Capital Lux

Description from the publisher:

Will you play citizens into your hometown for points, or contribute them to the capital and benefit from their special abilities? In Capital Lux, you always balance on a razor's edge, so will you take risks? Bluff? Or follow a carefully laid plan? The choice is yours in this clever card game, featuring beautiful art by American painter Kwanchai Moriya.

Each round begins with the players drafting a hand of five or six character cards. On your turn, you must play a card either in front of you (your hometown) or in the middle of the table (the capital). When you play a card into the capital, you benefit from the card's special ability. Each character belongs to one of four professions, and their special abilities are:


Merchant: Take 1 gold coin. Gold coins can be used at the end of a round to increase your own limit for one of the four professions.
Agent: Draw a secret modifier card and add it (face down) to one of the four professions in the capital. This will affect the limit of the chosen profession at round's end.
Scholar: Draw a card from the deck into your hand.
Cleric: Move the lowest valued card of any profession from the capital into your hometown


At the end of a round, for each profession, you are not allowed to have a higher total value in your hometown than the current total value in the capital. If you break the limit for one of the professions, you lose all cards of that profession from your hometown. At the end of the third round, all characters remaining in a player's hometown are worth points.

This means that for every card there's a dilemma of whether to add it to your hometown for possible points, or to the capital which not only gives you the benefit from a special ability, but also increases the potential points for all players. Since every player is dealt only five or six cards at the beginning of a round, every card play is crucial...