Heat

About this board game

Heat is a micro-ish card game for 3–5 players that plays in about 30 minutes. Recruit members of your criminal mob, pull off jobs across the city, and compete to score the highest amount of cash while keeping police attention under control.

The game unfolds over three rounds, with each round combining card drafting, hand management, and carefully chosen plays. During the drafting phase, your hand evolves as you pass cards to your neighbor and draw new ones. What you keep—and what you pass along—can shape both your own plans and the options available to your opponents.

• Recruit members of your criminal mob.
• Draft cards by passing to your neighbor and drawing new ones.
• Select cards from your hand to play each round.
• Pull off city jobs for cash while managing your Heat.

After drafting, choose which cards from your hand to play. You will need to out-guess the other players while pursuing the best score for yourself. Some crimes attract more attention from the police than others, so chasing cash is only part of the challenge.

Your Heat must be managed throughout the game. Build up too much attention, and the police may come down on everybody at the end. The tension comes from balancing bold criminal plans with the need to avoid attracting more notice than your mob can handle.

With its short three-round structure, Heat offers a focused contest of drafting, deduction, and risk management. Each round asks you to adapt your evolving hand, judge the other players, and decide how far you can push your criminal operation before the police close in.