Game Review: Bag-O-Loot

[SDragon]

Today was multicultural day in the next city over from where I live, and while exploring the surprisingly diverse cultures (and foods! I loved the spicy dish that was offered at the Philippines table) that the city had to offer, I stumbled across a guy shilling out this neat little card game he said his daughter and him invented: Bag-O-Loot.

This game was simple and fun, primarily based on rummy and BS, although the card he gave me billed it as being like "Rummy + Poker + Go Fish (It's fun!)".

The Deck

This game uses a simple deck of what seems to be 85 cards: five each of 1-16, and wild cards. I'm assuming, here, that there wasn't any rank higher than 16, and that there were five wild cards.

Rules

The rules were very well-thought out in such a way that made them a bit harder to explain than to actually play them out. It might be easiest to describe the rules in phases, although, with two exceptions, the order of phases isn't important:

Deal:

The dealer gives seven cards to each player (2-4).

Draw Phase:

At the beginning of each turn, the player whose turn it is must draw one card. There's no maximum limit to the number of cards in a hand.

Open Phase:

In this phase, you can play any 2, 3, or 4 of a kind from your hand. These are all played face up. If a player has a numbered card that belongs to a bag-o-loot (see the Loot Phase), then it's considered "dead", and is discarded.

Build Phase:

This phase, along with the next, aren't possible in the very first turn. This is when you can build on to the piles you have so far; if you have two 3's, and you drew a 3 in the draw phase, you can play that on your 3's.

Steal Phase:

This is where things start to get a little interesting: In this phase, you can "steal" someone else's pile, claiming it as your own, by building upon it. If, for example, it's your opponent that has the two 3's, you can play your 3 on that pile and steal it from them.

Loot Phase:

This is the final phase, and other than the draw phase, the only one where phase order is important. In this phase, you can create a "bag-o-loot". This is-- as far as anyone else knows-- a five of a kind. However, the fifth card is played face down, and can be bluffed. If you have a pile of four 3's, you can play a fifth card face down, and declare it as a bag-o-loot. You can only make one bag-o-loot per turn, and other players are allowed to challenge it. If an opponent challenges your bag-o-loot, they can privately look at your fifth card, to see whether or not it was a bluff. If it was a bluff, then they steal that bag-o-loot from you. If it wasn't a bluff, and you actually do have five of a kind, then you can steal a bag-o-loot from them. If they don't have a bag-o-loot, you steal all of your piles instead.

End of Game & Scoring

The game-- or round, if you're playing to a certain point value-- ends when one player empties their hand. From what I can tell, the last card played has to make a bag-o-loot, and it cannot be a bluff. Scoring is as follows:

Card in hand: -1 point

Card in pile: 1 point

bag-o-loot: 10 points.

Website

www,bag-o-loot.com

Overall

This is a great game; fun and simple. The core gameplay is a lot like rummy, and it shows. This makes it, in my opinion, a very beer-n-pretzels game. Where the game deviates from rummy, though, is where the creativity really shines. Challenging a bag-o-loot can really make the game swing in a player's favor.

Since it's so close to rummy, a little ingenuity can adapt the rules to a regular deck of cards, but the deck that was made for the game is definitely a plus. I'm not sure yet if I think it's worth the $7 price tag, but I tend to be neurotic with my luxury spending; I probably won't be sure if I think it's worth any amount of money for a week or two. Regardless of whether or not it's worth the purchase, it's still definitely worth a peek. You might even end up deciding that the single-digit price tag is-- dare I say it?-- a steal.