Spiel 2011: Press Day and a Weird Aunt

Are you ready to pick up a bargain? You can get as many goods as you want, but you can't take more than Aunt Trudel will allow you to take – and she's a bit of a weirdo when it comes to making sales. If your goods weigh more than the goods that Aunt Trudel has set aside, then you get nothing!

In '''''Tante Trudels Trödel''''', players shop from a 5x5 array of goods, each with their own basket. One item – a coat hanger, a vase, a dollhouse couch – is placed on most of the spaces in the array, while a few spaces are covered with vouchers. Three items are set aside at random, and those are the goods that Aunt Trudel will weigh at checkout to see whether you'd met her tough standards.

All players start on the same corner of the game board with a shopping basket. On a turn, a player rolls a die, moves her basket that many spaces around the game board in a clockwise direction, then picks up one item (or voucher) from the row that her basket is next to and places it in her basket. If a player's basket lands on the same location as an opponent's basket, then the player can take an item from the opponent instead. If a player picks up a voucher, she can exchange it later for another item on the board, putting the voucher in its place, in addition to taking an item. The first player to circle the board has the option of then moving counter-clockwise to pick up more goods; everyone else is finished once they circle the game board.

Each player in turn then weighs her goods against Aunt Trudel's holdings using the funky cardboard scale included in the box. If your goods weight more than Trudel's, you're out; if not, then you're still in the game. Of those players, whoever has the heaviest goods wins!