New Rule

Introduction: “Everything must go.” Portent words for any bargain hunter, but in this game, it’s the difference between victory and defeat. Players bid for a rapidly dwindling stock of valuable tokens with the certain knowledge that “everything must go.” Just when it goes and how much you pay for it, well… that’s another matter entirely.

Players: 3-6

Materials: 

• One deck of standard playing cards with all cards below eight removed.
• At least one hundred pennies or other small tokens.

Setting Up: Shuffle the cards and place them in the center of the table in a pile, face-up. Draw the top four cards and lay them on the four sides of the deck in a North-South-East-West orientation. Place the pennies in a common pool and distribute twenty pennies to each player. Designate a first player; play proceeds to the left.

How to Play: The deck of cards represents the stock that must be liquidated. On their turn, each player may make purchase or auction actions based on the cards showing, in an attempt to acquire higher-value cards for their final hand. For each card showing beside the deck, the player may either purchase the card outright or initiate an auction. To purchase it on the spot, the player merely transfer a number of pennies from their possession to the common pool equal to the face value of the card (face cards are worth eleven, twelve, and thirteen pennies for the Jack, Queen, and King respectively).

To initiate an auction, the play indicates a card and names a starting bid no less than half the card’s purchase value. All players may then bid verbally, continuing until all drop out but one. The winner acquires the card and pays the bid amount immediately.

Once a player does either of these things, their turn is over and play passes to the next player. Note that this occurs even if the play initiated an auction they did not win. The new player draws a new card to replace the missing one at the start of their turn.

Play continues in this way until every player has had one turn. Once all players have gone once, players may refill bank of pennies from the common pool:

• If they have fewer than ten pennies, they may refill back up to twenty.
• If they have between ten and twenty, they may refill up to thirty.
• If they have twenty or more pennies, they may refill ten pennies so long as they do not exceed forty in total.

The deck is reshuffled and four new cards laid. The position of first player passes to the next player in the order, and a new round begins.

“Everything Must Go:” Once the game has progressed to the point where twelve cards have been acquired (regardless of who has acquired them), the stock goes on closeout price. From now on, all cards may be purchased at 25% off. This continues until the last round, when all but four cards have been acquired. Once this stage is reached, the stock goes on liquidation price: all cards may be purchased at 50% off. Round to the higher number when resolving reduced prices.

Winning the Game: Play continues round by round until all the cards in the deck have been acquired. Once this occurs, players tally their hands: each card is worth its face value in points. The highest score wins the game.

Tags: Game Design //