How to Play Business Deal: India

Business Deal: India is a fast property-set card game for 2 to 5 players, played entirely with cards — no board, no dice, and no tokens. Draw two cards, play up to three, and race to collect three complete sets of Indian city properties before your rivals do, using a deck of attack and defence cards to steal, swap, and cancel your way there. A typical game runs well under twenty minutes.

Overview & Goal

Every player has a hidden hand, a face-up Bank of spent cards, and a face-up tableau of property cards grouped by colour. On your turn you draw, then may make up to three plays — banking cards for later payments, laying properties into your tableau, charging rent on groups you own, or firing an attack card at an opponent. The moment any player’s tableau holds three complete sets from three different colour groups, they win instantly, even if it happens during someone else’s turn.

Components

• 28 property cards across ten colour groups of two to four cards each, plus 11 wildcard cards that can substitute for one, two, or any colour group.
• 20 money cards, worth ₹1 Cr to ₹10 Cr, used purely to pay debts.
• 34 action cards: Takeover, Jugaad, Adla-Badli, Vasooli, Shagun, Naya Maal, Dukaan, Mall, Dugna Kiraya, and Naa Ji!.
• 13 Kiraya (rent) cards, each charging rent on one or two colour groups at once.
• A shared draw pile and discard pile, together holding 106 playable cards.

Setup

Shuffle all 106 playable cards and deal five to each player, one at a time, starting from the first seat. The rest form the draw pile; the discard pile starts empty; every player’s Bank and tableau start empty. Play begins with the first seat and moves in order around the table — this never reverses.

A Turn, Step by Step

1. Draw. If your hand held at least one card when your turn began, draw two cards. If your hand was completely empty, draw five instead. You can’t decline or change this.
2. Play up to three cards. Each of the following counts as one play: banking a card, laying a property, laying a Dukaan or Mall onto a complete set you own, charging Kiraya, or playing an attack card. Playing zero cards is a perfectly legal turn. A few things are free and don’t use up a play — playing Naa Ji! at any time, and flipping a wildcard already in your tableau to its other colour.
3. Discard down to seven. If you end your turn holding more than seven cards, discard down to exactly seven — your choice of which. If you’re already at seven or fewer, nothing happens.

Worked example: you draw two cards and find a property and a Vasooli card. You play the property into your tableau (one play), then play Vasooli to demand ₹5 Cr from an opponent (a second play) — they pay from their Bank, since hands are never revealed for a payment. With one play left, you bank a spare money card for later use, then end your turn at four cards, well under the seven-card limit.

Special Rules & Edge Cases

• Wildcards. A two-colour wildcard can be flipped between its two groups for free on your own turn, any number of times; a rainbow wildcard can join any group but has no printed value, so it can never be banked or used to pay a debt.
• Paying a debt. The player who owes money chooses what to hand over — from their Bank or tableau only, never their hand — and must pay at least the full amount if they’re able to. If a ₹2 Cr debt is paid with a ₹5 Cr card, there’s no change given. If someone owns nothing at all, the debt is simply forgiven and they keep playing.
• Naa Ji! cancels an action card played against you, and can itself be cancelled by another Naa Ji!, alternating back and forth: an odd number of cancels means the original action fails, an even number means it goes through as originally played.
• Buildings. A Dukaan raises rent on a complete set, and a Mall (which needs a Dukaan already in place) raises it further — but buildings can only ever join the Railways-and-Utilities-excluded groups, never those two.
• Attack cards like Takeover (steal a whole complete set) and Jugaad (steal one loose property card) can only target legal cards — you can’t steal from a set that isn’t finished, or take a card that’s already part of one.

How the Game Ends & Scoring

There’s no running score — the game is won the instant a player’s tableau contains three complete property sets from three different groups, and this is checked continuously, not just at the end of a turn. In the rare case that the draw pile and discard pile both run completely dry, the game ends immediately, and the winner is decided in this order: most completed sets, then highest total value of everything owned, then most property cards held, then the best rent a player could charge, then fewest cards left in hand, and finally the earliest seat at the table.

Variants / House Rules

Our default rules are the official ones, but a handful of optional toggles are available in casual and private games — never in ranked play:

• Buildings move freely between your own complete sets as a free action.
• Buildings become stealable on their own, without needing a full set to go with them.
• Wildcard sets don’t count toward your winning third set, though they still count toward your first two.
• No stacking on the rent-doubling card, capping it at a single double instead of a full quadruple.
• Four sets to win instead of three, for a longer game.

Quick-Reference Summary

• 2–5 players, no board or dice — pure card play.
• Draw 2 (or 5 with an empty hand), then make up to 3 plays, then discard down to 7.
• Bank cards for money, lay properties into colour groups, charge rent, or attack.
• Naa Ji! cancels an attack and can itself be cancelled, alternating the outcome each time.
• Complete three full sets from three different groups to win instantly — any time, even off-turn.
• A rare total deck exhaustion is settled by a tiebreaker ladder led by most completed sets.