Fluff - Game Review

Table of Contents

• Game Breakdown
• Fluff - Overview
• How to Play Fluff
• Fluff - Quick Reference
• Fluff - Tips and Tricks
• Fluff - Honest Review

Fluff - Overview

Fluff is a dice game where you roll dice in cups, only know the value of the dice in your cup and hope to be the last “Fluffer” surviving. The last player surviving is the last person to have a die left in their cup.

This game combines elements of luck, skill, and strategy. It is quick to play, always results in interesting gameplay, and brings laughs to the game table. This makes it perfect for families.

In Fluff, dice are rolled in cups, and only you know what you have in your cup. The first player bids how many of a certain number of dice sides there are in the circle, and turns proceed in order, with each player either raising the bid or calling the bid. Every time you lose a round, you lose a die. This is a bluffing game, so you can call a bluff (or Fluff as per game rules) at any point (if you think another player is lying). Get it wrong, though, when it’s not your turn, and you lose two dice.

How to Play Fluff

Setup

1. Every player chooses a cup (a Fluff Cup). Each cup contains 5 dice.
2. Everyone rolls their dice, and the person with the most wilds (animal faces) wins. The winner of this round is the player who will start the game off. If there is a tie, then roll again till an outright winner appears.

Each Turn

1. Each player places all their remaining dice into their cups and gives them a shake/roll/swirl inside the cups.
2. Once everyone has stopped rolling, lift the lid in the cup and look at your dice, not revealing what you have to other players.
3. First player places a bid, a bid is a guess at the total quantity of a specific value of dice in all players’ cups (for example, this could be that there are THREE twos in all cups). Note that dice have a wild value (animal face) in place of one side. You can’t bid on all wilds. Therefore, the lowest you can bid is one two.
4. The player to the left of the last bid then raises the bid or calls a bluff (or fluff). If you raise the bid, you have to either raise the quantity or value of the dice. For example, if the bid is FOUR threes, you can go FIVE threes or FOUR fours.
5. If you call the Fluff, then everyone reveals their dice, and you count the quantity of the current bids to see if it is correct.

6. You can also call Fluff (or bluff) out of turn. If you are wrong, though, then you lose two dice. If you are correct, then the current bidder only loses one die.
7. When you lose a die, then you start the next turn after everyone rolls again.
8. Once you lose all your dice, you are out of the game.
9. Play continues until only a single player has dice left.

Fluff - Quick Reference

Raising Bid Guide

IMPORTANT RULE: The quantity of the bid can never decrease.

Invalid Example	Reason
FOUR threes → THREE threes	Quantity decreased
FIVE fours → FOUR sixes	Quantity decreased

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Valid Raises

Action	Rule	Example 1	Example 2
Raise Quantity	Increase quantity, keep value the same	FOUR threes → FIVE threes	SIX fours → NINE fours
Raise Value	Keep quantity the same, increase value	FOUR threes → FOUR fives	EIGHT fives → EIGHT sixes
Raise Quantity & Value	Increase both quantity and value	FOUR threes → FIVE fives	EIGHT fives → TEN sixes
Lower Value with Higher Quantity	Value may decrease only if quantity increases	FOUR sixes → FIVE fives	EIGHT sixes → TEN twos

Game Cup Characters

We love that the game rules set out some funny characters for each cup. These are so good we had to share.

Character	Cup	Description
DON WHOOLIGAN	Blue Cup	The boss of the Talonino family, this wise guy is not only one of the most notorious of the “Good Feathas”, but a fearsome fluffer as well. It’s best to get under his wing.
RICKY FOOTS	Orange Cup	When he’s not wailing on his sac at the Treetrunk Lounge, Ricky runs an underground game of Fluff in a secret club known as The Den. Keep an eye on him — he’s been known to “wash” the dice.
VON SLYSTER	Red Cup	The baron of bluff, the duke of deceit, Lord Gennic Blangod Von Slyster claims to have ties to some noble family. His cunning and trickery in Fluff certainly make him a royal pain.
WICKED CHEATAH	Green Cup	This kid from South Pawston is famous for two things: fightin’ and fluffin’. A fixture at the local “bahs”, Wicked Cheatah is quick to jump in a scrap. He’s a fast fluffer with a “sharp” tongue and even “sharper” teeth.

Fluff - Tips and Tricks

• Keep track of how many dice are left in each turn. This can help you to determine the probabilities of who is bluffing.
• Never forget to account for WILD as they always count for the current bid. This can be useful when bidding or thinking about calling people’s bluff.
• Don’t be predictable. If you always do the same thing, it makes it easy for others to figure out when you are bluffing or not. The game rules sum this up as “the weasel who is shrewd brings home the food”
• The game rules also encourage you to cheat. We don’t condone this, however, but maybe in games like Fluff, it is only cheating if you get caught….
• Game Modification “Sloppy Style” - If you play this rule, any dice that fall out of your Fluff cup during the game count as lost. This is an official variation in the game rules. We haven’t tried it ourselves, but it does sound fun!

Fluff - Expansion Packs

At the time we wrote this review, Fluff didn’t have any known expansion packs. If you want to add more players to the game, the game rules mention that it is perfectly fine to combine multiple Fluff packs together. This means you can make it an eight or twelve-player game with extra game boxes!

Fluff - Honest Review

Fluff is a really fun family game that stands out from the typical collection of card games. Like we said in the intro, this game is a really great mix of skill, strategy and luck. Fluff is the perfect game for any game shelf and is great for families with kids. It is great for teaching kids about probability and judgement as they try to figure out if the current call is possible or if someone is lying to them, you could even argue the game teaches some essential life skills.

Fluff is not a quiet game. With dice rolling every round, it’s a loud game that will have you laughing and probably yelling at each other as you raise and call the bid. It is turn-based, so everyone gets a go. The downside is that generally, you find that people get eliminated, leaving only two players left, which can be a bit boring for those eliminated. Because the gameplay is quite similar each round, we usually find that one game of Fluff (around 16–30 minutes) is enough for a game night before moving on to something quieter. The game comes in a decent-sized box that will take up a bit of room on your game shelf and is probably not a travel-friendly game.

Each die cup is a different color and contains five dice, make sure you have picked all these up at the end of the game, obviously the large number of small dice are not suitable for super young kids. We love the humorously written game rules and the characters that give the game an overall sense of character found on the game box. Fluff plays best with 3–4 players, you can play this as a 2 player game but from experience it is best in groups.

Try Fluff today, and hopefully you agree with our review!