Pizza Thief
- Board's Eye View
- Mar 8
- 2 min read
None of the Board's Eye View team who played Pizza Thief had previously heard of Fuzzballs but apparently they are a thing and they appear in all the artwork for this deduction, bluff and bidding card game. It's designed by Laura Erwin, with art by Kayla Cline, and the game is published by Scrungo.
The 3-6 players in Pizza Thief have an always replenished hand of two cards. At the start of the game, players each choose one card to play face down for its contribution to the game's target number. All the cards have a positive number at the top left and a negative number on the bottom right, and you orientate the card so that your choice of positive or negative number is topmost.
With the set up complete, players then take turns to play a card for its positive or negative number as their prediction of the total of all the cards in the set up row. Each card they play to their prediction pile will add or subtract from their bet on the set up cards total. When the game ends, the game is won by the player whose 'prediction' is closest to the then revealed set up cards.
That's not all, however. As an alternative to playing a card to your prediction pile, you can play it sideways on to a timer pile. Do this and you get to use the text on the card for its effect. The card effects vary widely but can include peeking at and even switching cards in the set up row, swapping cards in your prediction pile and even messing with other players' prediction piles. And bear in mind too that there are also some 'times up' card effects that are only applied when the 21-minute 'timer' triggers the end of the game...
This all makes for a game that becomes steadily more chaotic as the game progresses, and it's the chaos that makes the game fun if occasionally frustrating when you find yourself on the receiving end of a 'take that' manipulation of the set up row and/or your carefully calculated prediction pile.
Because the game ends when the timer pile hits 21, player count doesn't significantly affect playing time. Most of our plays at Board's Eye View have come in at around 20 minutes: just enough time to play while awaiting a pizza delivery!
Pizza Thief is available from Amazon at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FHHGL83Q
