Card Game Review - Money

Here's the story as I imagine it:

Gryphon Games was trying to find games they could publish to start a new company. Reiner Knizia was trying to find some way to get paid. So he walks up to Gryphon Games and says, 'Look, I've got the brains, you've got the brawn, let's make lots of Money.' So Gryphon Games picks up Money and publishes it, along with a bunch of other bidding games, and there you go.

Now, if you read my reviews often enough, you know I'm not exactly Reiner's biggest fan. You may be waiting to see me take apart Money and tell you all about how it's a lot like a used colostomy bag stuffed into a full bag of douche. But I'm not. Because while the best things in life may be free, you can give them to the birds and bees - I want Money.

Money is a combination between a bidding game and a set-collection card game. There are several different currencies, and you want to collect a whole bunch of the same kind of cash to get paid. There are bills on the table, and you can see what they are, but to bid on them you have to take some of the money from your hand and try to swap it for the cash that's already out there. You may have to pay some big bills to get the kind of cash you want, but what do you want? Money for nothing? Chicks for free?

You'll blind bid with a bunch of money cards you hope you don't need, and so will everyone else. The person who puts out the most cash will have first dibs on the cards that are out - or he can swap them for someone else's bid. Sometimes that's actually a pretty good idea. Sometimes you'll see that someone is bidding exactly the kind of currency you're trying to collect, so you'll just go on, take the money, and run.

The trick here is that if you don't have enough of one kind of currency, it's worth just about nothing, but if you can collect a bunch of it, and have some triplets, you'll really rack up your score. If you can manage to get every note of a single kind of currency, your score for that pile of cash will be huge. But you might have to give up some pretty sweet bills to make that happen. You might get what you need, but you'll work hard for the money.

This is a really fun, really fast game. Twenty minutes after you start, you'll be counting up your score, and you'll have time to try it again - and you'll be looking forward to it, because it may seem odd for me to like a Reiner game, but Money - it's a gas. I may even have to reconsider my general opinion of Reiner games. Maybe, just maybe, Money changes everything.

Summary

Pros:
Really clever and full of tough decisions
Fast and easy to learn
Really nice cards
You'll play this game for the love of Money

Cons:
May lead to really awkward, painfully forced, barely hidden references to songs you probably wish you would never hear again

If you've got Money, I've got the time to play it. You can get it here:
http://www.eaglegames.net/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=GRY002