Game: Gold Digger

Thread: Re: HiG rules or OotB rules?

wmshub — 2008-11-05T17:07:15+00:00

I've played with and without the hand of 3. I think that having a hand of 3 adds some strategy to the game. Without it, there is pretty much zero strategy.

Even still, this game doesn't completely work for me. Something about the balance seems off. Too often it is clear that none of your cards will help you at all, so on your turn you are just wasting time instead of doing something productive...very unusual for a Knizia game! All the same, my daughter likes it well enough, and maybe with more plays I'll see some strategy, or maybe not!

Thread: HiG rules or OotB rules?

caesarbgg — 2008-11-05T10:57:31+00:00

I won this game at a Stone Age tournament on Monday.
Now I am wondering, which rules would play better: the HiG ones or those of the Out of the box version.

The major differences seem to be:
1. In the HiG version you don't have a hand of cards. You just draw a card an place it in a row, then decide to place a chip (claim marker) or not.

2. In the HiG version you are not allowed to play a gold card in a row where there are not yet person cards (if possible). If all rows are empty of person cards, or all rows with persons have already 6 gold cards, you are free to choose.

3. In the HiG version you have 36 instead of 30 gold cards (6 per row).

Does anybody know both versions and can compare? Or how would you judge the different rules having played only one of them? Any helpful hints?

Thread: A creative variant...

bwridge — 2008-08-04T05:57:47+00:00

A few months ago I gave GOld Digger to a friend in our game group who had a young son... I figured he might like it. At a party at their house today, I had a chance to play it with the young boy and some other folks.

SO we sit down to play... the boy, who was about 8, I think, Ron, my wife, and I. I try to explain the game to the others who hadn't played it but the youngster insisted in explaining game. I let him go ahead, and Ron and my wife were promptly confused. THe rules as he explaing it were quite different from the rules that I was aware of.

For whatever reason, the house rule is that we all start with a character card. I figure fine... grab my other two gold and start playing. THe first thing I notice is that the boy is arranging all the cards on oen side of the mine... I try to explain that you put character cards on one side and gold o nthe other... but I'm shot down.

After several turns... I notice that everyone is playing gold... that no more characters show up after our initial four. After a few more rounds of this, I inquire where the character cards are... I was told they were "at the bottom" because they don't come out "till later." "mmm..." I thought... "this isn't the Gold DIgger I'm used to."

SO we ended up with all the gold down first, then our hands were flooded with characters. NOt that it mattered, anyway, because another house rule was that you could stake a mine at anytime.

Finally, even before we exhaust the deck, we're told the game is over. We count up the scores but, you know... for the life of my I can't remember who won or why. I think we had some odd scoring mechanism in play that I wasn't familiar with.

Mind you.. .I'm writing this in a light tone and am certainly not ripping on the kid. I was very happy to see a young boy enthusiastic about a card game... even if he was butchering the rules beyond recognition. But still, it was funny to see what should be a light, easy game go off the rails in such a manner. I commented to Ron that I we should be careful about playing Monopoly with the kid

Nevertheless... it was fun. We went on to play Ra, Race for the Galaxy, and Hecatomb in a much more tradional manner

Brian

Thread: Re: Simple, short, and cheap filler.

Ed123play — 2008-04-18T23:07:27+00:00

A Great little game and it easy to carry in your bag.

Thread: Re: Session Report

wmshub — 2008-03-11T20:00:38+00:00

I know this session report is ancient, but...Greg stresses that you must take the top card and play it. My rules (the OOTB version, published after this session report was written) says you get three cards, and choose one of the three to play.

Is this a change that OOTB made? Or did Greg play incorrectly?

The 3-card hand makes it a lot less random. Still plenty of luck, but now it is at least a bit manageable. Since the randomness was the main complaint in Greg's group, it's too bad they got the rules wrong!

