Sold!

Here's a simple little 15 minute game that's seen some play in my group since someone picked it up last Christmas in a gift exchange. It's called For Sale. (And I'll tell you right now, searching for "For Sale board game" on Google isn't very helpful.)

The game is divided into two stages. In stage one, you have a limited amount of money to spend at auctions for property cards valued 1 through 30. Each round begins with one property card flipped over for each player. On your turn, you must "pass" and take the lowest valued property available, or bid higher than the previous player to remain in the auction. If you "pass" the next time it comes back to you, you take the lowest valued property at that time, but also get back half the money you've bid so far that round. The last player gets the best property available, but loses all the money he bid.

In round two, you're now armed with the properties of various values that you won in round one. Now, sale cards with values of currency up to $15,000 are flipped over -- again, one for each player. Each player simultaneously chooses one property card from his hand and reveals it. The player offering the worst property gets the lowest valued money card, and so on up to the best property receiving the most money. Repeat this process until everyone has sold all their properties. The most money (including any leftover from round one's auctioning) wins the game. Simple as that.

There is a surprising amount of strategy at play here. The bidding mechanic of round one poses interesting questions of what's worth settling for, and when to push the bid a little or a lot. The second round puts you into a series of interesting evaluations. When can you get a lot of money for a low valued property? When are a bunch of people going to waste their high valued properties, meaning you should go with a low- or mid-value choice?

And as I mentioned at the beginning, the whole thing plays in about 15 minutes. If that. So while it's certainly not a game to while the night away, it's great filler when you're waiting for other gamers in your group to arrive... or when it's late but you want to play "just one more quick one." If you're the host in your gaming group, it's a good one to have in the collection.