Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 15-20 minutes
Difficulty: 1 (of 10)

The Components

Circus Flohcati comes with a deck of 89 cards and a rulebook.

The cards are all medium-weight linen-textured cards.

The first 80 cards feature 10 suits, each marked by a color and a specific picture of a circus flea. The artwork is cartoonish, and pretty amusing. The blue Houdini flea remains my favorite. Each card has a value between 0 and 7.

The remaining 9 cards are "action" cards. There are three types, each of which shows an icon for an action. I find two of them (take attraction and request attraction) a bit too similar. We never had to look them up, but we always had to think about which did what.

The rules are a folded up rulesheet, printed in full color. They're simple and easy to follow.

Overall the Circus Flohcati cards are good quality, but beyond that don't really stand out. I gave them a high "3" out of "5" for Style: slightly above average.

The Gameplay

The object of Circus Flohcati is to create a great flea circus by collecting sets of fleas and high-valued fleas in different colors.

Setup: The deck is shuffled and a starting player is selected.

The Cards. As noted, there are 10 suits of cards, with a 0-7 in each suit.

Play: On his turn a player will be faced with a face-down draw pile and a row of face-up cards to its side (left by previous players). He may take any one of the face-up cards if he wants, ending his turn.

Alternatively he may flip up one or more cards from the draw pile, placing them in the face-up row. At any time he may stop and take one of the cards, again ending his turn.

However, if a player ever turns up a second card of a color around in the face-up row, then he busts. He discards the last card he drew and ends up not getting any cards on his turn due to his greediness.

In any case, all other face-up cards are left for the next player.

Action Cards. A player may turn up an action card during his turn. There are three types: "new attraction", "take attraction", and "request attraction".

The "new attraction" card makes the active player immune to busting. Even after a duplicate color is turned up he may take a card.

The "take attraction" card lets a player take a random card from a selected player. The "request attraction" card lets him request a color of card from the player either to his right or left, and go around the table until someone has the requested color. Each of these latter action cards end the players turn as soon as he finishes the action.

Playing a Set: At the end of his turn a player may play a set of cards, which consists of exactly three cards of the same value. This set will be worth 10 points at the end of game.

Ending the Game: The game ends when a player draws the last card from the draw pile. (Alternatively a player may end the game by showing all 10 colors of cards in his hand.)

Each player now gets to score his highest valued card of each color. He also gets 10 points per set he laid down. The player with the highest score wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Circus Flohcati is essentially a brinkmanship (or press-your-luck) game, where you measure the odds of busting against the chance of drawing a better card. It reminds me the most of Knizia's other card-based brinkmanship game, Double or Nothing.

As I commented in my review of i>Double or Nothing I generally don't find card-based brinkmanship as exciting as dice-based brinkmanship. Knizia has done dice-based brinkmanship too, Pickomino, and it's also published by Rio Grande.

The Game Design

Circus Flohcati is an ultra-light brinkmanship game. As with any good brinkmanship game, there's a meaningful choice, because additional draws can offer considerably better returns, and a meaningful chance for failure, because each additional card drawn ups your chances of failure by about 10%.

On the downside, as I already mentioned I don't find card brinkmanship quite as interesting as dice brinkmanship. Also, many of the best brinkmanship games have "can't stop" mechanisms, which Circus Flohcati doesn't.

There is some meaningful strategy in Circus Flohcati, largely centering around whether to collect sets or high numbers at any point. However beyond that, it's pretty light strategically.

On the whole, Circus Flohcati is small, simple, and enjoyable, but it's also pretty average for its class. I've given it a slightly high "3" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Circus Flohcati is a game of press-your-luck brinkmanship that probably should be best regarded for its simplicity and ease of play. It's not very deep, but it is amusing and occasionally nerve-wracking.