AndAgainMA
Games

Weird Trick-Taking Games

This Page

Note: I've moved this page over to my new web site from my old one at AOL, since I'm closing the AOL site. The page is currently in the old AndAgainma@aol format. I'll reformat it next time I add fresh content.

This is a page devoted to weird trick-taking games (WTTGs). A WTTG: has its own deck, as opposed to being played with a traditional deck of cards; and has at its heart the trick, in which each player in turn plays a single card, face up. Lest my use of the W-word give offense, it's probably worth noting that I do not consider weirdness to be a bad thing.

I intend to provide on this page:

• A list of such games
• A list of resources, in the form of related web sites, other reading matter, places you can buy these games, etc.
• For as many of the games as I can, a brief description comprising four short paragraphs as follows: (1) number of players, and other introductory stuff; (2) the cards; (3) the scoring; and (4) the trick play. (Note that, although these descriptions will take up most of this page, I stop far short of providing a full set of rules for any game.) I provide a fifth paragraph for games that seem to need it.

The WTTGs

I classify the following as WTTGs:
77;
Aber Hallo!; Alles Oder Nichts; Archie Bunker's Card Game; Auf falscher Fährte;
Beutelschneider; Black Spy; Blazing Camels; Blindes Huhn;
Canyon; Cosmic Eidex; Coup D'Etat;
David & Goliath; Dia de los Muertos; Double; Dragon Master; Drahtseilakt; Der Dreizehnte Holzwurm;
Flaschenteufel; Foppen;
Hattrick;
Instinct;
Marrakesh; Mit List und Tücke; Mü;
Nicht die Bohne!; Njet!;
Piratenspiel; Pisa; Play to Become a Millionaire; Port Royal; Powerpuff Girls: Villains-At-Large Game;
Rage; Renfield; Rook;
Schnäppchen Jagd; Sticheln; Summon the Dragon;
Tin Soldiers; Tricks; Trumpet; Twilight; Tzuris;
Volltreffer;
Was Sticht?; Wheres Bob's Hat?; Wizard; Won Over.

Games that might seem to be missing from the list include:

• Games that have been reissued under a different name, such as Wer Hat Mehr? (see Where's Bob's Hat?).
• Games that, while they may include trick-taking, aren't really trick-taking games, such as Atlantic Storm.
• Expansions to existing games, such as Gaukelspiel, the expansion to Beutelschneider.
• Trick-taking games other than Mü in the Mü and Mehr rulebook (i.e. The Last Panther and Wimmüln). I think of this as the Mü deck.
• Games in which a player can play multiple cards in the same trick, such as The Great Dalmuti, Tichu, etc. I'd be interested to see, and link to, a web page devoted to such games.
• Games in which players choose cards simultaneously, rather than in sequence, such as Land Unter.

Resources

My initial sources for the list of WTTGs were Funagain and Boardgamegeek. For many of the games, there is more at one of both of those sites than there ever will be here (graphics, rules,... it varies from game to game).

Comments from readers have also helped, and continue to be welcome. Contributions would also be welcome; if you see a game listed, but not yet described here, and you'd like to contribute a description in the 4-paragraph format I use on this page, then I'd love to hear from you.

The only article about WTTGs I'm aware of is Modern German Card Games, by Stuart Dagger & Alan How, which appeared in Counter #6 (August 1999). They concentrate on the following games: Sticheln; Hattrick; Mü; David & Goliath; Flaschenteufel; Schnäppchen Jagd. Their theme is interesting differences between these games and more familiar TTGs (i.e. the whist family).

At some point this year (2001), I'll write an article of my own and send it somewhere or other.

Now, from sources of information to sources of games. Funagain stocks most of the WTTGs, and the above-mentioned issue of Counter. I encourage you to buy from them, for your own convienience, to support their fine web site, and to give me a commission! But I must admit that most WTTGs fit squarely in the category of "German games that are a lot cheaper bought from Germany," and draw your attention to Adam Spielt.

This page doesn't cover trick-taking games played with traditional decks. This is partly because there are more than enough WTTGs to keep track of, and partly because there are excellent resources on games played with traditional decks. Pagat is such a resource, and includes pointers to others.

This is a game for 4 or 3 players by Jurgen Kraul. Its name means "one the wrong track," and you'll see how apt that is. I'll describe the game for 4, since I think it'll turn out to be a little better with that number; the 3-player version differs in detail, but not in concept.

The cards come in four suits, each with its own color and picture. For example, the yellow cards show an explorer in Egypt. There are 13 cards, numbered 0-12, in each suit. There are four chips, one in each of the four suit colors, used to keep track of which suit is trump. There are some further cards, including jokers used in a variant, but I'll say no more about them and get on describing the basic game.

All the cards are dealt. You select one of your 13 cards, and put it in face-down pile. When all players have done this, the pile is shuffled, and the 12 tricks are played. If you can't follow suit, you may trump. Red starts off as trump. One of the source of AFF's weirdness is that, when there are 4 tricks left in the hand, the player who is doing worst may change the trump suit.

