When it all goes wrong

Pig Out, Oinker and Piggyback

Learn about the few disastrous tosses that wipe out a turn or erase a whole running tally.

Three landings take points away instead of adding them, and they cost wildly different amounts. Knowing which is which is the difference between a bad turn and a ruined evening.

Pig Out

One pig on its dotted side and the other on its blank side.

The turn score goes to nothing and the pigs pass on. Whatever you had banked in earlier turns is untouched. The box puts it in four words: lose pts. for turn.

Oinker or Makin Bacon

The two pigs come to rest touching each other.

The whole score goes back to zero, not just the turn. The score pad prints it as back to zero, with no softening. This is the roll that ends friendships.

Piggyback

One pig lands on top of the other.

The player is out of the game. Neither the box back nor the score pad mentions this one, so the wording here comes from the printed rules.

Side by side

What the box says each one costs

The three landings nobody wants, and what each one takes from you.
Roll	What you see	What it costs
Pig Out	One pig on its dotted side and the other on its blank side.	the whole turn score
Oinker also called Makin Bacon	The two pigs come to rest touching each other.	your entire score
Piggyback	One pig lands on top of the other.	your place in the game

Pig Out is the one you will meet

Both pigs flat, one dot showing and one hidden. It comes up on roughly one roll in five, which makes it far and away the most common way a turn ends. It costs you the turn total and nothing else: anything banked in earlier turns is safe.

Oinker is the one that hurts

The two pigs come to rest touching. Your whole score goes back to zero, not just the turn, and there is no way to see it coming. Some tables cannot bear this and quietly drop it. That is a house rule and a reasonable one, but it is not what the box says.

Piggyback ends your evening

One pig lands on top of the other. In the classic rules the player is out of the game entirely. It is rare enough that many people have never seen one.

This is the rule editions disagree about most. In a travel tin the pigs cannot stack at all, so it never comes up, and plenty of tables score it as nothing and move on. Decide which way your table plays it before the first roll.

Questions this raises

Does Piggyback really knock you out?

In the classic rules, yes. It is not in every edition: in the travel set the pigs cannot stack in the tin, and with Big Pigs it does not come up. Plenty of tables just score it as nothing and move on.