Who doesn’t love haggling and a good yard sale on Saturdays? Imagine getting to clean out your Aunt Agatha’s Attic, and that attic is full of treasure The best part about it, you can take her old stuff for free! The worst part is your cousins are all trying to find treasures too. While you don’t really like them, you have to play nice to keep Aunt Agatha happy, because she might just give you an extra Special Item ff you are polite and keep the peace with your pesky cousins. This game best serves a player group of three to six people, and it took us about 20 minutes to to play and learn it with five players. It’s time controlled so each trading round of haggling only lasts two minutes. This time is kept on a sand timer with pretty blue sand inside of it. This game has an extremely clean design with an easy to comprehend rule book and a nice deck of cards that you will be trading with the other players. I hope you have good haggling skills because two minutes isn’t a long time to get the deals rollin’! The volume of your room may get a little loud as it had us up on our feet trying to broker deals over the dinner table. If you are anything like my family, I would suggest using the timer function on your phone so you don’t accidentally argue over the sand timer by a few seconds….
The boxes had a really nice thick booklet of scoring sheets and I don’t think you would run out of them any time soon! I love not having to worry about running out or laminating them. The artwork in this game is bright and vibrant too. I am also a sucker for shiny jewels and objects that just look downright Magical! The artist is Leda Chung. The designer of this game is Doug Levandowski, He has designed games such as Kids On Bikes, Kids on Brooms, Gothic Doctor and You’re Fired. This is my favorite game he has designed. It’s fast paced, quick on your feet kinda of game that gives the whole room a buzz of energy as you soar on the high of getting all those treasures!
Over three rounds, you and your friends will play the game by trading cards to try to get full sets if you have half of a set you round up for. All ties in the game are friendly so if two people are tied, you will both get the points. You will be trying to get the player with the highest score wins. If two players are tied after three rounds the person who has the fewest cards win. If both players have the same amount of cards they will then be judged by an impartial third party on who gives better Hugs.
A round is played as follows: in a five-player game you have eight cards in your hand and 2 cards the center of the table. You can look at your items, but are a secret to everyone else. Each player will also get a hug card that can be used anytime. You will draw four cards from your deck of eight, the hand you hold are your trading cards. The cards on the table are your drawing deck. Hug cards are not worth points, but they will break a tie at the end of the game. You must trade at least one card each round and you cannot trade a hug for a hug. The person with the most hugs at the end of each round will get a magic mirror. This can give you a huge scoring bonus and is an extra incentive to be nice and share your treasures for hugs.
I cannot say enough good things about this wonderfully designed small box game. It is one of the first games I ever play tested for a friend, and now it’s a truly high-quality, refined game. This game will be taking a spot in my Quiver (which is an extremely high honor for any game as a Quiver only holds so many great games). This moves up onto the ranks of games like Werewords, Star Realms, The Mind, and Sushi Go! This is absolutely the perfect light game to start your night off with. I would recommend it to everyone over age four, because it’s important to teach children the importance of and more importantly how to redistribute the wealth so everyone can be happy and have a nice treasure collection!
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You can pick up a copy of Aunt Agatha’s Attic on the Chronicle Books store or on Amazon. Thanks to Chronicle for the copy of the game used in this review!
Images via Chronicle Books
