Mandi rulebook
Rival Merchant
Named rival merchants, not mind readers.
Add a rival
Add computer merchants in an online waiting room or play Solo. Rival Merchant uses eight shuffled instructions that cycle after each round. Turn the deck off for mixed, randomly chosen instructions.
Eight approaches
Instructions alternate collecting, seeking a quiet bargain, pursuing variety, and competing for a majority, each paired with a cautious or bold bid. Stall choices are weighted rather than always taking the most valuable lot.
Fair decisions
Rivals use the visible market, public collections and their own available cards. They never inspect your sealed choice, private hand, or future lots. Strong cards and Sifarish are not used every round.
Saving and contests
Rivals weigh likely competition from public collections, spend each available Haggle once during rounds 1–5: higher cards on higher-value, likely contested stalls and lower cards on quiet picks. Every played card burns. In round 6 they use their strongest available card after restocking. They reserve Sifarish for valuable, likely contested lots. Their estimates are uncertain, not knowledge of anyone’s choice.
Rival recovery
Rivals recover every burned free card. They recover at most one paid card: the highest affordable Haggle h for which their best usable current stall value × (h − 1) / 5 is strictly greater than its Mithai cost. Otherwise they buy none. All other rival decisions stay unchanged.