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Ceryon — 2008-02-02T23:14:36+00:00

Better cropped image of the german cover

Thread: Re: Simple, short, and cheap filler.

amacleod — 2007-10-11T17:00:15+00:00

Quite frankly, I find Gold Digger to be a great filler, and still (after four years) to be one of Dr. Knizia's better games over all. This is bearing in mind what the game IS intended to be: merely a filler. I find the end-game to be exceedingly tense due to the fact that you've only got three possible claims to make, and not the foggiest idea what the other players might dump into that mine before it's full. Placing a claim too early guarantees a horde of fool's gold being dumped into that mine by your opponents; waiting to stake a claim too long means that you may not be able to do so at all, due to a lack of character cards in your hand. So the key to the game is not what gold cards you happen to draw, but rather when and where you stake your claims. The fact that you have the option to stake a claim later on a mine where you've already placed one is a defensive measure that can be played against a claim-jumping opponent.
I totally disagree with you, Nate, about the fun factor: with two players, it's a bore, and often a draw. If you're going to play it at all, have at least three players.
If you don't want to play a filler, then certainly avoid Gold Digger. But as a filler, Gold Digger is outstanding!

Thread: Simple, short, and cheap filler.

jentinma — 2007-10-09T17:37:57+00:00

Gold Digger is one of Knizia’s simpler designs, and in all honesty it is not one of his better designs either. While many Knizia games contain luck, it is nothing like that experienced in this game.

Gold Digger is about prospecting for gold in different mines. Different groups can lay claim to the mine, but the gold found in each mine must be shared by all those who have a stake there. It devolves into a rush to claim the best mines while trying to get the most gold in the mines you have claimed before they are full. Overall, it is not that much fun, and most people would be well advised to simply move on to other games.

Components: This is primarily a card game, and the cards are of fine quality. The cartoonish art is appropriate for such a simple game. Three types of cards are provided: mine, gold, and person cards. The mine cards are double sided with the names of the groups of people that can claim each of the six mines. Each mine has a different color corresponding to the colors of the 6 groups of people. Each person is given an individual name, some of which are slightly amusing. The artwork on each person card is unique to that card, which provides amusement the first time you play, but not even for the whole game. The gold cards have fools gold (grey) or 1 to 8 gold pieces on them. All cards work fine, but are not of particularly exceptional quality.

Each player is provided with 3 plastic markers that look much like Tiddledy Winks, which are functional, but not altogether breath taking. This game is from Out of the Box not Days of Wonder, so the lower cost of production is not surprising.

Setup: The 6 mine cards are placed in a row in the middle of the table. Players choose who will go first, and each player takes the 3 tokens for their color. The rest of the cards are shuffled together, and 3 cards are dealt to each player.

Game Play: On a player’s turn, they play one of the 3 cards in their hand to a mine. If they play a gold card, they play the card to one side of the mine that they choose. No more than 5 gold cards (either real gold or fool’s gold) can be played to any mine. Once the 5 card limit is reached, gold must be played to the other mines.

If they play a person card, the card is played on the other side of the mine that matches the color and description of the person. Mines are divided into Outlaws, Prospectors, Law, Explorers, Townsfolk, and Settlers with matching colors. If the player chooses to, they may place a claim in the mine that the person card was played to by placing 1 of their tokens on the mine.

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Example of a full table including mines, people, and gold.

At the end of the turn, the player draws one card to return to 3 cards in hand. Once the draw pile is depleted, players continue playing until all of their cards are played.

End of the Game: At the end of the game, players determine how much gold they have claimed. The total gold in each mine is determined and divided by the number of claims in the mine. Players claim their share of the gold. Gold must be divided in whole numbers, and no fractions of gold can be split. Thus, if a mine has 2 claims and 5 gold, each claimant gets 2 gold. The player with the most gold wins.

Conclusions: Gold Digger is a very simple game, and very little thought goes into the game. Players are vying to get the most gold that they can, and so they try to get claims on mines that have few claims and claims on mines with the most gold.

There are very few meaningful decisions to be made during the game. Each player only has 3 claims, and once a claim is staked it cannot be changed, and players can expect to get 6 to 15 person cards during the game depending on the number of players playing. As a result, most person cards result in no claim being staked. On the other hand, many of the gold cards are fool’s gold, so most of the gold cards that are played are used to block up the mines that each individual is not trying to claim. Thus, there are truly few meaningful decisions to be made both as a result of most cards being played without much consequence to the player and the limited hand size of each player. As a result, this game ends up being primarily luck driven, and the winner is frequently the player who happened to draw the characters to the best mines or the 6 or 8 piece gold cards (one card of each is in the deck).

