How to play
Fast, silly, and under ten minutes. Here’s everything you need to start playing.
Fast, silly, and under ten minutes. Here’s everything you need to start playing.
The goal of the game is to make the biggest hairball while trying to block your opponent(s) from gaining hairs for theirs. It’s all over when the Hairball! card comes up, so gather as much as you can before that!
Shuffle the Hairball! card into the bottom half of the deck, so nobody knows exactly when it will appear, but you know it won’t cut things short by being in the first half of the game. Deal 5 cards to each player. You’re ready to go.
Each turn has three easy steps:
Positive cards grow a pile; negative cards shrink it. Counter cards can swing a lead into a loss in an instant. With more than one opponent, you also get to choose who to sabotage. It’s not heavy strategy, but it’s far from a pure game of luck... your choices genuinely shape who comes out on top.
Sabotage is half the fun.
If you can’t make two plays, simply discard your whole hand and draw 5 fresh cards before playing your turn. You’re never stuck waiting on a bad hand.
The Hairball! card is always out there, lurking. The moment it’s drawn, the game ends immediately. Discard your hand and count up the hairs in your Hairball stack... the biggest number wins!
Each base deck plays 2–4 players, or up to 6 for a much quicker game. Decks are fully expandable: combine two or more and there’s no upper limit on players, as long as you have enough cards. Just make sure you keep only one Hairball! card in your combined game, since only one is needed. More decks also means longer games for those who want them.
There are 87 playing cards (bridge size, 57 × 89 mm), and the rules fit on a single card. The Contents card is there to help you separate out decks if you ever combine them, and there are FAQs to help you with game questions. Every playing card is now in color and, as always, everything is hand-drawn by the creator and artist, River Melody Graham.
Find Hairball! on BoardGameGeek to log your plays, leave a rating, and see what other players think.
Order your deck (with a free Christmas expansion through November) and let the fur fly.