Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
In Bankraub (a.k.a. "Bank Robbery") each player is trying to get as much money as possible during a series of bank robberies.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Deck / Bag Building
Add new pieces during play to improve the cards, tokens, or dice drawn later.
Grid Movement
Move pieces between adjacent spaces on a regular grid.
Dice Rolling
Roll dice to introduce uncertainty into actions, production, movement, or resolution.
Hand Management
Time and sequence a limited hand of cards to preserve future options.
Open Drafting
Select cards or items from a shared face-up display.
Read the full game description
In Bankraub (a.k.a. "Bank Robbery") each player is trying to get as much money as possible during a series of bank robberies. The center of the game board has four banks on it, each equipped with some combination of safes, guards and alarm bells – and the more equipment guarding a facility, the more money you'll find inside should you be the one to crack the bank. Of course the more equipment present, the more gangsters you'll need to get past everything. For a perfect robbery, you'll want to have blueprints of the bank, a safehouse to escape to (so that you don't have to wander the city eternally like the flying Dutchman), and gangsters who are perfect for the situation: an electrician for alarms, a safecracker for safes, and one "gorilla" for each guard. Oh, and unless you want to try walking away with the loot, you'll need some method of transportation. Everything that players need is on the four types of cards: banks, hideouts, gangsters, and movement/action. In the first phase of the game, players draft their eleven-card hand – drawing a card from one stack and discarding a different type of card – until one player feels he has the perfect hand and shouts "Bank robbery!" This player is announcing that he has already robbed a bank, and now the other players need to figure out where the robbery took place and stop those thugs from getting to their hideout. (After all, if you're not getting the money, you don't want anyone else to have it either!) This second phase ends when the gangsters reach their safehouse or one or more opponents block them and show a stronger hand of criminals. During this phase, the bank robber receives no new cards (since he's on the run) while the other players do, giving them resources to hunt down the crooks. If two or more opponents catch the crooks, they each get 10% of the money as a reward; if only one opponent catches the crooks, she can keep the 10% or she can grab the money herself and try to make it to her hideout. After playing a predetermined number of bank robberies, the game ends and whoever holds the most money wins!