Flea Market: A Trick-Taking Game 2024

Imagine a department store clearance sale — mountains of clothes piled high, and savvy shoppers scrambling to grab the best pieces first. In Flea Market, players compete to build the most complete outfits through a clever blend of trick-taking and worker placement.

The game uses a deck of cards in 4 suits (numbered 1–9), representing four types of clothing: hats, shirts, pants, and shoes. At the start of each trick, a number of face-up cards equal to the player count are laid out in the center of the table, each representing clothing tokens up for grabs.

Players take turns playing a card following standard trick-taking rules. Once all cards have been played, players place their single worker on an available center card — in finishing order, from highest to lowest. Each player then collects the clothing token shown on the card their worker occupies.

The trick winner also gets to swap one of the played cards with a center card, refreshing the market for the next trick — discarding the original and reshaping what's on offer.

Can't follow the lead suit? No problem — play any card from your hand and immediately collect that card's clothing token instead. Losing a trick on purpose can be a smart move: sometimes the card in your hand is exactly what you need.

Collect one of each color to complete an outfit set, worth 1 point. Incomplete tokens serve only as a tiebreaker — if players are tied on sets, the player with the most tokens of a single designated clothing type wins.

Play continues until all cards in hand have been played. The player with the most complete outfit sets wins!

—description from the publisher