The game can be played with between 2 and 5 players. With 5 players, the outcome is almost entirely luck driven, with some players never seeing 3 characters and being unable to place all 3 claims. Thus, I think the game should only be played with 2 or 3 players. However, with the increased skill (to very moderate), the 2 player game results in a draw half of the time with both players laying claims in the same mines. We tend to play 3 consecutive rounds, similar to Lost Cities, with the highest score total over 3 rounds winning. The game plays very quickly as a 2 player game (5-7 minutes) but can extend to 15 minutes with 5 players. However, the fun gets drained from the game with more players.

Overall, the game is fairly luck dependent, but the short length and low price make this game a reasonable deal. It can be used as a short filler between other games. With 4 or 5 players, there are so many other better games that I will not play this with this many people anymore. But as a filler for 2-3 players, this works very nicely.

Rating by Number of Players:
2: 5
3: 5
4: 4
5: 3

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Debate — 2007-08-02T06:32:40+00:00

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jwalduck — 2007-07-23T23:37:03+00:00

Tiles from my home made version of Gold Digger - re-themed to be about pirates dividing up their loot. The cion tiles shown are the loot. The lead shot (lower right) replaces the fool's gold.

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jwalduck — 2007-07-23T23:36:47+00:00

Tiles from my home made version of Gold Digger - re-themed to be about pirates dividing up their loot. The key and map tiles shown replace the character cards from the original.

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Terry Egan — 2007-07-23T15:53:03+00:00

Goldrausch: Back of the Hans im Glück edition box.

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Agape — 2007-06-02T19:45:40+00:00

Claims

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Agape — 2007-06-02T19:44:44+00:00

A game in progress

Thread: Re: User Review

ainsworth — 2007-05-29T00:45:38+00:00

Very easy to learn and simple game play. Great for playing with friends who aren't hardcore into games.

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mcwookie — 2006-12-01T23:38:25+00:00

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mcwookie — 2006-12-01T23:15:07+00:00

A game in progress

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mcwookie — 2006-12-01T22:56:16+00:00

Completed Game

Thread: Re: Is this the same game as "Digging"?

ssmooth — 2006-05-12T23:05:44+00:00

No, they're two different games.

Digging is (basically) a partnership card game, very fast moving since you either play a card or draw one on your turn, trying to slip through scoring cards without your opponents playing cards to nullify them. This is pretty much the same system as Korsar, tho Korsar has some refinements that for my tastes make it work better.

Goldrausch, as you know, is a claiming game where the cards come out one at a time and, if I recall correctly, you can either play a claiming chip or not on your turn. Typical Knizia game of too little time, not enough opportunities, which I've enjoyed but don't own.

Thread: Is this the same game as "Digging"?

JeffyJeff — 2006-05-12T22:16:45+00:00

Is this the same game as "Digging" under the seperate BGG entry http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/524 ?

They are both "Reiner Knizia" with a theme of gold digging, and BGG gives 1990 as the date for both. This version supports 5 players though, and the other one is 2 or 4 as partners.

Just wondering as I already have this one (Gold Digger), and just ordered the other one (Digging) cheap, but then I realized I may already own a version of this?

Jeff

Thread: 4-player team game

steveoliverc — 2006-02-11T17:20:20+00:00

One of the students at my daughter's after school game club recommended this one. Simply pair off the players into two teams, making sure the players alternate their seating as you would in a 4-player trick-taking game (teams sit opposite each other). Everything else is the same, including dividing up the gold at the end. The total score for each team is the total for both of its partners. This made for a very fun (and close) game when we first tried it.

Thread: Re: How do you rate these variants?

plezercruz — 2006-01-13T21:06:49+00:00

Most of these variants eliminate the only strategic element from the game, namely that a player can force a certain pile of gold/fools gold/claim onto the mines of his choice. If you play without the 5-card limit on the mines, for example, you might as well take all the fools gold cards out of the deck, because they serve no function at all, except to annoy the person that drew the card.

The whole point of this game is that the final outlay of the cards is set: 5 miners and 5 gold cards per mine. Knowing this, the strategy is to force the right cards onto the right mines and to place your claims at the right time. Nothing eliminates all strategy faster than removing the known 'end condition.'

That said, we've had some fun with a version in which each new claim overrides an older claim. That is, the last person to claim a mine wins all the gold. But this version clearly is more luck based than strategy based...the best rules are the printed rules.

Thread: Re: User Review

jentinma — 2005-11-15T22:32:36+00:00

Mine also allows three cards, which is much better than one. However, this still only permits limited strategy. Do you keep the big gold in hopes of locking others out with a quick play on a mostly filled character set, or do you play it early to keep cahracters taht are almost full.

