Dolce Vita

When did you last dream about a mansion in the Caribbean? About a Ferrari outside your front door? Of a yacht in the deep, blue sea? With a little luck and good tactics you can enjoy the finer things in life, unless you have to replace your dream mansion with a run down row house at the end...

66 cards with seven different luxury goods in the values of 100,000 to 700,000 are shuffled and laid out face up in seven rows. Each player has a set of figure card (values of 1-6). Each player in turn puts a card under any row. This continues until each player has played five cards. The value cards in each row are added up for each of the players individually. Whoever has the highest sum gets the bottommost card. Whoever has the next highest gets the next card, and so on. Since the luxury cards are worth wildly varying amounts, you want to try to get specific cards. Whoever doesn't have the right tactics here will get the row boat instead of the yacht.

But things can still change, because in the following rounds you can outwit your opponents. For example, whoever got the 700,000 mansion has to pay attention to keep from getting any other houses. If he gets another house, he puts the dream mansion back and takes the new card, because for each type of luxury good, you can only keep the last one you got. Thus, your opponents will make sure you don't get to enjoy the finer things in life for too long. And if you don't watch out, you'll suffer the consequences: easy come, easy go... Fortunately, there's still a lot of money in the game. That's not so bad, and you can keep every penny you make. After 3 to 5 rounds (depending on the number of players) the game ends. The players add up their money plus the value of their luxury cards. The richest player wins.