisa’s deck is all about. But watch out for the Action cards! |
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Mr. Burns
Use this Mr. Burns theme deck to score points by shrewdly placing Characters in famous (and infamous) Springfield locations. Attack without mercy, which will come naturally, given that Mr. Burns is vile. Rotten too. But watch out for the Action cards! |
Each starter deck has 40 cards. Each common character or scene card in a starter deck appears three times; each common action card in a starter deck appears twice; each rare card in a starter deck appears once. There are 18 unique cards in each deck. (There are three different Marge Simpson and three different Maggie Simpson cards; one of each Marge card appears in the Homer deck, and one of each Maggie card appears in the Lisa deck.)
 Sideshow Bob |
 Krusty |
 Itchy & Scratchy |
| Add more of Springfield’s “finest” to your game and gain an
edge on your opponents. Each 11-card booster pack contains all-new*
Character, Scene, and Action cards. Control the city that spawned the
“Flaming Moe”! Each player must have his or her own 40-card deck to play The Simpsons trading card game. |
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The Simpsons game can be played with 2 players, but it’s more fun with 3 to 5 players. Each player needs a 40-card deck of The Simpsons cards to play. You’ll also need something to keep track of your points (dice, counters, or pencil and paper).
The Simpsons game has four theme decks you can play right out of the box. When you’re ready to change your deck around or build a deck from scratch, check out the strategy section for tips.
Each player shuffles his or her deck and puts it face down on the table. Then each player draws 6 cards.
The youngest player chooses who goes first, or you could just play rock-paper-scissors to decide. Good old rock. Nothing beats that! Play goes clockwise around the table.
There are a number of things you can do on your turn:
For example, you could play a Character on your Scene, score your Scene (if it has enough Characters on it), play another Scene, and then play a second Character.
At the end of your turn, you may discard any number of cards from your hand. Then refill your hand to 6 cards. (That way, you can replace the cards you don’t want.) After you refill your hand, you can’t play any more cards on your turn. If you run out of cards in your deck, just shuffle your discard pile and make that your new deck.
You play a Scene from your hand by putting it on the table in front of you. You can have only 1 of your Scenes in play at a time.
When you play a Character, you have to choose a Scene in play to put it on. You put the Character next to the Scene, facing you. You can play any Character to any Scene—even to another player’s Scene. The Character stays at that Scene until the Scene goes away or an effect moves the Character.
If you have 2 or more Characters at the same Scene, put them in a row toward you so that everyone can see their traits (and remember that the Characters are yours).
Each deck has 1 “Star” Character. It behaves just like any other Character, except that it doesn’t count as 1 of your 2 Characters for the turn (because stars are better than the rest of us).
Each Scene has two numbers on it. The number on the left is how many Characters it takes to complete the Scene, and the number on the right is how many Characters it takes to trash the Scene.
Only Characters that match the Scene they’re on count toward completing it. Characters that don’t match the Scene they’re on count toward trashing it. (A Character matches a Scene if it has 1 or more traits in common with the Scene.)
Once a Scene has enough matching or nonmatching Characters on it, all you have to do to complete or trash the Scene is to say you’re doing it (on your turn, of course). A Scene isn’t automatically completed or trashed as soon as it has enough Characters on it. Sometimes you’ll want to wait until there are more Characters on the Scene in order to keep other players from getting points or to get more points for yourself. If more Characters are on a Scene than are needed to complete or trash it, the player who completes or trashes the Scene chooses which Characters to count. You can complete or trash any player’s Scene, not just your own.
Here’s who gets points when a Scene is completed or trashed:
After you figure out who gets points for completing or trashing a Scene, the Scene and all the Characters on it go to their owners’ discard piles. Some Scenes also have effects that happen when they’re completed or trashed. And that’s the end of that chapter.
Action cards let you do things during other peoples’ turns, in much the same way that Mambo in the Morning was interrupted by a special report about the theft of Jebediah Springfield’s head. An Action card does something, and then it’s discarded. Every Action starts out by telling you exactly when you can play it.
If 2 or more players want to play an Action at the same time, start with the person whose turn it is and then go around the table in turn order.
When you’re ready to change your deck, it’s really simple to get more cards. Just pick up some booster packs for The Simpsons trading card game at your local Kwik-E-Mart. You can even build a deck entirely from cards in booster packs. Anything goes as long as you end up with a deck that:
Here is some more
information which was provided from
the Wizards of the Coast website
Getting Started
In the Simpsons card game, players try to take over an episode by completing or trashing scenes. You can play with 2 people, but it’s best if you play with 3 to 5 people. Each player needs a deck of cards and some way to keep track of their points. You can use a pen and paper to keep track of my points, but some people prefer to use counters. For those who haven’t played a game like this before, a counter is something like a pebble or a penny. One counter equals one point.
There are four preconstructed decks available for you to choose from, each one based on a lovable Simpsons Character. These characters are Bart, Lisa, Mr. Burns and Homer. It’s OK if more than one player in a game wants to use the same Character deck. For instance, if Susie and I both want to play the Mr. Burns deck, we can.
Later, when you’ve played the game a few times, you may want to purchase booster packs and use those cards to build your own deck. For starters, though, you’ll probably want to play a few games using the preconstructed decks until you get the hang of things.
