Cheapass Games! These games might need you to supply dice, counters or money (use monopoly money for example) to play. See our DICE or COUNTERS sections if you need to add these.
Lets be honest, the name says it all! CHEAP and kick-ASS games. All these games are easy to play and light on the pocket. More info at the Cheapass website We strongly suggest you visit them to see how cool their games are. They are ideal to play before you start your main games session, waiting for all the players to turn up. Fab games though! We recommend Lord of the Fries. Many of these games have won or been nominated for awards all round the world. One thing, though - don't expect high quality full colour games in expensive boxes. These are CHEAP games, made cheaply by Cheapasses. Got it? |
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Players: 2-4 Playing Time: 30 minutes Elements: Cards and Rules You Need: 20 distinct counters for each player. Ever wondered what it's like to compete as a merchant in an ancient Greek marketplace? Of course not. But trust us, it's exactly like this. Agora is a fine little tile game in the Hip Pocket series, featuring the unique mechanic that you can play a card anywhere on the table and in any orientation. The resulting board is so organic you'd swear you were in ancient Greece. Game Synopsis: Players take turns collecting income and constructing shops. You only make money if pedestrians can reach your shop, so if you wind up completely surrounded by new construction your income drops to zero. Watch out if you own the biggest store on the table: it's likely to burn down or be destroyed in a sudden, freakish, and highly surgical flood. On the other hand, the biggest shop probably stands to make a bundle from the festivals that happen suddenly from time to time.
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A card expansion set for the Deadwood game.
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A card expansion set for the Deadwood game.
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A card expansion set for the Deadwood game.
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A card expansion set for the Deadwood game.
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Second Edition Players: 2-8 Playing Time: 1 hour Elements: Game Board, Rulebook. You Need: Pawns for every player, two 6-sided Dice, Counters. Prehistory: hot, primordial, dull. You've been dominating the earth for longer than you can remember. Of course, with a brain the size of a walnut, you've also been standing there for longer than you can remember. Nevertheless, you're completely positive that it's been 10 million years since anything interesting has happened. So you decide to cajole your buddies into running a suicide race across Skull Island. The winner is the first to hurl himself into the big volcano in he middle. The losers are everyone who got their heads bitten off along the way. Like we said, it's been hot and dull. Game Synopsis: Everyone starts at the lowest point on the island, and races around to the top. There are mud pits to slow you down, a big gap to jump over, and lots of rocks to pick up along the way. You can spend your rocks to roll again, or you can throw them at other players to knock them off the track. When you land on another dinosaur, you get to bite off their head. The board is dino-huge!
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Old Captain Park reckons he went to the Antarctic in 1898. He brought back all kinds of strange artifacts and tales of high adventure. Yeah right! He got as far as Stepney High Street, and called it a day. He pulled it off though, and everyone believes him! Can you do the same?
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You Need: A pawn for each player, two 6-sided dice, and a chest of treasures: 8 black coins, 12 blue, 14 gold, 16 red, 18 green, and 20 white. Sail the tiny little seas in your tiny little ship, battling tiny little pirates for their tiny little treasure, in this wee lark from Cheapass Games. Because we love pirates, and because we love you even more, this game is printed in glorious full color. You'll still need your own spare parts, of course. Players: 3 - 6 Duration: 60 (minutes)
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Change!
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A selection of games rules for those of you who are bored of hangman....
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Chief Herman's Next Big Thing is the sequel to Chief Herman's Holiday Fun Pack, which was released in 2000 and was nominated for an Origins Award for Best Abstract Board Game. Chief Herman's Next Big Thing contains more than 20 original games, some of which were previously published as magazine inserts, free games, or postcard games. Now all of them are in one incredibly affordable package.
[more info]
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Cube Farm
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Devilbunny needs a ham
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Devilbunny hates the Earth
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Deadwood! (boxed game)
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An expansion for Deadwood
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Diceland - Deep White Sea
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Diceland - Cyburg
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Diceland - Space
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Diceland - Dragons
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Dice and Counters for Cheapass Games See our DICE or COUNTERS sections if you need to add these items. |
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FALLING is a two-minute thrill ride. It's a freeform card game in which players are falling, fighting, and struggling to hit the ground last. There are no turns in this game. Everyone is playing at once. (nice colour cards) Players: 4-8
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Freeloader
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A strategic card game exploring the power struggles and illicit wealth generation in a modern Anarchy. OK, so its a game of duff-up the opposition, what more do you want! This edition contains both original card decks (Power and Fear) and is designed for 2 players.
