Description

Shark in the Water is a competitive card game for 2-4 players ages 7 and up.

• play time is approximately 5-10 minutes per player
• Goal= first player to 20 victory points wins
• in Shark in the Water, players use their one action per turn to build up their fleet of fishing boats, play fishermen to catch fish or send the shark or pirate card to another player in order to capture their fish or destroy their boats.
• as players draw up their hand limit of 5 cards, any fish cards drawn into their hand are immediately played to the center of the table and become available to catch. This does not count as your one action and is mandatory.
• with any remaining cards left in your hand you may choose to play a boat card into your fleet in front of you or (provided you have an available boat to place a fish on), you may play a fishermen card to catch one of the available fish from the center of the table.
• When a boat has the required number of fish on it, that boat can immediately be "docked" for it's victory points.
• once you've taken your one action, play continues clockwise to the next player who draws one card at random from your hand before drawing up their remaining hand limit of 5 from the central draw deck.
• The shark or pirate cards can show up in any players hand at any time and if that player chooses to, they may use it for their one action to attack another players fleet.
• The shark is able to destroy another players boat and cause that boat to be discarded along with any fish on it.
• The pirate can be used in a similar way however instead of destroying the boat, the pirate is used to steal the fish on that boat.
• In a defensive play, if the player being attacked is holding the "chum" card, that player can send the shark to attack another player instead of themselves.
• Pirate and Shark attacks can both be defended against by playing the Jed Fishworthy (dynamite Fishermen) card. In this defensive play, the player being attacked discards the Jed Fishworthy card in order to immediately stop the attack and send the Pirate or Shark to the discard pile, which is then reshuffled back into the central draw deck.

—description from the designer