The “discard to enter” rule was created because one of the players in the first public demo spent a third of the game waiting for a Numbered Enter Card.

When the first public demo occurred, the number and ratio of cards in the deck had not yet been established. (The cards for this demo were just hand-cut printer paper).

As a result, one of the players spent the first third of the game waiting to draw a Numbered Enter Card.

Matthew and the players discussed the issue and came up with several possible solutions.

By the end of the game, they agreed discarding two cards across two consecutive turns seemed like a good way to solve the problem.

The new rule was tested in the ensuing games that night, and everyone agreed the problem had been solved.

“You can never block a player’s Enter Tile” became a rule because Jacob’s strategy in the very first game was to mass all his pawns on Matthew’s Enter Tile.

Unbeknownst to Matthew, Jacob was eagerly anticipating a test of this strategy.

Always a clever and aggressive competitor, Jacob wanted to see how effective this strategy was, (and of course, aggravate his brother).

It was very effective.

For three-quarters of the game, Matthew was unable to enter a pawn on the board because Jacob was able to quickly mass his pawns on Matthew’s Start Tile. (Originally, each player had 4 pawns).

As you can imagine, Matthew was incredibly bored during that first game as he was just discarding a card each turn in the hope of drawing an Action Card that would clear his Start Tile.

At the end of the game, which Matthew of course lost, Matthew looked at Jacob and said, “Funny, but we need a new rule.”

Jacob laughed and said, “Yeah, I know. I just wanted to do that once.”

“Sixes and Nines are Interchangeable” was an accidental rule.

It was created by the gameʼs industrial designer to cover up a mistake discovered during the first public product demo.

Matthew (the industrial designer) originally designed the deck to use numbered cards 1-12, but Jacob (the genius and statistician) realized that the game would be too short, and made the decision to use only Numbered Cards 1-8.

Although Matthew agreed with the change and made the change to the deck, when he was asked, “How can I tell if itʼs a six or a nine?”, he panicked, realizing he hadnʼt put a line below the two numbers. (He forgot that the deck only used numbers 1-8, and Jacob wasnʼt present.).

To save face, he replied, “Oh, sixes and nines are interchangeable.”.

Once the game started, Matthew remembered there was no 9 in the deck, but he kept that to himself so he could run a test of the new rule. Everyone loved it, so he reviewed the rule with Jacob, who agreed it should become official.