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Get Out!
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Why do all mystery games start just after all the fun is over? Welcome to the J. Robert Lucky mansion, a sprawling country estate just ten miles north of nowhere. It's a fine country home, chock full of unusual weapons, good hiding places, and craven killers. Killers like you. The object? read on to find out....
[more info]
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Jacob Marley, Esquire
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Light Speed is a lightning-fast card game of space combat about identical teams of spaceships dropping out of hyperspace to do battle over an extremely important asteroid. This game is fast: each round takes less than a minute to play! (With a few minutes to score.) Tom Jolly, master game designer, brings us this fast-paced space combat game for 2-4 players. Each player has just 10 ships to play as quickly and strategically as he can. Once a player has run out of ships, the playing round ends and the shooting begins. Fast ships shoot first, big ships shoot last, and whoever scores the most points wins! A thrilling real-time card game in full color, a first for Hip Pocket games. You Need: For 2 Player Games: About 30 counters in two different colors. For 3 or 4 Players: About 15 distinct counters for each player (blue, green, purple and red) and an additional 15 counters in a fifth color. Players: 2 - 4 Duration: 10 - 15 (minutes)
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Nexus
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One False Step for Mankind
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An expansion for One False Step for Mankind. The Moon: 1850. Where a few thousand suckers who got on some fairly harmless-looking Moon rockets last year find themselves eking out a meager living mining dust and cheese. This month, it's time to go home. Will it work? Probably not. But living on the Moon is enough to drive anyone crazy, even if you're not right next door to a moon cave that spits out little green men like they're goin' outta style. It's one false step home. And maybe you'll even bring along some friends. One False Step Home is a set of new boards and rules for One False Step for Mankind that introduces a new resource type (Moon Men) and simultaneously chops about an hour out of the playing time. Impossible? Hardly. Printed in glorious Moon colors and inexpensively priced, this expansion is a must-have for any fan of the original One False Step.
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Elements: Cards, Rulebook. You Need: 1 Pawn for every player and 10 counters per player. Travel to distant lands, meet exotic animals, and kill them. That’s the basis of this simple little tile game, in which both players must build a map and then race to score the point cards. Safari Jack was originally released as a black-and-white Cheapass Game, but the lack of color made it less than appealing. Now re-worked in a color form, Safari Jack looks good and plays even better. If you would like to play Safari Jack with more than two players, there really aren’t enough cards in just one deck. That’s why it's only listed as a 2-player game, if you’d like to include up to 4 players you can do it by adding a second deck. Players: 2 Duration: 30 (minutes)
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April 14, 1912. A cold night in the Atlantic. An errant iceberg, a titanic cruise ship, and one very lucky old man. Doctor Lucky is a charismatic and well-repected philanthropist in this many-years-before prequel to Kill Doctor Lucky. Of course, you secretly hate the old bastard, and you can't wait to kill him someday. But killing him aboard a sinking ship would be pointless, especially when you're probably about to die. So you've decided to save his life instead, and do it while somebody else is looking. That way, even if you go down with the ship, you'll at least go down in history. Isn't that what life is all about? Game Synopsis: Everyone wants to save Doctor Lucky. Players move around the ship looking for helpful items and trying to save the old man while someone else is looking. Trying to save Doctor Lucky is pretty easy, but just like in the last game, every other player can play Failure cards to stop you. And don't take too long. If the ship sinks, everybody loses! Save Doctor Lucky is a quirky twist on the original game with clever illustrations and a sinking ship for a board. Illustrated by Damon Brown. If you've played Kill Doctor Lucky, the original Cheapass Game, you're already familiar with most of the mechanics of this game. But be warned: there are subtle changes that make all the difference. What's more, there's an extra set of penalty rules just for you! Awards: Listed in Games Magazine's "Games 100" for 2001. It also won a GAMA award from Games Unplugged Magazine for Coolest Game Mechanic, 2001
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A game for gravediggers....... (look, we don't write them, we just sell them, OK?)
