The Food Chain - Rilegato

Geoff Nicholson is the author of twenty books, including Sex Collectors,Hunters and Gatherers, The Food Chain, and Bleeding London, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. He divides his time between Los Angeles and London

By playing cards in Food Chain, players create natural food chains, hunting and eating in the forest and competing against one another for the best dishes.In game terms, each player holds four cards in hand, and four cards are placed in the middle of the table, which represents the forest. The card deck has twelve different types of animals/objects, in addition to special cards like the hunter, who can hunt any other card, and angry bees, which scare cards out of the forest. Players take turns in clockwise order and can choose one of five actions each turn:Hunt the food to create natural food chainsEat the foodLeave the foodSwap one card in hand for one in the forestPass by discarding a card and drawing a new oneThe game ends when the deck runs out, and passing is the only option available to all players; alternatively, the game ends when one player has lost all of his tokens to opponents. All players then add up their points from the top-left corner of each card, and the player with the most points wins.