Ouro de Tolo

The desire to become rich overnight is a dream for many people, a dream which drove many to take part in legendary gold rushes that have a hold on our imagination despite ending more than 150 years ago. Whatever appeal a gold mine might have, though, the risks are plenty and the riches limited, and when you're working under a gaslight it's tough to distinguish riches from Ouro de Tolo (fools' gold).

Ouro de Tolo is a fast and tense game of risk management in which the players, acting as miners, try to secure the best hauls for themselves while keeping their "colleagues" at bay. Each turn a player has three choices:

• Extract a nugget, i.e., pull a stone from the bag. • Play a card that brings him advantages or causes problems for opponents. • Leave the mine for that workday and cash in the stones collected that day.

If at any time a player has two "fools' gold" stones, he loses everything collected that round and sits out until everyone else finishes the round. Each turn spent inside the mine can harm your gains, yet how else but inside the mine can you gather as much gold as possible?

At the end of each workday, players sell their nuggets and earn money. The winner is the player who has the most money, with the game ending at the end of the round that any player reaches a certain threshold, with that value dependent on the number of players.