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OLDIE Filthy Rich
Battle of the Billboards
Sometimes there are external situations that motivate me to search my game collection for something long forgotten. In this case, it was the announcement of a new TV series, Filthy Rich, with Kim Cattrall as a leading character. Filthy Rich is also the name of a game that I needed to have by all means more than 20 years ago. Why? Richard Garfield was the designer, it was published by Wizards of the Coast, and it stood out because of its extraordinary components.
you try to use your own boards for cov- ering up your opponents’ ads in order to ruin their business, but in return, you have to pay them some compensation. And the number of the income dice you can use differs, depending on the current level. At the top level, you gain the greatest profit, but also have the highest risk of rolling zeros. Each zero entails tax claims, regardless of whether the business sign is visible or not. Bad dice rolls can actually ruin you and condemn you to just watch- ing the rest of the game. In such a case, capitalism shows its ugly face – after all, this is the “3-D game of capitalism,” as the subtitle of Filthy Rich reads.
Speaking of filthy rich: The object of the game is to be the first to purchase three luxury goods. These luxuries, available from a separate card deck, cost peanuts. The range starts with a “Personal Trainer” for 6 dollars and ends with a “Space Shut- tle” for 45. This doesn’t really sound like filthy rich... But that might be due to the intended simplicity of the game. And a European castle might be quite a desir- able luxury for an American like Richard Garfield; the price for it is in the middle range.
On your turn, you have five cards in your hand. Besides launching a business, you can also play other assets or action cards. Or you just discard a card and add a dollar bill to your cash-strapped tills. You can carry out two of these actions during your turn; then the income dice are rolled. All this proceeds briskly.
When Filthy Rich was published, it was well received – at least by all those who were willing to accept the high luck factor that comes with the frequent dice-rolling. Using a binder with card sleeves as game material definitely was an original idea that hasn’t been used again since. And the funny illustrations, billboards, and
business ideas did the rest. However, there have been numerous proposals for modification as to details of the game course – among others, in order to avoid that somebody is eliminated from the game pre- maturely. The most important variants have been com- piled by Mark Jackson on his blog (akapastorguy.
blogspot.com).
KMW/sbw
By 1998, Garfield was already a bright star in the designer sky. With Magic - The Gathering, he
had created a completely new genre five years before. The idea for Filthy Rich came to him during a visit to Hong Kong, when he was strolling through the shop- ping streets and noticed how the big bill- boards of the stores covered up the signs behind them, which became visible only when one got closer. At least that’s what Garfield told in an interview. But maybe the trigger simply was a collection binder for Magic cards.
It’s actually such a large binder that fills the box almost completely. It con- tains four empty Ultra Pro Platinum card sleeve pages. There is just enough space left for play money, dice, and cards. Some cards show billboards; some are small, others are spread
across two, three or even four cards. The action deck includes business cards that indicate how much it costs to launch the respective enterprise, what revenues you can expect and what tax amount will be taken by the tax office. When you play such a card, you pay the amount required for opening the business, then take the applicable billboard and put the respec- tive card(s) into the current card sleeve. Which one that is has been determined by the dice roll that your right neighbor did at the end of his turn. At the begin- ning, it is not a problem to accommodate the ad; but the more businesses that have been launched, the more difficult it gets, especially with the large boards.
Ten-sided income dice determine the revenue. The nine slots of a card sleeve are numbered consecutively. The busi- ness shown on the billboard in the slot determined by the roll gives you a profit – provided the ad is visible and not covered by another one. The turning of the card sleeves leads to new situations time and
again. Of course,
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