Reply To: The Incomplete Guide to Nice Little Card Games

Just redoing No Thanks! (partially rewritten and with variants added).
There will be one more game of taking the fewest points, and then I
think you’ll see a Chanukah-candle-themed game, followed by a few
with food themes (everyone likes food, right?).

No Thanks!
3-5p (3-5 players) / 8^ (age 8 and up) / 20m (Play time: 20-30 minutes)

The object of No Thanks! is to score the fewest points, which come
from cards that players will be taking over the course of the game.
Each card will score as many points as the number on it at the end
of the game; however, if a player has cards with consecutive numbers
(e.g., 11, 12, and 13), only the lowest of those numbers will score.
So, how do you actually play?

The deck consists of 33 cards numbered 3-34. After shuffling them,
9 are removed at random ( face down) and will not be used.
Each player is given 11 tokens, each of which is worth -1 point at the
end of the game, which they keep hidden (any additional tokens
they get during the game are kept along with the starting tokens).
A player is chosen to take the first turn, and the top card of the
deck is revealed, making it available to be taken.
On their turns, players must choose either to keep the currently
available card or place one of their tokens on it (saying “No thanks!”
is optional). If they choose to place a token on it, the next player in
clockwise order must then choose whether to keep the card and
the token or place one of their own tokens on it, and so on.
When a player keeps a card (and the tokens on it), they reveal the
top card of the deck and take another turn. Play continues in this
manner until the last card has been taken. The scores are counted,
and the player with the fewest points wins.

Some variant rules:
You can play with open tokens (which prevents players from taking
cards you didn’t expect them to because they had no tokens left).

To play with a 6th player (and only the included components),
you can give each player only 9 tokens at the start of the game
(I don’t know if I’d recommend this, but you can try it out).

You can play the game as many times as there are players, with each
player taking the first turn once, and have the lowest total score win.
(You can play 3 times, with the player whose score was lowest in the
previous round taking the first turn in the second and third rounds,
and have the lowest total score win.)

The official variant – Instead of removing 9 cards, remove the 10, 20,
and 30 before shuffling the deck, then remove 6 cards after shuffling.