The whole choice is moot if the game is in its later stages before the gold is drawn. Then you just have to hope you have a character in the slots that can still take some gold. The strategy is there, but it is still quite limited. I still enjoy the game.

Thread: Re: User Review

minordemon — 2005-11-15T12:57:22+00:00

Euhm.. In my version you are alowed 3 cards in hand. Which makes it a bit more strategic then your's.

Maybe it's a newer version of the rules, but it makes it a lot more exiting, especially since it's such a fast game.

Thread: Re: User Review

markhu — 2005-07-10T06:41:19+00:00

It reminds me less of Lost Cities, and more like a combination of Flinke Pinke and Schotten-Totten.
Partially this has to do with the size of the cards and style of art.

Thread: Session Report

ssmooth — 2004-06-13T17:35:40+00:00

The next deck we rambled through was the Gold Rausch one. This old Reiner Knizia title has proved fun for three (though a little taxing with five since there's nothing to do on your turn but wait for it). There are six claims to be staked, and you can only become a partner in a claim if you draw one of the five cards for each claim on your turn. The other kind of card to be drawn is gold, either a positive value from 1 to 10 or a zero value (fool's gold), and it that's what you draw, you immediately assign it to one of the claims, each claim eventually to contain six cards. So as you take turns drawing from the deck, gradually you see which are going to be the more valuable claims, and intermittently throughout this process you may get one or more of the five chances to become a partner in each claim. You only have three claim chips to place, so the question becomes, how soon to commit one? If you've got the only marker on the board, you know every other player who draws fool's good is going to give it to you... but if you don't have a marker on the board, and you draw real gold, you've got no place really good to put it. So it's an interesting little game as far as it goes, and we think three is probably the best number for it. Leon got the come-from-behind victory by a nose, staking the only claim on the "Ladies" mine in the last of three rounds to beat me 45 to 44.

Thread: Session Report

daw65 — 2004-05-11T23:37:25+00:00

As mentioned, Sterling and Audra both enjoyed watching the Carcassonne game for a bit, but eventually decided to sit down to a game of their own. They wanted a quick filler, and settled on Golddigger.

Golddigger is a game of mining claims. Players place gold (real or fool's gold) in mines, and also play characters to lay claims to mines. Scoring is based on the amount of real gold collected in mines you have claimed. Since I was involved in the Carcassonne, Sterling took some notes, and I'll interpret them below. Thanks, Sterling, for helping out with the report!

The Explorers mine wound up being a pretty valuable mine, with 17 gold available. It didn't matter much, though, as both Sterling and Audra had claims on that mine, so they split the gold. The Townsfolk mine closed with 10 gold and 3 fools gold, and (as best as I can tell from the notes) Audra had the sole claim on that mine. Since each player had three claims to make, it's possible that the Explorers mine was the only one shared, but it's possible that some mine went unclaimed. At any rate, after collecting all the gold at the end of the game, Audra bettered Sterling with 23 gold to his 18.

Thread: Re:How do you rate these variants?

Latria — 2004-02-01T05:24:28+00:00

nysmoke (#26821),
I think this game suffers from being too mathematical, so placing the gold cards faced down improves the game IMO quite a lot. I suggest turning the 8-gold card face up to reduce luck factor. So far these variants work very well.

For fututre variants, I am considering no gold cards on mines without any character card.

I have not tried your suggestions. But I think making fools gold score negative points is not a good idea. It impacts low scoring rows (which rewards the risk-taking investor) much more than high scoring rows (which rewards the risk-averse investors). Since I think the point of the game is to weigh your risk well, fools gold should not be negative, to encourage investments in low scoring rows.

Thread: Re:How do you rate these variants?

nysmoke — 2004-01-31T11:50:29+00:00

How about this one:

After the 5th gold card is placed you can no longer stake a claim on a mine.

This is completely untested but sounds like it could at least add some tension to the proceedings. This, as well as counting fool's gold as negative points were the two ideas I came up with immediately after playing and disliking this game. If anyone tries it, please let us know how it works - I doubt I'll be able to convince my gaming group to give this one another try :-)

Thread: Re:How do you rate these variants?

Latria — 2004-01-28T05:48:47+00:00

This is my favorite variant so far. Put all the gold cards faced down except the 8-gold card. No claims jumping. A chance to put one claim token per character card.

