Midnight Bakery
Three bakes before dawn. Each bake, a batch of pastries comes around the table. You keep one card in secret, everyone reveals together, and the rest of the batch passes on. After the third bake, the most truffles break any tie. Highest score wins the night.
Players
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2 to 8 bakers. Flour, Sugar, Butter, Cream, Spice, Cocoa, Honey, and Moon, in that seat order.
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Flour leads the first pick of each bake only in the sense that the deal starts there. Every pick is simultaneous: everyone who still holds cards chooses before anyone sees what was kept.
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A locked card stays locked. You cannot take it back.
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At two bakers, a Night Owl sits on the window ledge between Sugar and Flour. The owl is not a baker. It drafts, it can outrank you, and it never scores and cannot win.
The deck
The base deck is 106 cards, used at 2 to 5 bakers.
At 6, 7, or 8 bakers the sixteen extra cards are shuffled in, 122 in all. The base deck holds 49 baguette loaves.
Each bake deals every seat, including the owl, a batch of this size:
Cards left in the deck wait for the next bake. Cards in a display case at the end of a bake are discarded and do not return. Truffles are the exception: they leave the case and stay in your truffle box until dawn.
The deal gives each seat its whole batch, in seat order, and then the owl when only two bakers are playing.
A pick
On a pick, if your batch still has cards, you either:
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Keep one pastry. It goes face down until everyone who can choose has chosen.
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Use a Baker's Peel already in your case. Take two pastries from the batch, in the order you want them filed, then the Peel leaves the game. It is not passed on. You need at least two cards still in the batch, you may spend only one Peel on a pick, and you cannot spend a Peel on the same pick that put it in your case.
With a Peel in your case, the board shows two buttons under your batch. Press a pastry and then Keep one to keep just that card and save the Peel, or press two pastries in the order you want them and then Use the peel.
If your batch is empty, you sit out that pick. A Peel that takes your last two cards does that to you for the rest of the bake. Whoever is left holding nothing on the final pick of a batch skips it. The owl never uses a Peel.
When the last baker who can choose has locked, every choice is filed into that baker's case, the owl snatches one card if it is in the game, and the remaining batches pass.
Passing
The lobby option Passing is Alternate or Next.
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Alternate (the default). Bake 1 passes to the next seat, bake 2 to the previous seat, bake 3 to the next seat again.
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Next. Every bake passes to the next seat.
At three or more bakers the ring is the seats in order. At two bakers the ring is Flour, Sugar, the Night Owl, and back. Passing backward runs that ring the other way: the owl hands to Sugar, Sugar hands to Flour, Flour hands to the owl.
You do not see the faces of a batch you have already passed. Each rival's box shows their batch face down and how many cards are in it, so you can follow a batch around the table. When a rival locks a pastry, it sits ringed at the end of their hand until the reveal.
The Night Owl
Only at two bakers. Nobody sees the owl's batch, only how many cards are in it. After both bakers lock, the owl keeps one card from its own batch, chosen at random, in the open. If a Peel leaves both bakers with empty hands while the owl still holds cards, the owl keeps snatching and passing on its own until a batch reaches a baker again or the bake ends. The log names what it snatched. Its case and its truffles are public. It occupies a rank for baguettes and for the most-truffles bonus. It never takes the penalty for an empty truffle box, and an empty box does not cost anyone else a rank. It never scores.
Scoring a bake
Cases score at the end of the bake, then clear. Glaze and Peel score nothing by themselves.
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Croissant. Every pair scores 4. A leftover scores 0. One croissant is 0, two are 4, three are 4, four are 8.
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Macaron. Every three score 9. Two are 0, three are 9, four are 9, six are 18.
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Cinnamon Bun. 1, 3, 5, 8, then 12 for the fifth. Each bun after the fifth adds 3, so six buns are 15.
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Tarts. Jam 1, fruit 2, chocolate 3.
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Honey Glaze. A glazed tart scores 4 more (jam 5, fruit 6, chocolate 7). When you keep a glaze, it lands on the best unglazed tart already in your case: chocolate, then fruit, then jam. With no unglazed tart there, it waits for the next tart you keep. Several waiting glazes fill oldest first. A tart with no glaze scores its face value. A glaze still waiting when the bake ends scores 0, and the wait does not carry into the next bake.
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Baker's Peel. A glaze and a tart taken together with a Peel count as kept at the same time, so the order you take them does not matter: the glaze lands on the better of that tart and any unglazed tart already in your case. An unused Peel scores 0 and is discarded with the case.
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Baguettes. Only your loaf total matters, not how the loaves were split. Rank 1 scores 7, rank 2 scores 3, and rank 3 scores 1 only when six or more bakers are playing. A case with no loaves scores 0 and does not take a rank away from anyone. Rank is one plus the number of seats with strictly more loaves. Tied bakers share the rank and each score it in full. Ranks that nobody holds are skipped.
Six bakers with 9, 9, 6, 6, 4, and 0 loaves: the two 9s score 7, the two 6s score 1, and the 4 and the 0 score 0.
Six bakers with 10, 7, 7, 5, 3, and 2 loaves: 10 scores 7, both 7s score 3, and the 5 scores 0.
Four bakers with 8, 8, 5, and 2 loaves: both 8s score 7. Nobody else scores, because a four-baker table does not pay rank 3.
At two bakers the owl's loaves count. If the owl has 3, you have 2, and the other baker has 1, you are rank 2 and score 3. Without the owl you would have been rank 1.
The bake's results
When a bake ends, every baker sees its results before picking again. Each baker's row shows what the bake paid in total, broken down by croissants, macarons, buns, tarts and baguettes, along with the running total. Press Back to the ovens to close the results; each baker closes their own. After the third bake the results stay up as the night's results, with each truffle box opened and the winner marked.
Truffles
Truffles are set aside as soon as you keep them. They stay through every bake and score once, at dawn.
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The bakers with the most truffles, and at least one, each score 7. A tie shares the 7 in full.
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Every baker with no truffles scores −3. If the whole table has none, everyone takes −3 and the standings do not change.
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The owl can hold the most and deny every baker the 7. The owl's own empty box does not hand out a −3, and it does not count as a seat that has more than you.
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Every truffle box at the table, the owl's included, is shown beside that seat's points. The leader is ringed in gold, and a baker with an empty box is shown in red.
Winning
After the third bake, banked bake points and the truffle bonus are added. The highest total wins. If bakers tie, the one among them with the most truffles wins. If those truffle counts match too, they share the night.
A night can also end early when the deck can no longer deal anyone a card.
The score on the table during the night is the banked bake points only. The truffle bonus lands at dawn, so an empty box does not show as −3 while you are still drafting.