Ladder toss rules

1. Set the two ladders facing each other and mark a toss line 15 feet from the ladder you are throwing at.
2. Two players, or two teams of two with partners at opposite ends.
3. Each player has three bolas — six per game, two balls joined by a cord.
4. The practical footprint is about 20 by 8 feet.

Two things about the order of play matter more than the values:

• A player throws all three bolas before the next player goes. Not alternating.
• Scoring happens after everybody has thrown. A bola knocked off by a later throw scores nothing.

Those two rules together create the game's only real tactic: if your opponent has scored well, your last throw is often better spent knocking their bolas off the top rung than adding to your own total.

First to exactly 21. If a round would take you past 21, you do not score that round at all and your total stays put.

This is why ladder toss finishes better than cornhole. In cornhole there is no bust rule — play continues until a team has at least 21 at the end of a round. In ladder toss a player on 20 needs a single bottom-rung wrap and nothing else, while their opponent on 12 swings freely. That gap is where the game lives.

Bola mass decides how the game plays. A bola needs enough weight to wrap a rung rather than bounce off it. Sets with real golf balls on each end wrap reliably; hollow plastic ones skip off the top rung and land under the ladder, which turns the highest-scoring shot into the least likely one.

Wind is the enemy. A ladder frame is a large flat sail on a small base with nothing anchoring it. On an exposed site, weight the base — or pick a ground game instead. See weatherproof yard games.

Set buying advice: ladder toss. And if you are choosing between this and cornhole for a first purchase, the answer is in cornhole vs ladder toss.