Jumbo & Co (2004)

Overview

In the card game Jumbo & Co, first published as Mausen, you try to collect as many valuable animals as possible by chasing them from the table into your holding pen. To do that, you'll need to play the right animal at the right time while anticipating what opponents will play, too.

Each player starts the game with a hand of sixteen cards: four each of elephant, dog, cat and mouse, with those cards valued 1-4. One card of each type starts in the center of the table. Each round, players choose one card from their hand, then reveal them simultaneously.

Which animals are chased away is determined through a "rock/paper/scissors" format, with dogs chasing away cats, cats chasing away mice, mice chasing away elephants, and elephants chasing away dogs. If you play the only dog, for example, you collect all cats on the table and all cats played that turn; if multiple people play dogs, the strongest valued dog wins; if players play dogs of the same value, then those are ignored and the next strongest dog wins. Any animals not collected stay on the table for the next round.

Once all the hand cards have been played, players tally the value of the animals they collected and whoever has the highest sum wins!