Top Tracks cards and scoring, explained

How a round works

One card is one round. Each round has five steps.

1. The card. A category card is dealt and flips over on every phone. That is the theme for the round: The 90s, Disco, Road trip or whatever comes up.
2. Pick. Everyone searches for one track that fits and taps Lock it in. If the search can’t find it, you can type the title and artist in yourself.
3. Play. Players take turns in seating order, and a different person starts each round. On your turn you play your track out loud, and the title appears on everyone’s screen a few seconds after you start it.
4. Score. Everyone else scores your track in secret.
5. Next. When everyone has played, the next card is dealt. No scores are shown between rounds.

Secret picks

While people are picking, everyone can see who has locked in, but not what they chose. You can change your mind right up until the playing starts. Nobody else knows whose track is coming next or what it will be until the title appears, which is a big part of the fun: half the room is trying to guess who would pick that.

Two people can’t play the same song. The first to lock it in keeps it, and anyone else is asked to pick again. The host’s Difficulty setting can rule out more songs:

• Easy — anything goes.
• Intermediate — nothing you have already picked this game.
• Hard (the default) — nothing anyone has picked this game.
• Insane — nothing anyone in the room has played today, in any game.

What if a track doesn’t fit the card? The host can tap Off-category?. Depending on the lobby setting, the player is either let off and picks again (“Be nice”) or the track scores zero for that round (“Be mean”). Your house, your rules.

The four kinds of card

The cards come from the original Top Tracks deck, in four colours:

• Genres (green) — Rock, Disco, Motown, Heavy metal, Love song, One hit wonder, Musicals and more. Pick a track that belongs to the genre.
• Decades (yellow) — from The 50s right through to The 20s. Anything released in that decade counts.
• Associations (blue) — a track that goes with the card: Movie, Road trip, First dance, Your name, Year you were born, Bought it on vinyl, Funeral march…
• Actions (red) — cards that change how the round is played.

The action cards

• Player choice — play anything you like. No category, no excuses.
• Shuffle 1, 2 or 3 — no picking at all. On your turn you hit shuffle in your music app once, twice or three times and play whatever comes up, then log it so everyone knows what they are scoring.
• Make a link — the round’s starting player hits shuffle and plays a starting track, which isn’t scored. Everyone then picks a track that links to it — the artist, a word in the title, a theme — and can add a note explaining the link.
• Perform — pick a track, then perform it yourself. Everyone scores the performance; the original recording goes in the playlist.

Levels and decks

The host chooses a level, which sets how many colours are dealt from the shuffled deck:

• Warm-up — decades only.
• Party — decades and genres.
• Music buff — adds associations.
• Anything goes — adds the action cards.

Free games can play Warm-up, Party or Music buff with a starter deck; Anything goes is part of the full game. A good rule for a new group is to start at Warm-up and move up a level each game. The full game also has two other ways to deal: Mix It Up (four rounds, one card from each colour) and One category(every card from the colour you choose), plus expansion packs that add their own cards.

The 3-2-1 scoring

When a track is played, everyone except the person who picked it gives it hearts, in secret:

• 3 hearts — a track you love.
• 2 hearts — one you like but don’t love.
• 1 heart — one that’s not for you.

You never score your own track. By default voting opens 60 seconds after the title appears, so nobody judges a song on its first three notes; the host can change the delay or switch it off. You can change your score until voting closes. If you don’t vote, your score counts as a 2, so sulking in silence achieves nothing.

Because nobody sees the scores until the end, there is no tactical voting based on the table and no sulking after round two. The best strategy is the one the game itself suggests: play to the room, not to your ego. The track that gets everyone singing tends to beat the obscure one that proves you own a record player.

The Big Reveal

After the last round, everyone’s totals are revealed from the bottom up. Whoever has the most hearts is the Big Winner. Three awards are handed out too:

• Most Loved Track — the single track with the most hearts.
• Toughest Critic — the player who gave out the fewest hearts.
• Biggest Softie — the player who gave out the most.

The winner then gets the Winner’s Pick: any track they like, played in full, while everyone else listens without saying anything negative. If the host switched on Open ballots before the game, everyone can then see who gave what to whom — and players are told before they vote, so nobody can claim they weren’t warned.

Tiebreaks

If two or more players finish level, it is tie-break time. One more card is dealt, the tied players get one minute to pick, and everyone else scores their tracks. If they are still level after three tie-break cards, they are joint Big Winners.

Team games work slightly differently. You only score other teams’ tracks, and if teams are uneven the scores are scaled so every track is worth the same number of voters. Tied teams share the win — there is no tie-break — and each winning team gets a Winner’s Pick. The team game page has more on playing in teams.

That is the whole game. For setting up the room, read ourguide to hosting a music party night, and for the complete rule book, including the Chain Game and Six Degrees, see the in-gameHow to play guide.