Medici

Reiner Knizia at his most ruthless: bid too much, win the goods, lose the game.

You are a Renaissance merchant loading ships out of Florence. Each turn lots of goods come up for auction — silk, spice, furs, dye, grain — and you bid on them, painfully aware that you have only so many florins and only five spaces in your hold. Fill the ship, sell the cargo, and try to finish holding the most of whichever commodities everybody else was busy ignoring.

It is an auction game with almost nothing in the way of rules and an enormous amount going on. Every bid is a read of the table, and Knizia’s scoring makes certain that overpaying for something lovely hurts exactly as much as it should. It handles up to six players, which makes it one of the better big-group euros ever designed.

This is the Rio Grande Games edition, new and still sealed in shrink wrap. One copy only.

Perfect for: The friend who is convinced they are good at auctions. They are about to receive some very useful feedback.