The game Beutelschneider (= cutpurse) is focused on the happenings in a small medieval town. It is a game for 3 to 5 players and the main playing mechanism of the game is closely related to well known "highest card wins the round" games. There are three colours, and all of them consist of the same ranked cards: 1 to 4 gold, Beggar, Serving Wrench, Landlord, 10 Gold and Merchant. In their turn, the players play these cards following standard mechanisms: a card of the same colour as the first card usually must be served, and only if this cannot be done an other card can be discarded or a joker can be played. The player who has collected most gold at the end of the game has won.

So far - so good, but the striking factor in the game are the joker cards which add a lot of fun to the game which make it much more interesting. The highest joker is the Duke, and he usually cannot be beaten - only if another player can play the Assassin directly on the Duke the Duke is killed and the player of the Assassin wins the round (being worth an additional 10 Gold at the end of the game). Another nice combination is the Hero and the Comtesse. Being normal jokers if played solo, their function is different when one is directly played after the other. Here the later card always seduces the earlier, and thus the player of the later card will win the round. This is, unless the Duke comes on top of them, spotting their liason and prohibiting it. Last, we have the Cutpurse which may be put into a round where the player cannot serve the colour, and the player who has the Cutpurse at the end of the game has to substract 20 Gold from his total. However, on top of the Cutpurse the Town Guard may be played, capturing the Cutpurse and being worth an additional 10 Gold.

I cannot remember whether I have ever seen a game so easy which is so closely connected to a fitting background story. The deck of cards is well adjusted and the cards powers nicely support the story of the game. The artwork supplements this, and I would call Beutelschneider a really attractive game. And that for a price of only 10 DM! There even exists a 7-card-expansion called Gaukelspiel, introducing more characters with quite hillarious attributes to the game.

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Copyright © 2006 Frank Schulte-Kulkmann, Essen, Germany