Order by the year each player joined the Cincinnati Bengals. You place all 52 cards on one timeline, one at a time. You start with three lives, and ten right in a row wins a lost one back.
Put the Bengals in order of arrival: each card is a player, and his spot is the year he first joined Cincinnati. There's a position abbreviation on every card, from QB to NT. One player starts on the timeline with his year visible. You choose a gap for each card after that. A right choice reveals the year; a wrong one moves him to his true spot and takes away one of three lives.
Cincinnati started as an expansion team in the late days of the AFL, and the deck follows it through its Super Bowl teams, a long stretch of rough seasons, the steady playoff teams that came later and the recent quarterback-led revival. Running backs and receivers appear most, with defensive ends next. Long-tenured players are the risk here: someone who stayed with one club for ages can feel newer or older than he is.
Want a longer game? On the deck tree you can tick this deck alongside any other one measured in release years and dates, and they shuffle into a single timeline together.
Here are 28 of the 52 cards you might be dealt, with 24 more in the deck. Their values stay hidden until you place them.