Stray Thieves is a very short game of stealing treasure and outwitting the other players.

A full game is completed in 5-10 minutes. Each player is given seven cards: 4 Nobles, 2 Thieves, and 1 Knight. The game also includes 6 Treasure cards. (Also included in the box is an expansion adding additional roles with other effects on the scoring and gameplay.)

The game starts with as many Treasure cards as there are players stacked in a face-down pile. Players then take turns playing a card from their hand face down on top of the stack, announcing it as one of the cards it might or might not actually be can be (Knight, Noble, or Thief).

After all players have played all their cards, the deck is flipped over and the cards are scored in order.

Thieves will take all cards played before them, unless the next card (played right after it) is a Knight. The Thief (or Knight), and all the cards taken are given to the player who played it, and then the remaining cards are scored - up to the next Thief.

A Knight by himself does not take any cards. Only Knights right after Thieves can take any cards.

Treasure and Noble cards do not have any effect, but do count toward scoring when they have been taken.

If you look at them left to right, with the bottommost treasure cards on the left, a sample game might look like this:

An example 3-player game, with Red, Blue, and Green, using K, N, T, and X to represent Knights, Nobles, Thieves, and Treasure

X

X

X

N

T

N

T

K

N

K

N

T

N

N

...

Blue's Thief is not beaten by a Knight (Green played a Noble after it) so Blue gets 5 cards.

N

T

K

N

K

N

T

N

N

...

Blue's Knight beats Red's Thief, and Blue gets 3 more cards.

N

K

N

T

N

N

...

Red's Knight does nothing. Green's Thief takes 4 cards. And so forth, until the deck is emptied.

Games