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?
Players in Escalation! want to collect as few cards as possible.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Read the full game description
Players in Escalation! want to collect as few cards as possible. Each player starts with a hand of six cards from a deck that contains cards numbered 1-13, three jokers that can be worth 1-7, and two "pass" cards. One player opens by playing a single card or multiple cards with the same value, then calls out the sum of the cards played. The next player — and each player after that — must play cards to surpass that sum or else collect all of the cards played so far, after which they open with one or more cards. As soon as one player is out of cards, everyone else adds their cards in hand to the cards that they've collected and tallies their score. After playing as many rounds as the number of players at the table, whoever has the lowest score wins!