Osprey GamesHigh Society | Card Game | Ages 10+ | 3-5 Players | 20 Minutes Playing Time

This is a great game with clever but very simple rules and pretty quick to play. Your aim is to try to use your limited money (all players start with the same amount of money) to buy ‘prestige’ and avoid scandal! At the end of the game, before adding up points, the player with the least amount of money is immediately eliminated, which is an excellent and clever mechanic that really adds strategy. Beware, though! This game requires cunning and a lot of stitching up of other players!! Great fun and very social (unless you are super competitive!!!). Highly, highly recommended.

High Society is an easy game to introduce having a simple bidding mechanic but with unique twists. Large cards with different values are revealed representing aspects of 'high society' such as 'au de parfum' and 'joie de vivre'. Players bid for these points with identical sets of money cards of various values, and can continue to add to their bid until all but one have dropped out. The winning bidder pays their money to the bank and takes the card but all others can return their money to their hands.The twists are that players cannot swap the money bid, only adding to the cards laid down. So deciding which values to lay down and when is a tactical part of the game. Also there are penalty cards like 'faux pas'. These are bid for but go to the first player to withdraw from the auction. All other players pay the money bid and the 'winning' bidder gets to retain their bid. Finally another major twist is that the player with the lowest amount of money left at the end of the game is eliminated; even if they have the most points they are not considered a member of high society as they are not wealthy enough! So points and money have to be balanced.There are powerful bonus cards that can double a player's score. Four of the bonus/penalty cards have dark borders and when the fourth of these is revealed the game ends immediately, giving the game a random duration.Fantastic artwork and card quality add to a great production from Osprey Games. This is an older Reiner Knizia game which has stood the test of time. He's arguably the master of using auction mechanics in games.One caveat is that auction games are difficult to judge on first play as players won't fully understand the value of what they are bidding for. For example, in our first game one player spent way too much money and another player ended up with a negative score. There was one clear winner out of four players but expect subsequent games to be much tighter. Some people might find the idea of auction games to be a bit dry but High Society has enough theme, choices and tension to remain very interesting.

Fun game, relatively limited replayability in a single session (no more than 3-4 rounds) but you can get it out relatively frequently and have fun

You have to play this a few times to get the feel of the value of the cards and what you need to win.We played as a group of 4 and really enjoyed it.It's a small box so a good one for camping, taking to the pub etc.

This is one of my favourite games I discovered recently by accident - quick to learn, easy to play with a beautiful aesthetic! Perfect fun for a group or just 1:1. Best of all, it’s a great size for travelling. Buy buy buy!

This is a great little auction game. Easy to teach but with a good deal of skill and strategy involved. I own 50+ board games and this has been played more than any other as it works well with casual and hardcore gamers alike. Most people I have played it with have loved it and quite a few have gone on to buy their own copy.The best bit is the twist - that the player with the least money at the end of the game instantly loses, regardless of how well they have done with the bidding. This keeps a constant tension between buying the points you need but not spending too much, while also trying to prevent other players from getting points too cheaply.

Great little travel card game for 3 or more players, highly recommend for anyone that plays modern board games (or is prepared to try them out)

We loved this game the first few times we played it and the cards are beautifully designed ... but there isn't enough variety to stop it getting stale quite quickly. You basically auction for the most points... it's that simple.One thing we found spiced it up was randomly giving the money out after a Shuffle and saying the poorest at the end of the game couldn't win. That way you don't know how much each player starts with or how much you should spend!