Cover Your Assets
Overall Rating: 8/10
Age: 8+
GLAM Age Range: 8-Adult
Number of Players: 4-6
Playing Time: 20 min
Publisher: Grandpa Beck's Games
Complexity: Low
Available At: Amazon.com
Quick Take: This game is so simple in its premise - collect pairs of cards and lay them down to create a stack of money. Steal from other players when you can and defend your own stack of cards while doing so. There can be big swings in fortune. It's one of those games that are great for a game night, you can talk throughout the game and while there's a mix of strategy and luck, the game is weighed a little more towards the luck end of the spectrum which makes it a great choice for mixed ability level of players. Kids younger than 8 can easily play this game if you help them count up their cards at the end. It's great math practice for our 1st grade son.
How to Play: Collect $1 million in assets to win. Each player is dealt five cards. If you have a pair, you may place it down on the table directly in front of you and draw enough cards to get your hand back to five cards. If you have a card in your hand that matches an opponents top pair, you have the opportunity to steal those cards. They can defend against your card with an additional card that matches their pair, or with a wild card. Wild cards are very valuable and can be used to either complete a pair that you play on your stack, to attack an opponents assets, or to protect your own assets. If you don't have anything in your hand that either forms a pair or that can attack an opponents assets you may discard a card and draw a new one. Your discarded card may be picked up and used to form a pair of assets for any other player on their turn. Eventually you run out of cards and at that point everyone counts up the value of their assets. It may take a couple rounds of play to make it to a player reaching $1 million in assets.
Variations: Don't play to $1 million. It's enough to play through the deck of cards once and see who has the most money at the end of one round. Otherwise it will take two or even three rounds through the deck to get a player to $1 million and that unnecessarily prolongs the game in my opinion.
Similar Games To Check Out: Codenames, Monopoly Deal, Exploding Kittens, Dragonwood, Splendor