Gather your family and friends around the table as you race to become the first millionaire.
Gloating, smugness, and cheeky smirks abound in this fast paced, crazy fun game that will have players battling, laughing, jaws dropping, and fist pumping their way to financial success.
If only becoming a millionaire was this easy and fun in real life!
How does it Play?
Cover Your Assets is a fun, fast paced card game for 4-6 of your most shrewd asset stockpilers looking to become millionaires.
You amass your wealth by building a stack of assets in front of you either by forming pairs of assets from the cards available to you, or by challenging another player and stealing their assets.
At the start of the game everyone is dealt a hand of four cards with the remaining cards forming a draw pile. These are placed face down in the center of the table. The top card will be flipped over and placed face up next to the deck forming the discard pile.
Then the player to the left of the dealer starts the round.
On your turn you can take one of the following four actions:
- Make a pair from your hand
- Make a pair with help from the discard pile
- Attempt to steal another player’s asset
- Discard and draw
Make a pair from your hand
A pair of assets consists of either TWO identical asset cards, or by pairing ONE asset card with ONE wild card (gold and silver) tucked behind it. Your first asset you place in front of you is called your nest egg. This asset can NOT be stolen from you. Every other asset you place will be set on top of the previous asset cross-cross, so that all assets made are kept separate. Once an asset is covered by another asset, the asset(s) below are secured.
Only two cards can ever be laid down together at a time. So even if you have three of a kind in your hand, you may only use two to form an asset.
Make a pair with help from the discard pile
You may use the top card of the discard pile to form an asset if it matches a card in your hand. Simply take the top card lay it with your card down on your asset pile. This is the only use for the discard pile.
Attempt to steal another player’s asset
Now this is where the fun comes in! You may challenge another player in an attempt to steal their top set of assets.
To challenge another player, you must have at least one set of assets in your own stack, and the player you are challenging must have at least two. You cannot challenge for someone’s nest egg. Every player’s first asset is always safe.
You can only challenge for the top asset. The bottom assets are safe so long as they stay covered. (Hence the title of the game!)
If all those requirements are met, it’s time to do some dastardly stealing! (If you’re lucky that is.)
To challenge, you may show another player either a card that matches their top asset set or a wild card (gold and silver.) Best not get too smug yet though, because they have the chance to defend.
You defend your challenged asset in the same way you challenge for another. If you show a matching card or a wild card, then you get to return their delivered smugness right back to them. But it’s not over yet.
The player challenging must now either show another matching card or a wild (if they want) to continue the challenge. This back and forth continues until one player cedes to the other. Then the full display of smugness (or relief) can wash upon the victor’s face.
The winner of the challenge then takes ALL of the cards used in the challenge and combines them with the original set of cards they fought over. This now becomes a larger, much more valuable stack of assets that gets placed upon the winner’s pile. (Hint: you’ll quickly want to cover that bad-boy up because everyone not involved in the challenge is doing the math and might come for it quickly.)
Discard and draw
If you cannot or do not want to do any of the above three actions, then you must discard a card from your hand and draw a new card from the discard pile. If you draw a card that would allow you to form an asset, you must wait till your next turn.
At the end of each turn, all players must draw enough cards to replenish their hand back up to four. That means, if it was not your turn and you were challenged and used cards to defend, then after the hard fought battle, you will draw cards to refill your hand. Regardless of the outcome.
End of game
After the draw pile is emptied, players continue playing in the same manner just without the ability to replenish their hand. If you cannot make a pair or challenge, then you would need to discard a card from your hand into the discard pile.
All top assets are still available to be challenged during this time. Even if you run out of cards your friends (though they may feel like enemies by now) can still attempt to steal your top assets.
Sometimes, the end of the game gets the most crazy!
Scoring
Once the last card has been played, players add up the total face value of their cards and mark it on a sheet. This is kept as a running total throughout the rounds until someone’s total hits $1,000,000 and becomes the winner.
What’s in the Box?
In the box you will find 110 asset cards, and a rules sheet.
On the cards are 12 different assets with cash values assigned to them. These range from low value $5K assets to higher valued $20K, with the wild assets silver and gold worth $25K, and $50K respectively.
The art on the cards is classic and simple with each card easily distinguished from the others.
The types of assets are fun as well, my personal favorite is the “Cash Under the Mattress” asset.
What Do We Think?
If you’ve been following me for a bit, you know that I love a good card game. And let me tell you: this is a great card game.
Cover Your Assets is addictive fun. It has quickly become my favorite game to start or end a game night on. It is so easy to learn, and the player interaction is just so freaking fun.
When I first played it, I wasn’t sure how often the assets would hit and match up. But match up they do, and my-oh-my is challenging and defending for assets fun and intense!
This game is much more layered than simply, form a pair, place a pair as well. Because you have the high valued wild cards, you really need to develop a strategy for how you are going to use them, and under which assets you are going to try to hide and bury them so that you can keep them.
One of my favorite aspects of the game comes from watching other battle over an asset not just because it’s fun to watch players agonize over whether or not they are going to keep using valuable cards to steal or keep it, but because of what happens after.
All players not involved in the challenge suddenly start looking like hungry sharks in the water. And you can always tell who has a matching card in their hand by the glint they get in their eyes knowing that they may have a good chance to swipe that asset from a battle weary opponent.
Don’t be intimidated by the giant draw deck either. We thought the game might take ages but you really fly through the deck. Each round only takes about 10 minutes or so, with a whole game taking around 30 minutes for someone to hit a million bucks.
This was my go-to gift this past Christmas and it was a complete hit with everyone!
Is There Anything You’d Change?
Not really! The game itself is a lot of fun. If I were to pick one thing to add, it would maybe be a spoiler card as an optional add-in to the game.
It could be fun to have two cards that actually hurt a player. They could work like wild cards that you’d sneak behind an asset, but they’d be a card you’d try to get rid of, rather than keep, hoping that someone else will fall for your trap and steal your asset, not knowing that they actually just got snuck a “tax fraud” hit rather than the $20K+ home asset they were hoping for.
Necessary? Probably not. But after lots and lots of plays and loving this game, we might make our own cards to try it out.
Summary
This is a game absolutely everyone will love and one the whole family can play together. Our 6 year old is vicious and shows no mercy when it comes to stealing your assets, even if its from grandma!
As a mom I love when I find a game that I can play and enjoy with my kids as well as my adult friends and family while still holding my babies on my lap.
As a board gamer, I love finding that sweet spot where a game is easy to teach and play with a new group, yet still provides enough strategy and fun to keep me interested and coming back for more. And by more I mean, be warned, this game is so fun it may quickly go from “filler” to “holy cow, did we really just play that for 2 hours straight!?!”
Make no mistake, this card game is a classic.
Also check out Grandpa Beck’s latest game based off Cover Your Assets – Cover Your Kingdom.
Game Stats:
Title: Cover Your Assets
Ages 7+ Price 14.99
Designer: Brent Beck
Artist: Apryl Stott
Publisher: Grandpa Beck’s Games
Thank you so much to Grandpa Beck’s Games for providing us a copy of Cover Your Assets.
– Grab a copy of this game for your family HERE
– Read our other reviews of Grandpa Beck’s Games:
Skull King
The Bears and the Bees
– You can find out more about Grandpa Beck’s Games and their lovely family-run business HERE.
As always, our reviews and opinions are our own.
* This post contains affiliate links at no cost to you. To read my full disclosure policy click here.*
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