Klunker

Klunker is a game of buying and selling jewellery, where each player is trying to make the most money.

The game comes in the form of a card deck that contains several sets of jewellery, from tiaras and earrings to the more valuable necklaces. The goal is to collect as many sets as you can (4 being a ‘set’) and turn them into cash.

Klunker is played in three phases – at the start of the game players are dealt six cards for their hand, and one money (the reverse of the cards represent cash). In the first phase, players choose which card or cards to put in their shop window. These are available for the other players to buy, and each player gets one chance only to stock their shop. Everyone having done so, in the second phase players now choose which cards to add to their safe. These are the cards they are trying to collect, and are also displayed face-up. This second phase continues as long as players want to keep adding cards – one at a time – to their safe. The first player to pass will go first in the third phase, the second player to pass will go second and so on.

In the third phase players now buy – if they choose to – from a shop. You pay one money to one of the other players to take all the cards from their shop window (or pay nothing at all to take from your own shop) and add all the cards to your safe. This phase finishes as soon as any player passes – even if it’s the first player to go!

At any time during the game, if you manage to get 4 of a kind in your safe, you flip the cards over for money. Crucial in the game though is how many different kinds of cards you have in your safe at that moment: if you only have the cards you are flipping, you turn all four cards into money. If you have two different types of cards you only get three money – three types of cards only two money, and four or money will only get you one. Any discarded cards at this moment get shuffled into the deck.

Thus the game is really about what to put in your shop that is attractive enough for another player to buy it without helping them too much. At the start of each new round players hands are replenished up to six cards again, and the game ends when there is not enough cards in the deck to replenish all players.