This Fight Is Staged! 2026

This Fight Is Staged! is a cooperative strategy game for two players, played with two decks of playing cards. Work together with limited information to sequence your number cards correctly and impress the audience of face cards!

At the start of a game, both players separate their face cards [J, Q, K] from their number cards [A through 10]. Select which venue you're playing, shuffle the face cards, and you each set up your section of the audience according to the venue rules.

Shuffle your number cards, set aside the top 3 face-down to track your flourishes, and draw 7 cards. Take turns playing cards into a shared sequence. You can play whatever card you want, but you'll want to cater your choreography to impress the audience members!

Each rank of face card has a different requirement to impress them, so you'll have to read what your partner is going for correctly to maximize your score. The difficulty to impress the face cards increases as you play, according to the rules of the venue you're playing. Plan ahead and try to chain together impressing audience members for a bigger score!

This Fight Is Staged! is part of the zine game line by Triple Rainbow Games - small, handmade paper booklets that act as rulebooks and components for a variety of strategy games and other curios of joy. We provide the zines, you provide the rest of the components so you don't have to buy the same stuff over and over again, and we both win thanks to more accessible and affordable games!

—description from the designer