PAY THE HOUSE Demo

The first payment is three packs away. Prohibition-era America. The front room is a loan house — brass, velvet, and a ledger with your name in it. You owe 1,400, and the only trade you have is cigarette cards. Rip the packs, complete the sets, turn paper into cash — faster than the interest turns your name into a problem. Every pack is a bet you are forced to make. The Standard Pack floors the last card at Uncommon.

High Roller deals three cards, no floor, four times the Epic and Legendary rate. Special Order triples the odds on one set you name. You never get all of them at once, so the shelf you are dealt is the strategy you get. Six slots. The card you keep is the card you could have sold. Completing a set pays more than selling ever will — but the vault starts at six slots, and a payment comes due every two days.

Every third one is Collection Night: twice the amount, visible from the moment the layer begins. You can see the wall coming from ten packs away. That is the point. Clear the layer, then walk the Gilded Row. Pay off the 1,400 and the House comes to count your vault. Then the Gilded Row opens — three trinkets on offer and enough cash for one. Carry it into the second layer and watch it move the numbers.…