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Dice and Counters for Cheapass Games See our DICE or COUNTERS sections if you need to add these items. |
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Business is hell. Going out of business is worse. For some American businessmen, bankruptcy means years of hard work, a struggle to reclaim one’s hard-earned wealth and reputation by the application of fiscal conservatism and old-fashioned hard work. For others, it means a quick trip to Tijuana where smooth-talking wrestling promoters offer big bucks to any fool desperate enough to risk his life in the ring. As you might expect, this game is about option two. Secret Tijuana Deathmatch is a card game featuring clever strategy, funny wrestlers, and components from another game! Players take the roles of Mexican wrestling promoters, cajoling bankrupt and suicidal American businessmen into fighting in midnight deathmatches. The game begins with each player drafting a stable of five fighters, and plays out over several rounds as these fighters meet, fight, and die. This game is limited to 5,000 copies, because it uses counters recycled from the Atlas game, Spammers. Atlas overprinted its Spammers counters and gave us the surplus, so we’re only able to bring you this game for as long as those counters last! Designed by James Ernest, illustrated by Cheyenne Wright (Freeloader and James Ernest’s Totally Renamed Spy Game).
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There's a big mall, and its pretty light on security. And you've got guns....... BIG guns...... Springtime. Midnight. The Mall is beckoning. Welcome to LeGrand Mall, the oldest and most poorly secured indoor mall in the world. It's as airtight as the Titanic and as solid as a wet paper bag. This place just begs to be robbed. Enter you. And your infantile collection of friends. It's not enough to simply loot this mall. No, you have to do it with a certain amount of flair. Which boils down to an all-night looting race, with shopping carts, flashlights, and guns. The object? Park your car, dash into the mall, and load your shopping cart with the goodies on your list. You can snitch stuff out of the stores if you like, but it's even more fun (and easier) to steal it from your friends. And that would explain why you're carrying a huge gun. Game Synopsis: Your primary Pawn is you, your other Pawn is your car. You've got a hand of cards which represents your shopping list. When you hit the right stores, put the cards into your Shopping Cart (on the table in front of you) and draw some more. Now you've just got to get all this loot back to your car before the other players shoot you and try to steal it. This is the Classic Edition of Spree, featuring the original Phil Foglio artwork, a new 2-color board, and the "extra violence" rules from the Hong Kong edition. It’s the best Spree ever!
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There's a big mall, and its pretty light on security. And you've got guns....... BIG guns......
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Players: 2-5 Playing Time: 30 Min Elements: 48 Cards, Rules. You Need: About 20 distinct counters for each player and a way to keep score. In the year 2185, in the steam-driven titanium mine deep under the surface of Io,.... oh, who are we kidding. Steam Tunnel is a great game with no particular basis in reality. Compete for control of tunnels in an abstract game with a perfect mix of strategy and luck. Game Synopsis: Steam Tunnel is played on a grid of 36 cards. Players take turns flipping up facedown cards, then placing stones to try to control sets of tunnels. When a tunnel closes, the player with the most stones scores it, based on its length and the point value of its end caps. Some tunnels fork, some tunnels lead nowhere, but a masterful plan will always get you pretty close to winning. Another neo-classic Hip Pocket strategy game by the unstoppable James Ernest.
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Starbase Jeff
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Players: 3-6 Playing Time: 1 hour You Need: Money, 60 counters, and one six-sided die. Congratulations! You’ve just invented Flammable Beer. Your work has just begun. The Big Idea is a hilarious game of inventing and investing, where players try to market wacky products like Erotic Chowder and Mentholated Shampoo. Sound easy? Maybe that’s because you’ve never had to come up with the perfect sales pitch for the Non-Stick Toupee. In this remake of a classic Cheapass game, players create amusing products using descriptions like “Flying” and “Herbal” and items like “Robot” and “Monkey.” You could create Mail-Order Clown Pants, Electric Cat Sushi, or even Gigantic Addictive Chicken Cleaner. Do you think you’re the marketing whiz who can talk the public into a Perforated Kilt? Then you’re ready to play The Big Idea.
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Players: 3-6 Playing Time: 1 hour Yoriginal version - now out of print
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Multiply your invention potential from jillions to gazillions. The Big Idea: More Cards is a deliciously different assortment of 64 cards for The Big Idea, featuring such gems as Dangerous Cheese, Bulletproof Caveman, and Scandalous Turkey Pants.
