Chaos Cargo
A real-time, slam-the-card matching game for 2–4 players in the same universe but on different ships. First captain to empty their ship hold and their hand wins. Hesitate and you lose. Watch for hazards.
Setup
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The 100-card cargo deck is shuffled.
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Each captain receives a face-down ship of 23 cards and one face-up hand card.
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Three shared wormholes start with one face-up card each.
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One card remains in the deck pool (unused).
How to Play
This is real-time — there are no turns. Any captain may act at any moment. Be the first to spot a match and slam.
The Slam
If your hand card shares at least one cargo symbol with the top card of any wormhole, you may slam your card onto that wormhole. After your slam, you immediately draw the next card from your ship into your hand (if your ship has cards left).
Each card carries 6 symbols drawn from a pool of 30 — pizza, lasers, robot arms, alien eggs, toxic barrels, customs inspectors, comets, crystals, and 22 others. Any one symbol matching anywhere on the wormhole's top card is enough.
Empty wormholes are wild. When a wormhole has been emptied — for example, right after someone scoops it with an "accuse contraband" — there is no top card to match. Any captain may slam any card onto an empty wormhole to reopen it. The first card played sets the new top card everyone else must match.
Hazards
Three symbols are not normal cargo:
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Toxic Barrel — whenever you slam a card showing a toxic barrel, every OTHER captain is frozen for 3 seconds. Their move attempts will bounce until the freeze expires.
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Alien Egg — whenever you slam a card showing an alien egg, every ship pile rotates one captain forward (Captain 1 → Captain 2 → Captain 3 → Captain 4 → Captain 1). Yes, you just got somebody else's deck.
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Customs Inspector — when a wormhole's top card is a customs inspector, ANY captain (not just the one who slammed it) may accuse contraband and scoop the entire wormhole pile to the bottom of their own ship. This is a penalty for the captain who slammed the inspector — and a chance for the others.
Winning
The first captain to have 0 cards in both their ship and their hand wins. Slam fast.
Variants
The boardlang declares 2–4 players via min_players = 2 and max_players = 4. Adjust the player count in the lobby and the deal scales automatically.