Hoity Toity

In Hoity Toity – also published as By Hook or By Crook and Fair Means or Foul – we take on the role of status-obsessed nobles who try to outdo each other by virtue of having the best collection of antiques. That means buying antiques at the auction house – but because rich people take their status incredibly seriously, it may also mean theft, and getting caught, and going to jail.

The board shows the auction house, where there are always two valuables up for auction. Above that is the prison – we’ll come to how that works shortly – and around the outside edge is the track along which players will race. Everyone begins with some valuables in their hand (the large cards) along with some (small) action cards, which you’ll use to choose what you get up to in each round.

The rounds work like this. Firstly, everyone chooses secretly whether they’ll go to the Auction House to bid for valuables, or to the Castle to exhibit them. Once everyone has revealed which destination they’re going to, everyone secretly chooses what they’re doing when they’re there: stay within the law, and you can buy or exhibit. But everyone also has a Thief and Detective card they could choose to play as well!

The auction house gets resolved first. The highest bidder gets their choice of valuable, and lose their money. Any lower bidders keep their money but get nothing from the Auction house. If a single thief was played, that player takes the successful bid into their hand, to use on a subsequent turn. But if more than one thief was played, nobody gets the money.

Then the players who went to the Castle reveal their cards. Players who exhibit their valuables will – potentially – score points and move along the track. First and second place only score, and exhibited valuables must correlate in the form of sets (all of a kind) runs (A-B-C) or even a combination of both (for example BB-C-DD would be a legitimate set of five). Thieves can also strike here too; stealing valuables rather than money, and Detectives can be played to catch Thieves and place them in prison: they’ll eventually be released, but in the meantime can’t be used to steal anything.

The catch, of course, is that timing is everything. Multiple thieves at the auction house get nothing. Multiple detectives catch no-one. A detective with no Thieves to catch is a wasted turn and you definitely don’t want to exhibit on a turn with multiple thieves who are going to pick off your goodies. So it’s a game of bluffing and reading the table, and trying to be the one not thinking the way everyone else is. As soon as any one player makes it to the ‘Dining Hall’ at the end of the track, there is one final round where everyone must exhibit, and then the player furthest along the track will win.