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Players: 3-6 Playing Time: 30 minutes Elements: 36 Cards, Rulebook. You Need: 10 Counters for each player and either one 6-sided die or a full set of polyhedral dice. Rats! That's what you are. Big, hungry rats. You're all VP's at Rat Financial Incorporated, and you're all striving for a slice of the Big Cheese. The President is retiring next month, and whoever can score the most points with him gets to take his place. And his Big Cheese. Game Synopsis: The Big Cheese is a clever little bidding game. Originally released in 1998, it's been redone in the style of our newer Hip Pocket Games, with the same low 1998 price. Players bid on project cards using their underlings' time, trying to score points as quickly as possible. The more people you assign to a project, the longer it takes to finish. Just like in real life! Illustrated by Carol Monahan, designed by James Ernest and Jon Wilkie.
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Players: 3-7 Playing Time: 1 hour Elements: 8 board game sections, 60 card, rules You Need: Pawns for every player, about 50 counters, and two six-sided dice. It is a dark time for Friedey's, the Fast Food Restaurant of the Damned. For one thing, the Zombies don't even have one Brain to pass around. For another, the Cowabunga Conga hasn't been invented yet, and the closest thing to "fast food" is a speeding passenger train full of free Government Cheese. But any train full of passengers is also a train full of Brains. And you're almost positive that Brains are what you need. So saddle up and rob that train. If you're lucky, you may even come home smart. Game Synopsis: This is the fourth game in the Friedey's series, and the first Cheapass board game to come in a sturdy cardboard box. You and your friends are robbing a train full of Brains in the Old West, fighting to take home the best one. The "Board" is composed of eight double-side Train Cars, and the Train grows and shrinks throughout the game. New cars appear in the front as players move forward, and old cars fall off the back, well, sort of randomly. To win the game, you need to find the Brain with the highest IQ before the Train comes to a stop, and defend it from all the other Zombies who'd rather beat you up than find a better Brain on their own. A splendid adventure for 3-7 players, illustrated as always by loveable Zombie artist Brian Snoddy. Awards: The Great Brain Robbery won a prestigious Origins award: Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Board Game of 2000. It was also nominated for Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game of 2000. Way to go, Zombies!
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Players: 2-4 Playing Time: 30 Minutes You Need: A score pad The Very Clever Pipe Game is another in a series of abstract strategy games from James Ernest and Hip Pocket Games. It was originally published as a 120-card envelope game in 1997, and returns now in a more compact and affordable form. The Very Clever Pipe Game is unlike any pipe game you've seen before. We promise! In the basic game, each player has a different color of Pipes (either Black or White) and is trying to construct closed sets of his own. When you complete a set, you take those cards off the table, and whoever takes the most cards wins. The rules of the game allow you to play cards anywhere on the table, even unconnected to the existing layout, as long as they conform to the existing grid. There are special rules for half-card sized holes (called "Pillars") and for deciding who takes the cards when two sets form at once. Once you have played the basic Pipe Game, you can move on to version two: Fields. Every card has light and dark Fields which run behind the Pipes. In the Fields game you are building the board by the same rules, but instead of picking up Pipe sets, you pick up Fields of your own color that are completely surrounded by Fields of the opposite color. In version 3, which is playable by up to 4 players, each player has either a Pipe color or a Field color, and each is trying to pick up sets of his own color. You can also play either of the two basic games with 4 players, by forming two teams of 2. The Very Clever Pipe Game has 48 cards, including several cards that were not in the original edition. The deck is better balanced for Pipes vs. Fields than the original game, and there is also a slight tweak to the starting rules (players draw starting hands of 9 cards and discard 4). What's more, the artwork has been updated to reflect the sensibilities of the new millennium. Okay, not really. We just made the borders white instead of black.