Playing the Game
Once all the players have a deck and a way to keep track of their points, you’re ready to play. Each player then shuffles their deck and places it face down. Then each player draws six cards. The youngest player chooses who goes first. If two players are the exact same age, or if people don’t feel like divulging their age, then you should all agree on some other means of deciding who goes first.
A player, on their turn, may play a Scene if they don’t already have one in play. Scenes are cards that represent places in an episode, like “Kamp Krusty” or “Science Fair.” A player can only have one Scene in play at a time.
On their turn, a player may also play characters on a Scene to complete or trash it. The Scene card has some words at the bottom. Those are called the Scene’s traits. Characters have traits, too. For instance, Milhouse’s traits are “Uptight”, “Kid” and “Lackey.” If you play a Character on a Scene, and the Character has at least one trait in common with the Scene, then that Character counts toward completing the Scene. If a Character has no traits in common with the Scene, then that Character counts toward trashing the Scene.
There are two numbers on the Scene. The number on the left tells you how many Characters it takes to compete the Scene. The number on the right tells you how many characters it takes to trash a Scene.
Finally, on their turn, a player may complete a Scene (if there are enough Characters that match) or trash a Scene (if there are enough characters that don’t match). When a Scene is completed or trashed, players get points. The player who played the Scene and any players who played characters to complete or trash the Scene each get one point. The players with the most characters on a Scene that’s completed get 1 bonus point. Nobody gets a bonus point if a Scene is trashed.
Trashing or completing a Scene is always optional. You’re never forced to declare a Scene completed or trashed if you don’t feel like it. The first player to get seven points, wins.
Trashing a Scene
As you should know, you can declare a scene complete when there are enough characters on it with at least one matching trait. You can declare a scene trashed when there are enough characters on it with no matching traits. When you trash a scene, the player who played the scene and the players with any Characters used to complete or trash a scene get 1 point each. This is pretty much the same as completing a scene. One important difference between completing and trashing a scene is that when a scene is trashed, nobody gets a bonus point.
So, why would you ever want to trash a scene?
Sometimes you might want to trash a scene to keep other players from scoring the bonus point they’d get if the scene were completed. Remember, the first player to reach 7 points wins, and those bonus points can add up quickly.
Take the Moe’s Tavern scene card from the preconstructed Homer deck. When this scene is completed using Homer the player who played it gets 1 extra bonus point. Somebody playing the Homer deck, therefore, could earn a total of 3 points for Moe’s Tavern—1 for playing the scene, 1 for having the most Characters on it, and 1 for having used Homer to complete the scene.
Since it only takes 7 points to win, letting your opponent get 3 points for completing 1 scene has got to hurt. But if Moe’s Tavern were trashed instead, your opponents would only get 1 point for having played the scene and would lose out on the other 2 bonus points. If you helped trash Moe’s Tavern you’d get 1 point, too, for having played a Character on the scene—leaving things much more even between you and your opponent.
In this situation, players might team up to trash the scene, rather than allowing their opponent to get too far ahead. This is perfectly appropriate, especially if you’re the ruthless sort who likes to play the Mr. Burns deck.
Sometimes you might want to trash a scene because it will score points for you more quickly. There are some scenes that require fewer Characters to trash than they do to complete. You’ll miss out on possible bonus points for having the most Characters on a scene, but sometimes it’s important to score quickly, especially in a close game or if you don’t have any Characters with traits that match the scenes in play.
Finally, some scenes have effects that take place when they’re completed. Trashing the scene prevents the effect from happening. For instance, when the Springfield Nuclear Plant scene is completed, the player who completed it gets to choose a scene in play. That scene and all the characters on it are discarded. This might be bad for you, especially if you don’t have any Characters that match the scene and so can’t complete it yourself, but you can try to trash the scene to prevent anyone from using the effect against you.
Action Cards
Action cards add unpredictability to the game by allowing players to do things when it’s not, strictly speaking, their turn. You’ll probably spend most of your time playing Characters and deciding whether it’s better to complete or trash a given Scene, but a well-timed Action card can make the difference between winning or losing.
Let’s look at a couple of examples from the Mr. Burns deck. All of the preconstructed decks have good Action cards in them, but the Mr. Burns deck has some especially devious ones.
First, the Poison Pill card is a great way to change the momentum of the game. You play Poison Pill when a Character is played on a Scene. This Action card causes that Scene and all the Characters on it (including the one that was just played) to be discarded. You can use Poison Pill just as someone plays a Character to complete a Scene, denying your opponents the points they would have gained. Since players are limited to playing one regular Character per turn, Poison Pill can easily undo an otherwise carefully laid strategy when it sends those valuable Characters to the discard pile.
If you’re particularly desperate to get rid of a Scene, you can even play Poison Pill after playing one of your own Characters—but this probably shouldn’t happen too often.
Then there’s Staff Review, an Action card you play on your turn that allows you to move all the Characters on your Scene to any Scenes you choose. This is a sneaky way to keep your opponents from doing things you don’t want them to do. For instance, you could play Staff Review to keep an opponent from trashing your Scene. You could also use this Action card to suddenly shift a bunch of nonmatching Characters to another player’s Scene and trash it, instead. The possibilities are limited only by your devious imagination.
VALUES: TBA