Thread: Re:How do you rate these variants?

Latria — 2003-11-19T05:06:12+00:00

Shannon Appelcline proposed more variants in her review, they are as follow:
1)Make each gold mine limitless (ie, not bound by 5 cards)--until 2 bags of fool's gold are played in a row (maybe 3).
2)Make each bag of fool's gold negatively affect its mine (e.g., it's actually worth -1 bag of gold or maybe -2).
3)Limit each mine by the number of bags of gold rather than by 5 cards (e.g., if each mine was limited to 8 bags of gold, and each fool's gold card was counted as 2 bags of gold, then playing those fool's cards would have a fairly notable result in limiting eventual mine production).
4)Have fool's gold take up more than 1 card/space in a mine.

Thread: How do you rate these variants?

Latria — 2003-11-15T01:58:15+00:00

There are four variants I have heard so far. I am eager to know of more, and would like to know how you gamers think of these four variants.

1) "Claim Jumping" - This is the official variant on the OTB website, stating that the player with most chips on a mine wins all the gold. The original rule states that the gold is shared in proportion.

2) The reviewer who recommended the variant above suggest that you can put any amount of chips you want on the mine when you put the respective character card. The original rule state only one chip per card. Does this variant add to the strategy?

3) One of the comments here suggest placing the gold cards upside down hence hiding the value. Does that Bluffing element improve the strategy game, or is perfect infomation a better game?

4) This is not really a variant, but in the original rules of Goldrausch. No placing of gold cards on a mine without character cards. What do you think?

Thread: Session Report

mlvanbie — 2003-10-21T13:05:15+00:00

While waiting for more people to show up, Jake pulled out his copy of Gold Digger (Open the Box version) which he had not previously played. The rules were simple, but we found it hard to develop a useful strategy in a two-player game because we only had three cards in our hands. Situations on the board were slow to develop without additional players and it was all too easy to end up sharing many of the same mines.

Jake won the first game by a significant margin. In the second game I tried to save cards so that I would be the last to play people on some mines. I did this when I had two cards of the same type, which actually worked out for three mines. (At one point all of the cards in my hand were Settlers cards.) This meant that I had few gold cards at any time and mostly played gold cards to build up some useful mines. Holding the last card of several types allowed me to tie Jake by having an interest in the same all the same mines as him.

In conclusion, this game seems to need more players to be intersting, but at the time we lacked the human resources required to test the hypothesis. Using more cards in a two-player game might help, but that also went untested.

Thread: User Review

TomVasel — 2003-06-12T14:34:46+00:00

I was interested in Gold Digger because it combined two things I really like: Out of the Box Publishing, a company which makes quick, easy-to-learn, fun games; and John Kovalic, the artist for the game, better known for his humorous comics at www.dorktower.com . Add in the fact that the designer was the prolific Reiner Knizia, and I thought that Gold Digger was a sure winner.

So was it a winner? The short answer is yes, it’s an excellent little filler, and it makes a fine very fast two-player game. Now we go onwards to the longer answer.

First, a short description of game play:

The six double sided mine cards are laid out in a row on the table. Each player (two to five) takes three claim tokens (tiddly winks) of the same color. The deck of sixty cards is shuffled and three are dealt to each player. The rest of them are placed in a draw pile in the middle of the table. One player goes first, and each player then takes a turn. There are three things done on each turn.
1). Place a card by a mine card. There are 3 types of cards that can be played.
- Characters: There are five character cards that match each mine. (For example, “Annie Oakleaf” matches the Law mine.) Characters and mines are color coded for easy matching. Characters are placed above the mine.
- Gold: Gold makes a mine more valuable. Gold cards have from one to eight bags of gold on them. Gold cards are played below a mine, and make the mine worth that many points. (1-8)
- Fools gold: Fools gold is played below a mine, just like gold. It doesn’t affect the mine at all, except that only five cards are allowed below each mine. Fools gold cards block placement of a gold card in the same spot.

2). Stake a claim in a mine: If you place a character over a mine, you have the option of staking a claim in that mine. The player should place one of his claim tokens in that mine. By doing so, you will get a portion of the gold (points) that the mine is worth.