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Players: 2-5 Playing Time: 30 minutes Elements: Cards, Rulebook. You Need: 1 Pawn for every player, about 30 counters in each of 4 colors, and a way to keep score. Congratulations! You’ve invented a time machine. You will use it one day to learn about the rich history of the planet and perhaps even contribute to the betterment of Mankind. But first, you’re gonna play the stock market and get really, stupidly rich. Timeline starts with a row of cards depicting crisscrossing paths, which represent the values of commodities. By connecting a starting point, which never moves, to a “market” at the other end of the board, the lines connect four commodities to four values. As time changes, these values change. And they change a lot. During the game, players will travel through time picking up miscellaneous commodities, then going to the markets at the end of the line trying to get the most value for their goods. The deck contains 48 cards in the familiar abstract Hip Pocket style, and you’ll need a Pawn for each player as well as about 30 colored stones in each of four colors. With very little randomness, Timeline is an intense and engaging strategy game that, for what it’s worth, models aspects of time travel better than it has any right to.
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Players: 3-6 Playing Time: 90 minutes Elements: 9 game boards, 48 Upgrade cards, 8 Time Machine cards You Need: Approximately $20 in cash or chips per player; a pawn and a counter for each player; at least three 6-sided dice. Eureka! You've just invented time travel. But the awful truth is that you're not alone. In fact, scientists have been inventing time travel since 1814. But if you have a time machine, it really doesn't matter who invented it first. All that matters is who gets to the Patent Office first. And by "first" we mean on opening day. Because nothing suits a time machine like U.S. Patent 1. Game Synopsis: U.S. Patent Number 1 is a racing game. Every player is a scientist who has invented time travel, and now everyone is racing to the Patent Office to prove who invented it first. Because you have a time machine, it's not enough to get to the Patent Office fast. You actually have to go back in time, to the day the Patent Office opened! During this race you will upgrade your machine with some gadgets, including a power plant, a chassis, a weapon, and a shield. You can invent these things on your own, you can buy them, or you can steal them from the other players. Only a machine with all four upgrades qualifies to earn the patent, and you have a limited supply of money and power to spend. U.S. Patent Number 1 was designed by James Ernest and Falko Goettsch, and it's the coolest board game of its time!
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Players: 3-7 Playing Time: 60 minutes Elements: 81 cards, rules You Need: One six-sided die, money. Europe. Summer. 1997. You and your friends have discovered two problems with a common solution: Mad Cows in England and Unexploded Bombs in France. You've decided to bring these two powderkegs together just to see what happens. And you wouldn't say "no" to a little money on the side. So round up your herd, march them through France, and set them loose behind the Cordon Rouge. If you're lucky you'll come home rich before Greenpeace gets hold of you. Either way, there's something magical about blowing up cows. Game Synopsis: Unexploded Cow is a money game in which the players are trying to collect enough points to win the Pot. On every turn you will buy Cows and pay for special effects by putting money into the Pot, then try to discover bombs with your own Cows in an effort to take money out of the Pot. All along, you will be earning points from the French as you liberate town after town from the terrors of unexploded bombs, and the player who scores the most points gets whatever's left in the Pot. Unexploded Cow is best played as a series of short games, each of which takes about half an hour. The game is quite simple and very chaotic, and we think you'll have a blast.
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Vegas!
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Players: 3-7 Playing Time: 90 minutes Elements: Game Board, 84 cards, rules You Need: One counter, two six-sided dice, money. It is a dark time in American history. Society has chosen to rid itself of the influence of "witches," i.e., unmarried women, free thinkers, vegetarians, the homeless, and other undesirables. In Witch Trial, you play an attorney at a prestigious law firm. You will act as prosecutor or defender in several cases involving unsavory characters mentioned above. While witchcraft per se isn't really a crime, it's customary to bring suspects into court on related offenses, such as Card Playing, Smoking, and Tampering with the Post. There's no burning-at-the-stake in this game, for two reasons. First, once the case is out of the courtroom you don't really care what happens. But more important, you don't normally burn witches at the stake. You press them to death with stones. This game requires lawyer-like reflexes, a little bit of luck, and the willingness to plea bargain when you know you can't win. Game Synopsis: Players take turns being both prosecutors and defenders in this barely realistic courtroom game. First, build your case by pairing a Suspect with a Charge. Then entice an opponent to defend your case on his turn, or choose a random "public defender" on yours. The Defense has a harder job, but gets a little easy money at the start of the case. The majority of the case money goes to the player who plays the best collection of Evidence, Witnesses, Motions, and other courtroom drama to lull the Jury into believing their side. The Jury is a little unpredictable, since it always comes down to the roll of 2 dice (modified by the cards played), but the lawyers can agree to "plea bargain" before the end and spit the case money however they see fit.
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