Filou: Le Chat dans le Sac

As the German proverb says, buying "a cat in a bag" means buying something you do not really know. Filou is an auction game based on this principle: at each round, players bid on prizes that they do not know, at least partially, the true value ...

Each player receives the same set of 10 cards of his color including 7 cats (negative or positive value, between -8 and 15), a small dog card, large dog, and a rabbit card. He also receives 15 mice in chips. One of the cards in each set is discarded by the player's left neighbor. Finally, we place in the center of the table a number of mouse cards (green) depending on the number of players, in ascending order of their value. Each mouse card receives the number of mouse tokens corresponding to the value of the card.

At the beginning of each bidding phase, each player from the first player places one of their cards face down under the first available mouse card. These cards are the contents of the bag auctioned for this round. The first player returns the first card in the row (the one under the Cat card in the bag). Each player, in his turn, then has the choice: Either he bids (with his mouse chips) on the proposed lot. Either it passes, returns the first mouse card still secret, and retrieves his wagered mice and all the mouse placed on the mouse card of smaller value.

When all players have passed but one, this player pays his stake in the bank and gets the entire prize, as well as the first player marker. If there is a small (resp: big) dog in the lot, it cancels the weaker animal (resp: larger) value of the lot; if there are two or more dogs in the lot, they cancel each other out. A rabbit card counts for zero points.

After the ninth and final round of play, each player adds the value of the cats cards he has earned with his remaining mouse chips. The player with the most points is declared the winner!

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