3). Draw a card

Obviously, once all five characters are placed on a mine, the mine can no longer have any claims put on it. Once five cards are placed underneath a mine, the mine’s value is fixed. When all sixty cards are placed, the game ends. At this point, the game is scored. If only one player has a claim token(s) on a mine, they get all the points for that mine. If more than one player has a claim token(s), the total points are divided by the number of tokens, and each player gets points according to the amount of tokens they have on the mine. Whoever has the most points is the winner!

Some comments on the game:

1). Components: The game in its entirety is just sixty-six cards and 12 tiddly-wink counters. The box is very small, and holds the cards and counters. I would have preferred wooden counters, but it really doesn’t matter much. The cards of good quality, and are very easy to distinguish. The six mines are six different colors, and the characters match not only those colors, but the name of each mine. There should be no confusion when laying down characters, and that’s really helpful. The bags of gold card are nice, but I think it would have been even better to put the number of points each card is worth on the card, instead of making the players count up the bags. (Although, in fairness, it’s not hard to do so.)

2). Artwork: I love Dork Tower. It’s artwork isn’t a stunning masterpiece, but it does makes me laugh. It’s nice to see that same humorous artwork transferred to this game. The names of the characters are also quite humorous (Dances with Rocks, Louis N. Clarque, Donna Partie, etc.) And each character has their own distinctive artwork. Is this necessary? – of course not, but it adds a nice touch.

3). Time: The game plays extremely fast. When you have a decision of three cards to play, and only a limited number of places to place them, it doesn’t take long for each player’s turn. The only time any hang-up might occur is when deciding to place a claim token or not. But then again, this is a yes or no question, and shouldn’t take that long anyway. A game can last as short as ten minutes, and usually don’t take more than twenty-five.

3). Players: I thought I’d mention here that the game seems to play as well with two as it does with five. However, when playing with two players, we each use six chips. It’s a VERY fast two player game, (sometimes as short as five minutes!) and is quite fun. On a trip with a small amount of room, I would take this game as a travel game.

4). Fun Factor: The theme is lightly layered onto this game. It could have been produced as a tile laying game, but the cards are fine. And staking out gold is fun! However, when playing the game, you are looking for optimal points, and usually don’t think much about the theme. The character names usually draw chuckles, and the lighthearted art seems to bring a lighthearted mood to the table – but the theme is a little stagnant. (Not a huge surprise with a Knizia game)

5). Rules: As with all OOTB games, the rules come on heavy laminated stock paper, that is folded and fits well in the game box. The rules are clearly written, and a sample card layout is an invaluable addition to the game. Some short playing tips are included at the end of the rules, leading us too….

6). Strategy: As I said before, there aren’t too many decisions to make in the game. It gives me the same feeling as Lost Cities, except in this game I only have three cards in my hand. Do I place my claims quickly, or wait until a lot of gold is in a mine? Do I go for a mine with a lot of gold, which will surely be contested – or a mine with less gold, where I might get it all. The strategy isn’t deep, but there’s enough there to warrant a second playing. I must tell all those who do not luck to shy from this game. There is a massive amount of luck in the cards that you draw. If draw poorly, you will probably lose. The games are so fast that it doesn't bother me that much, but it might bother some people.

So I frankly have to highly recommend this game. It’s very inexpensive, easy to teach and is fun to play. The two-player game plays very fast, and is fun with a little strategy and a lot of luck. Out of the Box Publishing has produced a little winner here!

Thread: Session Report

daw65 — 2003-06-06T14:15:48+00:00

The Totally Insane Card Game went over so well that Val, Sheri and Hollis went to check out Heather's gifts from the baby shower that the folks at school gave for her. That left four of us to find something else to play. Hoping that they'd come back after checking out the gifts, we picked out Gold Digger, one of Helen's games that she said was not too complicated, and pretty quick to play.

As mentioned earlier, the game plays pretty quickly. We played two games, and in both games, once the draw deck ran out, I had the feeling of "this is all the cards I get?". But we all played out our cards and chips, and the mines were scored:

Jim and Susy each scored 1 gold in the first mine.
In another, Dave and Helen each scored 2.
Susy, Dave and Helen each scored 5 in a pretty valuable mine.
Jim and Helen scored 6 in another valuable mine.
Dave, Jim and Susy, scored four in the fifth mine.
And no one claimed the last mine, which ended up full of fool's gold anyway.

Tally up the scores, and Helen comes out with 13 points and the win.

