Thrift Treasure: Crypt Card & Dice Game
It isn’t often we find Kickstarter games at thrift. Usually when people go through the effort to support a game through crowdfunding, they become attached to the reward. This week we came across a copy of Crypt by Road to Infamy Games. This game came into being thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign four years ago. Over 11,000 people backed the game, no doubt due to the inexpensive price offered ($9).
Crypt is both a card and dice game played by up to four people. The premise is your relative was buried with all their treasures instead of giving them to family. You and your opponents, as members of this family, are raiding their crypt to take what you feel is rightfully yours!
Arriving in a small box containing twelve player-colored dice and sixty cards, setup for Crypt is as easy as giving each player a set of three dice and matching Servant card, shuffling the Treasure cards (adjusted for the number of players), and spreading out the six Collector cards in a row. Leader and Lights-Out cards are given to the first and last players, respectively. Again, depending upon the number of players, Treasure cards are dealt out, some face-up and some face-down.
Dice are used in this game as a bidding mechanic. Each player, in turn order, will “bid” on one or more of the Treasure cards by placing their dice on whichever they want. The dice may be turned to any face, whose sums will be added when on the same card. They must also be matching (two 3’s, etc.). The next player may outbid you on a card by submitting dice with a higher total, giving your dice back to you for use immediately in the next round.
After the last player has placed their dice (they may only bid on one card), whoever has the highest bids on each Treasure card takes it and places it face-down in their personal tableau. The dice used to purchase the card are then rolled. Any dice that do not meet or exceed the value bid become exhausted and will not be available to you in the next round. If they are of the same or greater value, they are returned to the player’s pool.
Face-down Treasure cards are considered unspent and may be used to purchase the actions provided by the Collector cards. The Collectors will allow you to do various things like re-roll dice, score cards twice at the end of the game or even take more cards from the Crypt. These can be used as many times as you like if you can afford the listed cost. Actions that perform immediately will ask you to flip over the spent Treasure cards. End-game bonuses require you to only have the items listed, spent or unspent.
A game of Crypt ends when the Treasure deck is depleted. Finish the current round and add up the coin values listed on your collected Treasure card and add any bonuses earned from Collectors. Each unexhausted die still in your pool are also worth a point each. The person with the highest total wins! If tied, those players roll their unexhausted dice and sum the total (re-rolling additional ties). The person with the highest result is the overall winner!
You won’t find Crypt at your favorite local game store as it appears to have been a Kickstarter release only. There are a handful of new and used copies on eBay. Unfortunately, they are all more expensive than both the original Kickstarter price and listed MSRP. Maybe another copy will show up at a thrift shop in your area!
Have you ever backed a game on Kickstarter?
