The Pandante kickstarter was successfully funded last month, and manufacturing is now underway. So far, no delays so we're still on track to meet the ship date in May.
There have been a few rules updates since the print-and-play version was available at the start of the kickstarter. The latest (and final) rulebook is at www.sirlin.net/pandante/rules. The print-and-play version is available here.
In case you already played the game but didn't notice the updates, I'll list them here for you.
1) If you fold with the highest (or tied-for-highest) hand, then you must buy breakfast next gambit. This means if you already plan to fold, you can't bet on straight flush to get a free snack (free card) while denying everyone else snacks. If you do this, you'll have to pay to get new cards anyway.
2) The conditions for when you get a Panda Lord are more specific. The part that has not changed is that you need to win a gambit alone by claiming you had a higher hand than you really did. But now in addition, one of the following two things must also be true: either at least *someone* had a chance to challenge you and decided not to -OR- you scared everyone into folding so that you were the only person left in the showdown. Now getting a Panda Lord is a bit more in the spirit of getting away with a lie. There were just uncomfortably many cases before where you could get one just because you happened to be the only one left after several people challenged each other during the showdown, and you were last from from the dealer button.
3) When resolving ties, you now go in reverse turn order rather than regular turn order. For example, imagine a 1v1 game where you and I both claim "straight" as our hands. At the end of the gambit, we first try to break the tie by saying what kind of straight we have. Assume I have the dealer button, which means you say what kind of straight you have first. For example, you say a 7 high straight. Then imagine I repeat whatever you say automatically so that we stay tied. I can always do this when I have the dealer button and in the previous rules, players *accepted* challenges to their hands in turn order. That means I would challenge you first. So in the case where neither of us has a straight, I could always get away with challenging you first, I would get free snacks the whole gambit, and there'd be no way you could really stop that while I had the dealer button.
Now, players accept those challenges in reverse turn order, so I (with the dealer button) get challenged first. I got to say the kind of straight I had second (so I still could say whatever you said to maintain a tie), but I actually have to put some thought into it now because I'll be receiving challenges first. Note that this rule change *only* applies to when hands are tied at the end. It just fixes some issues with that case that come up especially much in 1v1.
4) 4X -> 5X for challenging poker hands. The most costly type of challenge in Pandante is when you falsely accuse a player about their poker hand. For example, they say they have a floosh, you challenge it, but then they really have the floosh. You had to pay them 4X gold where X is the number of players before, but in the final version it's now 5X gold. This will reduce the number of overall challenges so that it's a bit more possible to actually get away with lying sometimes.
5) There was also a slight adjustment in the amount of gold needed to win the game when there's 4 or 5 players. The amount of gold needed to win for 2 / 3/ 4 / 5 players was 80 / 90 / 100 / 120 / 150 but in the final version, it's now 80 / 90 / 110 / 130 / 150 gold. This has no effect on the seriousface gambling mode of the game.
It's great that so many of you are into Pandante that we were able to make those tweaks for high level play. It's quite a fun alternative to poker. If you missed out on the kickstarter, pre-orders will be up in 2 or 3 months on www.sirlingames.com. In the meantime, follow Sirlin Games on facebook so you can get notified about when Pandante is available or try the fan-made online version or the official print-and-play version.