Street Value

Buy low. Sell high. Don't get caught. You owe the Shark 10% a day, and he wants it back in thirty days. You've got a little cash, a coat with a hundred pockets, and a deck of cards. Every day you draw six cards, work the market, and move on before the heat catches up. Your Card Deck Hustle cards bend the market: buy in bulk, hype a price, haggle, fence hot goods, cook your own. Street cards get you out alive when Detective Hardass comes around the corner: sprint, juke, take cover, go up the fire escape. Tip: A Hustle card is dead weight in a chase, and a Street card makes you nothing on the corner. Every card you draft is a bet: more profit, or better odds of getting away. Stack them right and every big sale shows you the math as it lands. Getting Chased! Big deals bring heat. Hardass and his deputies show you their next move: close in, open fire, radio for backup. Play Street cards to build distance and cover, and reach the escape line before they reach you. Get busted, and you lose the stash. Get shot, and it's over. Word on the street! Most mornings the street talks: a shipment landing in Red Hook tomorrow, a shortage in Harlem, a sweep in Midtown. Most of it is true. Plan your route around it, or don't. The expensive stuff only comes in so much a day, so when a block sells out, you have to get the rest of your coat somewhere else. The city will fight back. Two rival crews want your corners. King Vega runs Harlem from a barbershop on Lenox, Mickey Doyle owns the Red Hook piers, Nando holds the Bushwick warehouses. Walk onto their block, and they want a toll. Leave them alone, and they grow stronger: they flood your market, hit your fronts, and poach your crew. Fight them with your whole deck and their neighborhood becomes your turf, and their boss's prize is yours: King Vega's chain, Doyle's cargo hook, Nando's ledger. Collection Day, and one more week On day 15, Rico wants your corner. On day 30, whoever holds your marker comes to collect: the Shark, the Accountant, or the Widow, each with their own muscle and moves. Pay and walk, or fight with your whole deck, where every card has a use. Break them and the debt is gone. Then the real question: walk away with your street value, or take Kingpin's Gambit. Seven more days with every cop in the city after you. Make it, and your score is multiplied. Don't, and you lose it all.