Cowards 2025

Cowards is a bluffing game for 2 players, using the Blossom Deck. It is based on Barcelona, a similar game with a standard poker deck. The game is named after Cowards Bay, which is set in the fantasy Dew Point universe.

OBJECTIVE: Cowards is played in short rounds, using chips to keep score, and players can choose to play as many rounds as they wish. The goal is to have the most chips at the end of the game.

GAMEPLAY: The Blossom deck is divided into two decks, Day and Night, each having 27 cards. Players draw one card from each deck. Players then choose one of their cards to reveal, and the lowest of these may decide whether the game is "On" or "Off". If the game is "On" (which happens automatically if both players played a Night card), all cards are revealed. The highest Night card wins (ties are resolved by the suit order prescribed in the rules), and the loser’s penalty is decided by the size of their Day card, which they pay in chips to the winner.

COMPONENTS:

The Blossom Deck roughly 100 chips for each player

THE BLOSSOM DECK: The Blossom Deck is a six-suited deck from James Earnest and Crab Fragment Games, and is set the Dew Point universe. The deck consists of 54 cards in six suits ranked Ace through nine. The suits are divided into three colors, each with "night" and "day" versions, allowing the deck to be split into halves, thirds, or sixths. Two games were specifically created for the Blossom Deck: Bulldog (a gambling game for 2-8 players) and Cowards (a gambling game for 2 players).