We finished off with a game of Filou (or Felix: The Cat in the Sack), a little card game by Friedemann Friese and published by 2f-Spiele and Rio Grande. This is a bidding and bluffing game that is very simple but is good fun and can be played to completion in less than half an hour.

Each player starts with an identical set of 10 cards from which one is removed at random. In each of the nine rounds, all players add one of their cards face down to the sack and the start player’s card is revealed. Players then bid on the right to acquire all the cards in the sack. If a player passes, they receive a small number of coins and another card is revealed, thus giving more information about the value of the sack’s contents. When only one player remains in play, they pay their bid and receive the cards from the sack. These could be cats of positive or negative value or dogs who chase a cat away before you receive the sack, or rabbits that are worthless. After all cards have been played, the value of cats is added to your remaining coins and the highest total wins.

A bit of memory helps in this game towards the end in working out what cards are likely to be left but, as some cards are removed at the start, nothing is certain. Watching how many coins other players have is important especially if you can force them out of a bid due to lack of coins. Steve suffered from this in our game and never was able to recover. A good bluff can be very enjoyable when you know you’ve put rubbish into the sack but just pray you’ve not timed it when everyone has put in rubbish. Nige surprisingly came out on top in this one, although he had no idea how he had won (not that it stopped him from accepting the win). Good fun and a good selection for the end-of-evening slot.