The others were still looking at the baby gear, so we went ahead and played another game of Gold Digger. What the heck -- it's pretty quick.

I'm not sure if having one game under our belts benefitted any of us at all. I do know that even though the scores of the first game were pretty close, this game was even closer. This time two of the mines wound up not scoring, although one of them had the eight-gold card: by the time it was played, everyone was out of claim tokens. In the other four mines:

Jim scored 4, and Dave and Susy each scored 2. Jim used two claims on this mine.
Susy and Helen each scored 4 in a second mine.
Susy and Helen each scored four in another mine, but this time Dave also had a claim there, and scored 4 from it as well.
And Jim and Dave both scored 4 from the last mine.

The final scores in this one were very close, with Jim, Susy, and Helen all tying with 10 points, and Dave eking out the win with 12.

Thread: Session Report

BoardGameGeek — 2002-10-23T14:00:35+00:00

The Aiken Area Gamers met last night for couple of brief games. When I arrived, pizza was being consumed so we sat around for a bit chatting (no grease on the games!). Once the pizza was consumed, gaming commenced.

I had recently bought Gold Digger as an impulse buy while in VA at The Game Place in Charlottesville. It was $10 and I figured...Knizia, $10, western theme, gotta have it. The John Kovalic graphics are just icing on the cake.

The game is pretty simple. There are 6 Mine cards owned by 6 different groups of people, Explorers, Outlaws, The Law, Townspeople, Prospectors and Settlers, gold and fools gold card and character cards. There are only 5 characters for each mine (with colorful names like Mannin Black, Daisy Crockett, Ma Belle, Louis N. Clarque, Rooster Sideburn, ect.). You can only 'claim' a mine when laying one of the character cards. Only 5 'gold/fools gold' cards are allowed beneath the mines.

We had 5 people so we decided to play 5 rounds. Round 1 was the first time for all of us but I had read through the rules and explained to everyone that 'staking a claim' immediantly did not look to be a good idea. Everyone picked up on the game quickly and the scores stayed pretty close throughout the rounds, with a range of only 4 points at the greatest. We had a tie at the end of round 5 (43, 43, 42, 41, 40) and a quick 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' decided the winner.

Thread: Session Report

Dan Bosley — 2002-09-25T12:44:49+00:00

Next up was a 3-player game of Gold Digger, a recent Toby acquistion. This is a very simple Reiner Knizia game. It is NOT one of his better efforts. It is pretty light. So light in fact, some of the cards kept floating off the table....

Basically each player has a hand of 3 cards. You play a card, and then you draw a card. There are two types of cards. People cards (in 7 or 8 different colors - I forget the exact number), but there are 5 people of each color-card. And there are gold cards. The gold cards have different numbers of nuggets on them. And about half the gold cards are really fool’s gold cards and are worthless.

For each color of people-cards, there is a corresponding mine card of the same color. These mine cards are all laid out in a row at the start of the game.

During your turn, you may play ONE card. If it is a people-card, you must play it in a column above the corresponding mine. If it is a gold-card, you can play it under any mine. No mine may have more than 5 gold cards beneath it. And of course, since there are only 5 people of the right matching color, each mine can only have 5 people above it.

The game ends when ALL the cards have been placed.

Now, you start the game with 3 investor chips. These are also known as tiddley winks in some gaming circles. Whenever you play a people-card, you MAY place one of your investor chips n the corresponding mine. You don’t have to - only if you want to do so. After playing a card, you then draw another card, and it is the next player’s turn.

If you play a gold card, then you can’t place an investor chip.

So there is a lot of luck in this game. You either get good cards or you don’t.

Where the strategy comes in (what there is of it) is here: if you place a chip too early on a mine, your opponents will dump their fool’s gold there. But if you wait too long, you might never get the right-colour people-card, and you will be unable to invest in that mine. And since you only have 3 cards, there’s not a lot of long-range planning you can do. Die Macher this isn’t.

As I said before, the game is very light. For what it is, nothing more than a quick filler, it’s O.K. And a game is very quick - 10 minutes. But you won’t be burning up many brain cells playing this. And the card-artwork is very cute. And all the people have funny names.

Scores:
Toby - (winner) - 20
David - 17
Dan - 11

We all rated it a 6. Note that this rating is for within its’ category (light, filler games).

