Description

Noalon is a hand management game for two players in which there are only two types of cards.

The game contains an equal number of red and black cards. Each player has a hand of twelve cards and tries to work towards a winning hand. Hands are formed based on the sequence of red and black cards in your hand, so you can't freely rearrange the order of your cards. The other catch is that you draw cards two at a time, insert them next to each other, and always discard two adjacent cards.

Scoring follows this rule: a set is a sequence of N cards starting from one edge of your held cards, followed by the same number N cards of the other color. You may only use one set to calculate your score. If the leftover cards not in the set would form a set on their own then the point value of your hand is half the number of leftovers; otherwise it's the full number of leftover cards.

Points are to be avoided. You can go out if you have four or fewer points in your hand. When someone goes out, players compare hands and the player with more points is the loser, and takes points equal to the difference in points with a bonus for a perfect hand (0 points) or undercut (where the person who went out had the worse hand). The first player to collect nine points loses the game.

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