In Art Robbery, you and your opponents are part of a group of thieves who, after a successful robbery of the Great Museum of Art, now have to divide the loot among themselves.
2-5 players, age 8+
Playing time: 20 minutes
Designer: Reiner Knizia
Artwork: Petra Eriksson
Publisher: Helvetiq
https://helvetiq.com/
Over the course of 4 rounds, the different types of loot are displayed and one by one, the thieves choose which sketch, sculpture, antiquity or painting they want using cards to indicate their preference. There are different types of cards: Number cards allow players to take the art with that number from the center or steal it from another player; Watchdog cards help protect your own loot by claiming the dog tile; Greedy Thieves and the Boss let you take any tile from the center or from the Boss tile respectively. At the end of the round, the Boss only remains and will score you points if you have one of the most expensive loot tiles of this round.
Some tokens have white dots, which count as alibis, and at the end of the game, the player(s) with the lowest amount are arrested by the police and can no longer count their loot score.
Each round starts quietly with collecting loot from the center of the table, until it runs out and players start stealing from each other, resulting in a lot of moving back and forth. The nice thing is that you always have 5 cards in hand and therefore have some flexibility, for example you can quickly choose to end the round by taking the last chip from the center or postpone it because you want to increase your loot first. The alibis are also a nice touch: it makes the game exciting until the end, because even if you have collected a large amount of loot each time, you are not sure that your points will be counted, because the player with the fewest alibis is eliminated.
Art Robbery packs a lot of fun into a small box, and has become one of our most played filler games of late!
Tabletopping 