Clumsy Thief

By Melon Rind
Price $13.99
Age 9+

This game is all about action and stealing. After receiving seven cards apiece from the dealer, players make money stacks by placing, face-up on the table, pairs of cards whose sum is $100.00. Other players steal stacks using cards from their hand, either a Money card whose value, when paired with the stack's top card, creates a sum of $100.00, or a Thief card. Just place the card on top of the stack you're stealing and slide it in front of you. But beware. The same stack can and will be stolen repeatedly. There's no turn-taking, leading to unpredictability and bursts of action that turn things upside down. One moment a player is up, and the next, (in a blinding swirl of stack-stealing) he's down. When stealing dies down, players add another card from the deck to their hands, kicking off a new flurry of stacks and stealing. There are other strategic ins and outs, including players adding money to their own stacks and the use of special Jail cards that can only be played on a Thief card, and prevent that stack from being stolen again. Play ends when someone runs out of cards in hand or the deck itself runs out. Players then earn the sum value of all the money in their stacks, and the highest score wins. 2 to 6 players.