Thread: User Review

PBrennan — 2002-08-25T19:06:37+00:00

When I first played Gold Rausch last year, I rated it a 3 and it went straight on to my trade pile. I played it again last weekend, and it went up to maybe a 3.25 because I was playing with more tolerant people. The only good thing about it is that it plays so fast because it's so mindless. We were racing to see who could play their cards
the fastest by the end of it.

There are 6 suits (characters), 5 cards in each suit. Added to the draw pile are 36 gold cards, ranging from 0 to 10 gold, and about half of them are actually worth 0 - they're counterfeits.

Pick a card from the draw pile. If it's a gold, place it against a character type - each type can have 6 gold cards and the sum of the cards is the payout for anyone who has a betting chip on that character type at the end of the round (divvied up).

If you draw a character card, place it against its character type, and you have the option of putting one of your 3 betting chips against it. Remember there are only 5 cards for each type. You can't place a chip early, because then everyone dumps counterfeits on that character and you score zilch. If you play later, you're pretty much forced to accept the luck of the character cards you get as to what you can place a bet against. Ooooh, so strategic. Once you have a bet placed, put all the gold cards you draw on to it naturally.

If Gold Digging allows more cards in the hands (ie more than 1!), than at least you can hold onto character cards until more gold is placed against it. But then everyone will be doing the same anyway, so it's the same lottery, just delayed. It may raise the rating another quarter notch to 3.5 I guess. A simple, very simple betting game where you have no control over what you can bet on. If you get no character cards, you can't bet. *sigh*. Don't "rush" out for this one without playing first.

Thread: Session Report

gschloesser — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

We were pleasantly surprised by the unexpected visit of my good buddy Ted Cheatham from Madison, Mississippi. It was good to have Ted back at the 'Bayou Bungalow' (in spite of the games he forced us to play!).

This is a little known Reiner Knizia card game which very loosely utilizes a gold rush theme. Ted Cheatham had just acquired it in a trade and was eager to give it a go. The early bird crew of Clyde Hayman, Eric Alleman, Darren Arnold, Jerry Maus and I obliged.

Basically, there are six types of characters (ranging from miners to drunkards). A row is designated for each of these characters. Matching character cards will be placed to one side of the row, while gold and fool's gold cards will be placed on the other side.

Players take turns selecting a card from the top of the deck and laying it beside one of the character rows. If the card is a character card, it is placed in the appropriate character row. If, however, it is a gold or fool's gold card, it is placed beside a character row which already has a matching character in its row. If none of the rows have had matching characters placed in their row yet, then the gold card may be placed on any of the rows.

Each character row can hold only 5 characters and 6 gold or fool's gold cards. The gold cards range in value from 1 - 10. Fool's gold cards are worthless and take up valuable space in a row.

After placing a character card, a player may place one of his three betting chips on that character row. At the end of a round (when all cards have expired), the amount of gold that is in a character's row is divided amongst those who have placed betting chips there (kinda like Titan: The Arena here). Thus, the more chips placed on a character, the more the money must be divided resulting in a smaller 'take' for the players.

The game is VERY random as you must take the top card and play it. About the only thing you can do to 'hose' someone else is play a fool's gold marker in a row where they have a betting chip. Further, the only way you are allowed to place a betting chip is by drawing a character card, and then if you wish to place a chip, you MUST place it only on the row matching the character you drew. It is quite possible to go through a round or more and only draw a few character cards, thus limiting your bets. This is what happened to Clyde.

We played two hands in attempts to counter the effects of possible 'bad' draws for the players. Two hands was enough. The round-by-round scores:

Ted: 19 + 9 = 28
Jerry: 13 + 6 = 19
Darren: 5 + 12 = 17
Eric: 6 + 10 = 16
Clyde: 6 + 8 = 14
Greg: 4 + 8 = 12

The ratings reflected the player's ambivalence towards the game and its pure 'random' feel:

Ted 6, Darren 6, Greg 5, Eric 4, Jerry 3, Clyde 2

Thread: Session Report

dougadamsau — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Present: Doug, David, Janet, Alan, Julian, Donna

Julian Clarke writes:

Doug & Janet arrived first, so we moved off with GoldRausch.

A simple game, whose scoring system Janet & I really didn't understand, so she ended up wasting one of her scoring chips on a line she had already marked. Nevertheless, with me playing a chip early, as I hadn't realised that there were 5 people for each line, that made a mistake each. The final scores were

Janet 18
Julian 18
Doug 16