Rules
Abundance & Famine is a game for 7 to 13 players about not following the crowd. There is not enough bread for everyone, and the more players think alike, the less anyone eats.
The towns
- Abundance makes 6 loaves.
- Famine makes 3 loaves.
A round
- Every player secretly buys a ticket to one of the two towns.
- Each town’s loaves are split evenly among the players who went there, rounded down. Leftover loaves are thrown away.
- If more players visit a town than it has loaves, nobody there gets any bread.
- Only the number of visitors to each town is announced, not who went where.
Winning
After 5 rounds, the player with the most bread wins. The player with the least bread finishes last.
Our version
- On the show, 11 players played and each player got five ticket coupons, one per round. The winner got two Tokens of Life and the player with the least bread went to the Death Match. Here the most bread wins and the least bread is marked last.
- Against the computer you choose 7, 9, 11 (as on the show) or 13 players. Online rooms take 7 to 13.
- Each round has a 30-second timer. If it runs out, you go where you went last round, or to Abundance in round 1.
- Ties share a place.
- The AI travellers take turns at three habits: the follower goes where bread was good last round, the contrarian expects the crowd to follow and goes the other way, and the counter works out the expected loaves from the numbers. Easy AI plays its habit loosely, medium closely, and hard mixes its choice around the balance point so it cannot be read, leaning away from the town it expects the crowd to flood. They only know what you would know.
- The “Share table” helper shows how many loaves each visitor gets for each crowd size.
Sources: The Genius Season 1 episode guides and fan wikis.
Strategy
Think one step ahead of the crowd. If Abundance fed everyone last round, many players will go back. That is a good time to try Famine.
Famine is best when you are alone. One visitor gets all 3 loaves. Two or three get 1 each.
Abundance is safe up to six. Up to six visitors all eat something, and a quiet Abundance is the best seat in the game.
Do not be predictable. If you always react the same way to the last result, so does everyone else who thinks like you, and you end up in the same crowd.