Escalation! (2007)

It's the classic suburban conflict of unreturned tools, loud neighbors, and prize-winning garden gnomes from Reiner Knizia. This simple gateway card game has players starting with low-value cards then escalating the values until someone goes too far and penalizes their neighbor with the stack of cards. When the deck runs out and a player's hand is empty, the player with the least cards in his stack wins.

One player opens with a card or cards and calls out the value played. The next player must play cards to surpass that value, and so on, escalating the value until the point where a player does not wish to or cannot go above that value, thus taking the stack of cards and placing them in her penalty stack. A simple card game in the tradition of No Thanks!

(Description from the publisher)

Components:

• 1 rule card
• 56 playing cards (51 numbered cards and 5 special cards)
  • 1-#1, 5-#2s, 6-#3s, 6-#4s, 6-#5s, 6-#6s, 5-#7s, 4-#8s, 3-#9s, 3-#10s, 2-#11s, 2-#12s, 2-#13s
  • 2 neighborhood watch cards
  • 3 wild 1-7 cards