Around the Rings: clear the board in order
Five targets, outside in, fifteen throws to do it. Only the ring you are currently on scores anything — and finishing early is worth far more than the rings themselves.
The rules
You work through the board from the outside in, in a fixed order:
| Step | Target | Band (share of board radius) | Base points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ring 5 (outer) | 0.65 – 0.85 | 10 |
| 2 | Ring 4 | 0.45 – 0.65 | 25 |
| 3 | Ring 3 | 0.25 – 0.45 | 50 |
| 4 | Ring 2 | 0.10 – 0.25 | 75 |
| 5 | Throwverse (centre) | 0.00 – 0.10 | 100 |
You get fifteen throws. Only a landing in your current target ring scores or advances you — hitting the bullseye while you are still on Ring 5 does nothing at all. This is the one mode where the centre is often the wrong place to aim.
Because the target changes as you progress, the throwverse bonus does not apply here. Instead there is an early-finish bonus, and it is the whole game.
The early-finish bonus is the whole game
Clear all five rings before your throws run out and you earn +100 for every throw you had left. The base points for a flawless run — 10 + 25 + 50 + 75 + 100 — come to just 260 before multipliers. A perfect five-throw clear leaves ten throws unused, which is +1,000.
| Throws used | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 12 | 15 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bonus | +1,000 | +900 | +800 | +700 | +600 | +500 | +300 | 0 |
Every wasted throw costs you a flat 100 points. Nothing else in this mode moves the needle nearly as hard, and note that the bonus is not multiplied by your distance setting — it is flat.
Distance choice: less obvious than it looks
Distance multiplies your ring points but not the early-finish bonus. With a flawless clear, the base 260 becomes 1,300 at Master versus 260 at Easy — a 1,040-point swing, comparable to the bonus itself. So distance is not irrelevant here.
But the bonus decays at 100 points per extra throw, and higher distances cost you throws. Two extra throws at Master wipes out a chunk of that advantage, and the inner targets get genuinely hard. In practice:
- Learning the mode: Easy or Medium. Bank a clean five- or six-throw clear and take the big bonus.
- Chasing a leaderboard score: Hard, if you can still clear in seven throws or fewer. That is the crossover where the multiplied base outruns the throws you burn.
- Expert and Master: only worth it if the inner two rings are reliable for you. Ring 2 is a narrow band and a scattered throw sails straight past it into the centre, which does not count.
The overshoot problem
The classic way to lose this mode is overshooting inward. Each target band is narrower than the last: Ring 5 is 0.20 wide, Ring 4 is 0.20, Ring 3 is 0.20, Ring 2 is only 0.15, and the centre is 0.10. Meanwhile your scatter grows the closer to the middle you release.
On the Ring 2 step especially, a throw released too near the centre crossing will scatter past your target into the bullseye — scoring nothing and costing you 100 bonus points. Aim to release while the reticle is still clearly outside your target band and let it drift in, rather than releasing dead on the line.
Use the flat views
Around the Rings is played in the 2D and 2D+ board views rather than full 3D. Ring boundaries are what matter in this mode and a flat, top-down board reads them far more precisely than a shaded perspective board does. That is a deliberate design choice, not a limitation.