Rules v2.0

OBJECTIVE - The objective of The Big Steamy Thing is to run out of cards.  In other words, the first 
person to have no cards in their hand and no cards in their deck is the winnder. 
 
GETTING STARTED - To play, each player needs a deck of 50 cards, no more and no less.  
Currently, there are 100 cards to choose from in the main set, so your deck will represent exactly half of 
the available cards.  Your deck may not contain more than 1 copy of any particular card. 
To begin the game, both players shuffle their decks.  Put your deck face down somewhere in front of 
you, where you can easily draw cards from it, and leave space beside it for your discard pile.  Each player 
then draws an opening hand of 5 cards.  Take a few moments to look at your cards.  Sometimes an 
opening hand will contain cards impossible to play because they all require you to already have something 
else in play.  If something like this happens, you may declare a mulligan, meaning you return those 5 
cards to your deck, shuffle, and draw again.  If you declare a second mulligan, you draw 4 cards as your 
opening hand.  You may not declare a thrid mulligan. 
 
THE CARDS - There are 4 types of cards:  Characters, Objects, Locations, and Events.  Each card’s 
type is clearly marked on the bottom.  You will notice that Location cards also have a second word.  This 
will be explained later.  Normally, only one card of each type will be played each turn, and note that even 
tough there are different kinds of locations, you can only play 1 location per turn 
Here is the layout of a card: 
 
Card Name:  While all the cards are based on things mentioned in TMBG songs, a few are not exact 
quotes. 
Art:  A little bit of clip art to display what the card is based on.  Not relevant to rules. 
Rules Text:  The most important part of the card.  This tells you what the card does when it is played, or 
while it is in play. 
Flavour Text:  A quote from the TMBG song which the card is based on.  A few cards have no flavour 
text because of long rules text. 
Card Type:  Tells you which of the 4 categories this card is in. 

GAME PLAY - Randomly decide who goes first.  At the beginning of your turn, first check all cards in 
play and see if there are any "at the beginning of your turn" instructions, and follow them.  Then, if you 
somehow ended up with more than 5 cards in your hand, you may choose to discard back down to five.  
This discard is not forced. 
Once each turn, you get an opportunity to draw.  If you choose to, you draw enough cards to bring your 
hand size back up to 5.  You only have one draw each turn. 
Each turn you may play one of each card type.  Note that the draw can occur between playing different 
cards.  For example, lets say you start a turn with 4 cards in your hand.  You don’t have to draw right 
away.  You can play a location, object and event, draw 4 cards to bring your hand size back up to 5, then 
play a character. 
Remember to tell your opponent when you are done with your turn, since this is not always obvious. 
You may only play cards during your turn, unless a card says otherwise.  You may only use card’s 
abilities (like "discard to..." effects) during your own turn, unless a card says otherwise. 

LOCATIONS - As mentioned earlier, there are 5 types of locations.  They are, in order:  local, municipal, national, celestial, planar.  You may only have one of the highest type in play at any given time.  In other 
words, if you have at least one municipal location in play, you may play as many locals as you want, but if you have no 
nationals, celestials or planars, you can only play that one municipals.  It obviously follows that you can only have 
one planar in play. 

EXTRAS - What song a card’s name is from sometimes affects the rules due to cards in play.  There is 
an official list available of what song each card is from, but players can decide amongst themselves if a 
card can be interpreted differently.  For example, Fingertips prevents you from playing a card whose name 
is from a song already represented by a card in play.  Glass of Milk’s flavour text is from "Someone Keeps 
Moving My Chair", and "Mammal" also has the words "glass of milk" in it, so cards from those songs 
can’t be played while Glass of Milk is in play (on someone’s head).  However, the song "Fingertips" 
contains the line "please pass the milk please", so players may decide that having Fingertips in play 
prevents Glass of Milk from being played.  Such decisions should generally be made in casual 
conversation outside of gameplay.  During gameplay, the official list should prevail. 
Other variations or "house rules" are open for discussion among players, such as deck size, hand size 
and multiple copies of cards in decks. 
If you have any specific rules questions, or if you are confused about specific cards, feel free to contact 
us at kipps@tmbg.org or the following snailmail address:

PO Box 20006
Summerside, PEI
C1N 5Z3
Canada