Pyramid Review
Gold Digger
From Out of the Box Publishing, Inc.
Designed by Reiner Knizia
Design Team Mark Osterhaus and Ellen Osterhaus
Illustration and Graphic Design by John Kovalic
66 full-color cards; $9.95
Considering its impressive track record of developing fast-playing games that are easy to learn but still demand a lot of the players' noggins, Out of the Box Publishing Inc. doesn't have far to go to strike gaming gold. As such, it may seem hopelessly redundant to name a game Gold Digger.
The object of the game is to be the player with claims in the most valuable mines. Everyone else will want to fight with you for the productive ones, or will try to fill those mines you claim with a lot of worthless fool's gold.
The game -- suitable for two to five players -- starts with six Mine Cards, each a different color. Each player gets three cards from the deck and three Claim Tokens (each player has a different color of Claim Token, but only so you can tell which claims are yours; there's no connection between your token color and the mine colors). On his turn, a player must play one of his cards. This can be a Character Card, a Gold Card, or a Fool's Gold Card. Like the mines, the Character Cards are color-coded, and must be played above the Mine Card of the same color; each mine has five characters of matching hue. If a player places one of these cards, he will have the option in the next step of staking a claim there (you cannot stake a claim . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: October 11, 2002
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