Gold!

From the publisher:

Gold! Gold! Nothing but gold as far as the eye can see. Well, to be honest the landscape holds a few donkeys, too, and while donkeys can help carry all that gold, they'll also eat into your savings if you aren't careful.

Gold! consists of a 60-card deck, with cards in six colors; each color has gold cards valued 3-8 and a few donkeys worth -2. Each player starts the game with a different-colored donkey, then two cards are removed from play and five cards laid out face-up. On a turn, a player can:

• Take the lowest valued card on display, with donkeys always being worth less than gold, and add it to his tableau.
• Exchange one gold card from his tableau for a lower-valued gold card.
• Exchange a donkey from his tableau for a gold card of any value.

Whenever a player collects three cards of the same color, he must score it. First, though, he can pilfer a card in a color not present in his tableau from an opponent. When the last face-up card is claimed, five new cards are revealed. Once the final set of five cards is claimed, players compare their totals in each of the six colors; whoever has the highest total in a color scores the highest gold card of that color. Players then sum the cards in their score piles, and the player with the highest score wins.

Players: 2-3

Time: 20 min.

Ages: 8 and up