Smash Up: What Were We Thinking Rules
Smash Up: What Were We Thinking? Rules
AEG flavor: This expansion is intentionally an eclectic mix: Teddy Bears, Grannies, Rock Stars, and Explorers. AEG describes the set as the factions they “couldn’t talk ourselves out of adding.”
Factions in this set
- Teddy Bears
- Grannies
- Rock Stars
- Explorers
Core Smash Up rules
Choose two different factions and shuffle them together into a 40-card deck. Draw five cards. If your opening hand has no minions, you may reveal it, discard it, and draw a new five-card hand; the second hand must be kept. Put one base per player plus one extra base into play.
On your turn, resolve start-of-turn abilities, then normally play one minion and one action in either order. Check all bases for scoring, resolve any bases that meet or exceed their breakpoint, draw two cards, discard down to the hand limit if necessary, then resolve end-of-turn abilities.
When a base begins scoring, it continues scoring even if its power later falls below the breakpoint. Before-scoring Specials are resolved in player order beginning with the current player until all players pass consecutively. After VP are awarded, resolve after-scoring Specials, discard remaining cards from the scored base unless an ability says otherwise, discard the base, and replace it.
Faction notes and official clarifications
Teddy Bears
Teddy Bears mix extra minion plays with abilities that interfere with opposing minions. Their small minions can arrive in groups, while several actions punish either swarms or a single large opposing minion.
Bear Picnic: Its restriction concerns minions owned by other players. Monsters are not owned by a player, so they are not stopped by Bear Picnic. It also does not prevent a card effect from playing another player's minion.
Cuddle: Canceling a minion's abilities does not cancel the abilities printed on actions attached to that minion. It does cancel abilities the attached action grants to the minion itself. A monster's Treasure reward is not a minion ability and is not canceled.
Group Hug: Calculate the power bonus once when the action resolves. The bonus does not later change merely because more minions arrive, minions leave, or the boosted minion moves.
Lovey Bear: Its starting power only rises to match a higher opposing starting power. If the highest opposing starting power is lower, Lovey Bear's starting power is not reduced.
Snuggly Bear: The same first minion play of the turn can trigger more than one Snuggly Bear in your hand.
Grannies
Grannies manipulate both the top and bottom of the deck, then reward you for correctly arranging Actions toward the top and minions toward the bottom.
Attic Treasures: Under AEG's current wording this uses “up to” three cards. If you have fewer than three cards in hand, you may put all of them on the bottom of your deck and still draw the full number of replacement cards specified by the current card text.
Great Grandma: Great Grandma is a later optional Titan for the Grannies, not part of the original What Were We Thinking? box. Its abilities care about looking at or revealing cards from the deck and can reward those reveals with temporary power; keep the top and bottom of the deck clearly distinguished when using it.
Rock Stars
Rock Stars favor high-breakpoint bases and can rapidly assemble Groupies for a large burst of power.
Turn Up to 11: If several abilities try to set a base's starting breakpoint to different values, the current player chooses which setting effect prevails. After the starting breakpoint has been established, ordinary breakpoint modifiers are applied to that value.
Explorers
Explorers manipulate the base deck, create or replace bases, move early to newly revealed locations, and profit from bases entering play.
Crypt Looter: Its trigger also works when a base changes without scoring, such as when a card swaps or replaces a base.
Forgotten Horrors: If one effect moves several minions at the same time, Forgotten Horrors gives only one card draw from that movement event. A minion that moves other minions to its base likewise creates one draw for the grouped movement, not one per moved minion.
Idaho Smith: The additional base it creates permanently increases the number of bases in play for the rest of the game unless another effect specifically changes that number.
It Belongs in a Museum: If only one minion in play meets the effect's requirements, you cannot choose that same minion as both sides of the required movement.
Lost City: If another ability determines which replacement base comes into play, Lost City can still let you play its extra minion on that newly played base.
Very Large Boulder: This is a later optional Explorer Titan. If its ability says to move the Titan and then destroy a minion at the destination, the destruction is dependent on actually moving the Titan; if it does not move, that destruction does not occur.
Current official errata
AEG now maintains a living Smash Up rules wiki. Current wording there supersedes older printed wording when the two differ. This matters especially for cards whose optional/mandatory wording or timing has been clarified since the original printing.
Accessibility play notes
For Grannies and Explorers, announce whether a card is being placed on the top or bottom of a deck and preserve the announced order. When Explorers create or replace a base, read the new base's name, breakpoint, VP values, and full ability before play continues. For Teddy Bears, announce which abilities are being canceled and distinguish a minion's own ability from abilities of attached actions. When Rock Stars alter a breakpoint, state both the starting breakpoint and every later modifier so the final value is available nonvisually.
If optional Titans are used, announce when a Titan enters, moves, leaves play, or changes power and keep it in a fixed tactile location adjacent to its base.