3 Ring Circus

In 3 Ring Circus, players lead travelling circuses around the USA, raising cash, attracting better performers, and generating fame. In this game fame is recorded in points, and the player with the most points at the end will be the winner.

The board shows a map of the Eastern US and the game handily supplies custom parts to cover parts of the map not in use if you’re playing with only 2 or 3 players (with 4 you used the entire map). At the start of the game players are dealt a hand of money cards, a single performer card, and place their wagon in one of the big cities on the map. The nub of 3 Ring Circus is simple: on your turn you either engage a performer, or put on a show. Hiring a performer is the simple matter of playing a performer into your personal player board – your circus – and paying for them by spending money cards – note however that money cards themselves also double up as performers; just not very good ones. So you can play a money card as a performer, or use it to pay for another performer.

The second option of putting on a show is also pretty straightforward: you can move your wagon to a spot on the map that doesn’t have a circus tent on it yet and perform there, adding a tent of your own. The map is made up of small towns (raising cash) medium cities (cash and attracting new performers to join you) and large cities, for which you’ll need specific performers to put on a circus there at all, but generate both cash and fame.

Every time any player puts on a show, the game’s metaphorical clock ticks toward the end as the non-player circus, Barnum, moves around the perimeter of the board, skipping over any destination that has a tent in it already. When Barnum reaches the big cities he’ll also trigger some bonus scoring for whichever state he’s in, giving fame points (10 and 6 respectively) to the players with the most tents in that state. And when Barnum reaches the city he started in, there’s a final scoring for that state, and then game is over.

So – that’s the nub, but there are layers of complexity around it. Rewards in the cities will vary depending on how many pedestals you have in your circus: you start with a measly one, but can generate more through the addition of performers: each performer has a suit (eg animals, magicians, clowns) and each card supplies a bonus of some kind when you play it. The better performers are worth points at the end of the game: by themselves and/or depending on what other performers you have in your circus. Additionally, where cards go on your board can trigger bonuses: when you cover up a symbol, you take that symbol’s bonus: more cards, move cards around on your board, end-game bonus cards (which can only be played whenever you complete a column on your board). One exception to this extravaganza of possibly-fruitful considerations are the train symbols: the more you cover up on your board, the less far your circus can move on the map, as it grows from nascent clown-and-acrobat combo to a vast procession of visual delights.