Whether you need a way to blow off steam from work, are waiting for your model to train or want to be able to talk to your family about the things you do, this game, developed in Barcelona and designed in Mallorca, is the ideal one.

Use it as a catalyst to make your witty comments about that boss who gets on your nerves, AI hype or simply as a pretext to explain to your nearest and dearest what is NLP, MLOps or why all the work comes at 6 o'clock.

1. Rules

plAI is a game designed for 2 to 5 players (we call them plAIers). More might also play and it will be more challenging. For 2 we recommend playing with less cards in the deck. See the extra modes section.

​Objective

Be the only startup alive. If you went bankrupt, fight against the monopolies together with the other individual contributors.

How to plAI

It’s a turn based game where the cards in your hand are your company's assets.

They allow you to attack to get more cards, defend yourself and mess with the other startups Do not let it reach 0, but beware of having too many!

Setup

Give each plAIer 6 cards. Then ask your Virtual Assistant who will start and the direction. Or just decide throwing a coin, by who has more cats or by random sampling, it’s more eco-friendly.

Now it's time to decide if you want to follow any of the extra modes and/or make your own rules. If it’s the first time plaing the game, we do not recommend it yet.

Turn

On your turn, you can do one of the following:

• plAI one special card.
• Do a funding.
• If you have more than 9 cards, challenge a rival to a Hostile Takeover battle. The winner will get all of the loser's remaining assets.

Company elimination

To end the turn, check if any startup has 0 cards. If this is the case, their company is bankrupt and can't continue on the market.

In the case a startup has no cards, the plaier becomes an individual Open Source Maintainer.

All Maintainers keep their turn and act in collaboration for wining over the Startups. On their turn, they can:

• plAI one special card
• Do Charity funding (1 card)
• Coordinated hostile takeover of a company where everyone MUST collaborate. In case of winning, assets will be distributed randomly amongst all.

Being a part of an Open Source project has its drawbacks though:

• Max of 3 card on your hand (just discard the extra ones).
• You can’t communicate your cards or intentions with the colleagues.

Otherwise, you can still dispute funding and companies can still take your resources with a hostile takeover.

​Funding

To be a successful startup you always need more funding! There are 3 types you can end your round with:

If no one wants to attack you, recover the cards.

Attack

It’s how you can discard extra cards and crush other startups. You can plai up to 4 cards. Use ‘Attack’s if you are on attack and ‘Use Case’s if you are on defense. In both cases you can also add Buzzwords and Specials.

Considerations:

• For an attack to be successful, you’ll need to have at least one Adversary card.
• For a defense to be successful, you’ll need to have a Use Case card.
• If no one has the required types, defendant wins.
• You can ask for help to any other plAIer.
• You can choose not to defend yourself, loosing the battle.
• Some buzzwords have effects that completely change the outcome.
• Some special cards can be thrown at any time within the battle, but they do count for the max number of 4 cards.
• You can bluff and defend or attack with just Buzzwords.

Battle Resolution

1. The defendant turns its plAIed cards face up and applies the effects.
2. Attacker turns cards face up and effects are applied.
3. The attacker wins if it has more points than the defender and at least an attack card.
4. The winner takes the drawn cards if it’s a funding or all the looser remaining hand if it’s a hostile takeover.
5. All cards plAIed in the battle are discarded.

End of game

If there are no more cards available in the draw pile and there are more than one plaier you are in the Trough of Disillusionment. No one will remember you.

Otherwise:

• Monopoly: When one startup is left, it must resist a coordinated attack (can’t be blocked) from the Open Source maintainers. If the company wins, congrats, you are now a corporation.
• Teamwork makes the dream work: Well done! The open source project resisted and it’s a collective win for all.

If a game finished with Monopoly situations and there are cards left, you may start a new game this way without reusing the discarded cards. That’ll be great for the card counters.

​Card types

There are five types of cards, each one with a different role:

• Adversaries: Used for attacking other startups and crushing them.
• Use Cases: A description of "the problem" (– you sell–) you solve. Use them to defend against adversaries.
• Buzzwords: popular words or phrases in the AI world. Use them with adversaries or use cases to step-up your battle.
• Special: Wild effect cards to play in your turn, and some of them at any moment. The description will explain more what each card does.
• Market Event: Capitalism is unpredictable and will affect you. Throw those immediately (even outside of your turn).

2. Extra modes

We've designed it so it can be used in more than just one way. Try them out (alone or combined) and if you invent any other mode, share it with us!

• 2 plAIers: see "Bear Market" or "Botifarra"
• Bear Market: You want to innovate in the midst of a global crisis. Play with less cards (~54 per 2 people) instead of the full deck.
• Botifarra: Do multiple rounds. The winner of each round gets all used cards and when the deck is finished, the one with more cards wins. TIP: strategically loose rounds if you don’t have a good hand at first.
• Truth-teller: When attacking, you have to do a “pitch” explaining what you attack with. Use your imagination to bluff or tell the truth to make them back down, but if you get caught, you’ll lose one of the plaied cards.
• Speed plai: you have a 10 minutes to become a monopoly, if not, the hype has passed and you all loose.
• Consultant: once a plaier has lost their startup, provide consultancy services to other plaiers... for a fee! Like giving you a card next round. It’s your call.
• Cosplay: the plaier dressed more like a startup owner starts with an extra card. Just remember to tag us in any photo you upload to any social media site!
• 10x Data Scientist: Not really a card game, but an exercise for you, eager data scientists. Split use-case and buzzwords. Mix them. Select 1 use-case and 2 buzzwords. Build a model to “solve” the use case and think about the ethical implications.
• Fish Bank: If a big plaier declares a Hostile Takeover against you, merge your company with another willing player and act as a bigger fish to scare them off. Build your strength through unionization.

3. Product Roadmap

As PO I always tried to give the teams and stakeholders a transparency of where the product is going. And now I want to share with you the different options I have in mind.

4. Technical Sheet and Card statistics

It's possible to play up to 7 people though its recommended they already know the mechanics to avoid long rounds.

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