You're a pup competing to be the "Goodest Boy" by proving you can balance both sides of your personality: your loyal Passive nature and your feisty Aggressive streak. Win tricks to collect cards into two separate piles. Only your weaker pile counts as your score. The goal is to have your lowest pile beat your opponent's lowest pile, while skewing theirs along the way.

Balance matters because your score is your lower pile. If one pile is huge and the other is tiny, the tiny one drags you down, and all those points in the big pile are wasted. The only way to raise your score is to grow the smaller pile, which means keeping both sides close. A balanced dog has a higher floor, and the floor is what counts.

Your Turn

1. Lead & Declare

Play a card from your hand of 4, then flip the Lead Token to declare this trick:

• PASSIVE: Opponent may play any card (no restrictions)
• AGGRESSIVE:  Opponent must try to win (follow suit, beat your rank, or play trump if able)

2. Opponent Responds

On Aggressive, they must follow suit and beat you if possible, or play trump. On Passive, no restrictions. Any card goes.

3. Winner Splits the Cards

The trick winner takes both cards and splits them between their two piles. The declaration determines which pile gets the high card:

Declaration	Higher Card Goes To	Lower Card Goes To
Aggressive	Aggressive Pile	Passive Pile
Passive	Passive Pile	Aggressive Pile

 4. Draw

Both players draw back to 4 cards (loser draws first). Winner leads the next trick.

The Twist

Your declaration does two jobs at once. It controls how your opponent must respond, and it controls where the captured cards go.

Declaring Aggressive forces your opponent to win, but if their Aggressive pile is already bloated, you've just sabotaged their balance.

Declaring Passive funnels the high card into your Passive pile, but your opponent can play anything, so winning is never guaranteed.

Every lead is a calculation. Sometimes you want the trick. Sometimes you want your opponent stuck with it.

Scoring: The Lower Pile Wins

Your Final Score = your LOWER pile total. The other pile doesn't count. Those points are wasted. To raise your score, you have to grow the pile that's falling behind, which means keeping both sides close.

	Aggressive Pile	Passive Pile	Final Score
Player A ✓	34	28	28
Player B ✗	50	10	10

Player B won more points overall, but only the lower pile counts, so Player A wins 28 to 10 

Tiebreaker: smallest gap between piles.