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Gold
Digger From:
Out of the Box Publishing MSRP:
$9.99 (USD) Loco! From:
Fantasy Flight MSRP: $6.95 (USD)
Related Links: TTGOTW: Lord of the Rings - The Confrontation
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Tabletop
Games of the Week: Gold Digger and Loco! Two
of the best light card games released recently are English language
additions of solid, enjoyable German card games.
On top of that similarity, Loco! from Fantasy Flight and Gold
Digger from Out of the Box are both designs of respected game author
Reiner Knizia. Most
importantly for our purposes, both games are light, quick-playing and a
good deal of fun. In
Gold Digger, a line of gold mine cards is dealt out horizontally on the
table. Players take turns
playing two types of cards either above the mine or below it.
Gold nugget cards and Fool’s Gold cards are played below the
mine and at the end of the game the number of gold nuggets played on
each mine will be the basis of the scoring.
The trick to playing Gold cards is in the fact that only five
cards can be played on each mine, so any Fool’s Gold cards that are
played on a mine mean one less valuable Gold card can be played.
This is important because during the course of the game players
will play claim tokens on the mines that they expect to be worth the
most gold by the end of the game. So,
the game becomes a struggle for the player to maximize the points in the
mines he or she has invested in and limit the points in the other
player’s mines. Gold
Digger’s components are high quality.
The card stock is above-average and holds up well through
excessive play. The art on
the cards is cartoony, but attractive.
Everything comes in a nice, sturdy box that travels well. Gold
Digger plays quickly (about fifteen minutes on average) and is engaging
throughout. It provides a
lot of opportunity to make decisions considering how light a
fast-playing it is. Armchair
Empire gives Gold Digger our highest recommendation as both a fun family
game and a light opener or closer for game night. Loco!
from Fantasy Flight feels similar to Gold Digger, but even though it is
quicker playing and has even less rules, it is much more of a brain
buster. In Loco!, thirty
cards (six each in five different colors) are dealt evenly to each
player (with leftovers being set aside face-down).
Players take turns playing these cards beside piles of tokens of
colors that match the cards. After
playing a card, players pick up a token from the board.
The color of the token does not have to match the color of the
card played. When one color
has had all six cards played, the game ends.
Tokens are worth the value showing on the last card played in the
matching color. The tension
in the game is remarkable as it is hard to know when a color will be
finished off. Especially
with five players, it is very difficult to guess what the situation on
the table will be the next time play comes around.
So, the decision to play a high number on a pile and take a token
from the same pile is risky, for someone could close off that very color
with a zero before play made its way back around. Overall,
the game is incredibly tense and action packed for a game that often
ends in less than ten minutes. It
is one of our favorite fast-play card games of the year. The
component quality of Loco! is a bit of a letdown.
The cards are thin and showed signs of wear over six or seven
plays. The chips are high
quality, but they aren’t designed to stack and don’t fit neatly in
the included box. Of
course, for the measly four bucks this game can be found for online, it
wouldn’t take many plays to make the game worth the purchase. For the record, both games are available from the nice folks at Games Surplus (www.gamesurplus.com) at a substantial discount.
(October 26, 2003) |
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