Mini Christmas is a set collection card game where you cleverly collect different types of Christmas items and trade them for victory points (VP) at the right time. The more items of the same type you have, the more VP you score, but you might risk losing them if someone trades cards of the same type before you do!

How to play
The cards are shuffled and laid down in a pyramid containing 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 cards in each row.

On your turn, you take one of the two actions:

1. Take one row of cards into your hand, and refill the cards in the row.

(1) You can take the card(s) in the first row for free.
(2) If you want to take cards from the lower row, you must put one card from your hand into each row you skipped.
Example: You want the cards from the third row, you have to put one card each in the first and second rows. (Put down a total of two cards from your hand).
(3) After taking the cards (and putting down cards if necessary), refill the row back to its initial number of cards (1, 2, 3, 5, or 7 cards).

2. Play cards from your hand to score victory points (VP)

(1) Play cards to score:
- If you play 3/5/6 cards of the same type, you score 1, 2, or 3 VP, respectively.
- You keep a number of played cards facedown in front of you as your VP and discard the others to the discard pile.
- You may play as many sets of different types of cards as you want and score VP individually.
Note: Santa cards are wild and can be used as any type of item card.

Example: Wendy played 3 Snowman cards for 1 VP and 5 Chrismas Tree cards for 2 VP, respectively. She kept 3 cards as her VP and discarded the other 5 cards.

(2) Force others to discard cards:
- If any players have 2 or more cards the same type as what you have played, they have to discard half of the cards from their hand (rounded down).
- For each card the other players have been forced to discard, you can draw one card from the draw pile as a reward.

Example (continued): Bob had 3 Snowman cards in hand and he discarded 1 of them. Poki had 4 Christmas Tree cards in hand and discarded 2 of them. Then, Wendy drew 3 cards from the draw pile as her reward.

When someone reaches a certain amount of VP, the game ends after all the other players take a final turn. Whoever has the most VP wins!

—description from the designer

MANTIS