Date: 20th January 2006
Game played: Cash Trap ( New Century Games ) BGG Id: 20260

It has taken some little while for us to be able to try out Cash Trap, as we’ve not recently had fewer than five players. Tonight though, as there were only three of us, I was determined to give it a go. The game was designed by Debbie Keigan and published by New Century Games.

Cash Trap is a fairly straightforward race for players to get their pieces from one side of an 8x8 square board to the other. However, movement is determined by the cards you hold and can be hampered by the traps put in the way of the pieces. Each player receives a hand of 5 cards and a set of Money bag pieces that are set in the start positions along one side of the board. Up to four can play but, in our 3 player game, we had 6 pieces and one player had no opponent sitting directly opposite them. On a player’s turn, they play a card, carry out the corresponding action and draw a replacement card. There are several variations of card. Some allow you to move your money bags forward or sideways (never backwards) between 1 and 4 spaces; others allow you to place, move or remove traps (walls that block the progress of a Money bag piece); and others allow you to move an opponents piece back and yours forward. As soon as 1 player gets all their money bags across the board to the opposite start positions, that player wins.

The game is pretty simple in description but there are quite a few tactical decisions that make it interesting. Often, when you’re blocked, you play a card to remove a trap only to find that by the time it comes round to your turn again, someone’s put a trap back. You, therefore, need to try and collect a combination of stronger cards to try and make decent progress. This is especially true for the player who is getting near to winning the game, as everyone will gang up to try and hamper that person’s progress.

In our game, Nige showed his intentions straight away by slapping several traps in front of me in quick succession. Mark G was able to progress unhampered early on but, as he was opposite me, he eventually was facing the same traps as I was but from a different direction. The game developed into a very tight struggle for progress as lots of traps were being played to mess up the board. One problem is that, sooner or later, you get stuck with a hand of cards that are no help and you have to waste a number of turns just getting rid of the dross. This helps balance the game a bit as lucky cards at the beginning tend to be replaced by not-so-lucky cards later on. Nige eventually was able to manoeuvre his final piece into place to claim the win, although I reckon Mark and I were not hard enough in blocking his progress.

We all quite enjoyed Cash Trap. It was a solid 6 and Nige was close to rating it a 7. Turns move quickly and although abstract in nature, the card play was fun, especially the blocking aspect of the game, which is more likely to appeal to gamers. However, it is still card-driven and picking the right cards can make a big difference especially nearing the end of the game. It is not, therefore, going to be challenging the heavy abstracts like the Gipf series for the attention of the pure abstract fans. It is, however, a good game for family play.

 
Player
Rating
Score
Position
Winner
Nige
6
1
Mark G
6
2
Garry
6
2

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