Cover Your Assets card game box, full product shown on white — how to play Cover Your Assets

How to Play Cover Your Assets (2026): Rules, Stealing and Scoring

October 20, 2026

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How to play Cover Your Assets (2026): Cover Your Assets is a set-collecting card game where you build a stack of valuable pairs, steal your friends’ top sets and race to become the first millionaire. It plays best with four to six people, takes about 30 minutes and is easy enough for kids to learn in one hand. This guide follows Grandpa Beck’s Games’ current rulebook, including the advanced rules and the changes for two and three players.

Get the game: Cover Your Assets

One deck of asset cards, Silver and Gold wild cards, and a few advanced-rule cards. It costs about $20 and travels well, which is why it shows up at so many family holidays.

Price band: $10–$20 (about $20) · Check today’s price on Amazon

What is in the Cover Your Assets box

Asset cards: ten kinds of valuables, from piggy banks to classic cars. Most kinds have nine or ten copies, and the Home cards (Cabin in older printings) have eight. Exact asset names vary between printings.
Wild cards: eight Silver and four Gold. Wilds match any asset and are worth more than most assets at the end.
Advanced cards: two Swap, two Move and two Penny Jar cards, used only in the advanced rules.

How to set up Cover Your Assets

Choose a dealer and remove the Swap, Move and Penny Jar cards for your first game.
Shuffle and deal five cards to each player.
Put the deck in the middle as the draw pile and flip one card face up to start the discard pile.
Leave space in front of you for your stack. The player left of the dealer goes first.

Taking a turn: the three actions

On your turn you must do exactly one of these three things, then draw back up to five cards.

1. Form a set

Lay down a pair in front of you: two matching assets from your hand, one asset from your hand plus the matching top card of the discard pile, or one asset plus a wild. A set is always exactly two cards when you form it. You cannot pair two wilds, and a wild always goes underneath the asset. Each new set goes on top of your stack, turned crosswise from the one below so the sets stay separate.

2. Discard

Place one card from your hand face up on the discard pile. Discarding is a real choice, because the next player may grab that card to make a pair.

3. Challenge another player

Only the top set of each stack can be stolen. To challenge, play a matching asset or a wild in front of the player whose top set you want. They can defend by playing a matching asset or wild of their own, and you can answer again. Assets and wilds are equally strong in a challenge. Whoever runs out of answers or gives up loses. The winner takes the set and adds every card played in the battle to it, which makes the set more valuable.

The first set in each player’s stack, at the bottom, can never be stolen.
You must form at least one set of your own before you can challenge anyone.
Nobody draws during a challenge. After your turn, you draw back to five, then any defender who used cards also draws back to five.

Ending the round and scoring

When the draw pile runs out, keep playing until everyone has used their hand. You cannot pass; if you cannot form a set or challenge, you must discard. Then add up the dollar values on every card in your stack. Sorting them into piles of $100,000 makes counting easier.

The rulebook offers four ways to finish: play rounds until someone passes $1,000,000; play one round and the high score wins; total three rounds; or record round winners until someone wins two rounds.

Advanced rules

Hands grow to six cards, and you may take two actions each turn.
Improve a set: add one matching asset to your top set.
Swap: trade your top set with any player’s top set. Move: move any player’s top set to the bottom of their stack, or their bottom set to the top.
The second set from the top can be challenged by revealing two matching cards or a single Penny Jar, which counts as two wilds in a fight.

Rule changes for two and three players

With two players, remove all eight Home cards (Cabin in older printings), two Silver and one Gold, deal three face-down draft piles of ten cards with the top card face up, and deal six-card hands. You gain a new action: draft a set by matching a card from your hand with cards on top of the draft piles. Your opponent may challenge the new set before you keep it. With three players, use the full deck and five-card hands, place a draft pile between each pair of players, and only the neighbor beside a pile may challenge a draft from it.

Cover Your Assets strategy tips

Cover big sets fast. A stolen set grows each time it changes hands. Bury a valuable set under a new one as soon as you can.
Save wilds for defense. A Gold card that blocks a steal on a fat set is worth more than a new pair.
Count what is gone. If three of a kind are already in stacks, a challenge on that asset is safer.
Watch the discard pile. Discarding a card your neighbor needs hands them a free set.

Cover Your Assets is a top pick in our best games like Monopoly Deal list. For more family card games, see best family card games and card games for 5 players.