Description

This expansion does exactly what it's title would imply and no more: it supplies the components necessary to make a Hamsterdam base set (which can only accommodate a max of 4 players) playable with 5 or 6 players. It does not include any new types of cards or components, new rules, or anything else that changes the game-play.

Hamsterdam is a primarily card-based game, where each player gets a set of 11 numbered "dam" cards, a set of 20 identical regular "hamster" cards and 2 "special" hamster cards drawn from a deck of 16 (which includes 2 each of 8 special types of hamsters).

The Hamsterdam 5-6 Player Expansion includes 2 additional sets of dam cards, 2 additional 20-card regular-hamster decks, and an 8-card specialty hamster deck including 1 of each type.

The expansion does not include other components needed to play the game (flood tokens, dice), thus it cannot be used as a stand-alone game.

Game-play of Hamsterdam when incorporating this expansion proceeds exactly as the base game does: Players create a "dam" made up of a line of cards numbered 2 through 12 and distribute their hamster cards (20 regular + 2 special) on top of the numbered cards. Players take turns rolling 2 d6 to see which spot in the dam is weakened. If a hamster is on top of that number, that hamster is used to plug to the hole and is placed to the side in a reserve pile to come back into play in the next round. If a hamster is not on that number, a flood token is placed there until the end of the round, at which time it can be removed by taking a hamster card permanently out of play. If a flood token is already located on a number that is rolled, another flood token is placed in a special pile of tokens belonging to that player which cannot be removed. As flood tokens pile up, your stock of hamster saviors dwindles, and flood tokens pile up all the faster. The game ends when any player accumulates 10 flood tokens (counting both those in the permanent pile and those currently on the dam). The winner is the player with the fewest flood tokens. In the case of a tie, the player with the most remaining hamster cards wins.