The other source of weirdness is that only gradually do you find out whether "doing well" is a matter of maximizing or of minimizing the number of tricks you take. After the second trick, the top card of the face-down pile is revealed. After the third trick, the next is revealed, and so on until all 4 cards in the pile are revaled after the 5th trick. If the cards sum to 24 or more, it's a Plus round, and you are aiming for as many tricks as possible. If they sum to 23 or fewer, it's a Minus round, and you are aiming for as few as possible. You score 4, 3, 2 or 0 points depending on where you rank in having achieved the objective of the hand. Then deal passes to the left, and you do it again.

The name of this game means Cutpurse. You can find my summary sheet at Boardgamegeek; it tells you most of the things I'd normally include here. Beyond that, I should add that I like most of the card art, and that the twist on regular card play here is that some of the cards have special powers. I'll take as an example the wonderfully sinister Assassin and his power over the Ruler. Although the Ruler is the top trump, the Assassin will kill the Ruler if played after him in the same trick, and will score a bonus if he wins the trick.

This is a partnership game for 4 (although there is a 3-player variant) by Frank Branham. Frank is the publisher as well as the designer. You can get an explanation of the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration, and check out the art used in the cards for this game, at his Muertos web site. This art, together with the scoring system, makes this the only WTTG I've played with a theme thicker than its cards.

The deck comprises cards in four colors: black, blue, green, and pink. Cards are numbered from 0 to 10. But this does not mean that there is one 0, one 1, etc., in each of the four suits; read on for a description of some of the cards.

The scoring cards are the food and the Muertos (dead). The former are black 2s. There are 3 such cards in each of the three hands. There are also 4 Muertos cards in each hand: in the first hand, these are 4 animal Muertos (green), in the second hand, 4 child Muertos (pink), and, in the third, 4 adult Muertos (blue). The partnership with more food/Muertos pairs wins, since this pair has done the better job of giving food to the dead over the three-day celebration. The food and Muertos cards in a pair need not have been taken by the same partner, in the same trick, or even in the same hand.

There are two unusual features of the trick play. First, several of the cards have special effects. For example, the 1s (all 4 of which are black) are Swap cards; immediately after playing a 1, you and your partner exchange cards from your hands. Second, in each of the colors other than black, only one card may be played per trick. There are no trumps. The highest-numbered card played in a trick wins that trick, including any scoring cards played in it.

Drahtseilakt is German for Tightrope. This Reiner Knizia game is for 3-5 players. I am among those who consider that it's tightest (pun difficult to avoid), and therefore best, with 3, but it is a good filler anywhere from there up to 5.

The card art is cute, but there could be more variety between the art for different cards. There are two types of card. There are those, numbered from 1 to 50, with which you play the tricks. And there are those, numbered from 1 to 9 (plus a couple of special ones I won't describe here) that are turned over to determine how many sticks a trick will be worth. Sticks? Yes, the game includes some blue sticks and some red sticks, which are used in scoring.

Whoever plays the highest card in a trick takes the appropriate number of blue sticks. Whoever plays the lowest takes the same number of red sticks. Blue and red sticks balance each other out, so if I have 6 red sticks in front of me and "win" a trick worth 4, I return 4 of the red sticks to the stock. If the trick is worth 8, I'd return all 6 red sticks and take 2 blue. At the end of each hand, you simply score the number of sticks in front of you, whatever their color. The winner is the player with the lowest score (i.e. the best balance) after a set number of hands.

Drahtseilakt has the simplest trick play of any of the WTTGs I know. Whoever "won" the previous trick leads a card. Then the other players, in turn, play a card each. There are no trumps because there are no distinct suits. Each hand comprises 9 tricks. Before each trick you turn one of the 1-9 valued cards over to see how many sticks it will be worth.

This is a game for 4-6 by Klaus Palesch. I've only played it with 4, and it feels like a 4-player game, so I'll describe it as such. I'll also describe it as being a rather counter-intuitive and nasty game, but in a good way.

The deck comprises four suits, each identified by both a color and a character (for example, the cards in the blue suit feature a boy with a catapult). There are cards with numbers 1-21 in each suit, but some of these cards are removed from the game if playing with fewer than 6; in particular, with 4, you use 1-14 in each suit.

The number of hands played is equal to the number of players (although this could easily be varied). The winner is the player with the highest sum of points at the end of all hands. Your score for a particular hand is calculated as follows. Take the two colors in which you have won most cards, and multiply the number of cards in each (e.g., 5 blue x 3 red = 15). Then divide by the number of cards you have in the other suits (e.g., 2 green + 2 yellow = 4) to get your score (15/4 = 3, since you round down).

The trump suit for a trick is the color of the first card led. You do not need to follow suit. But there is a restriction: a trick may not include cards of all 4 colors. The player who played the highest trump chooses 2 of the 4 cards played, and takes them (this player would choose 3 cards in a 5- or 6-player game). The player who played the lowest non-trump takes the remaining cards; this player leads to the next trick. Of course, you try to concentrate the cards you take in one or two suits, while trying to give other players a spread of cards across the suits.

This game is by Doris Matthaus and Frank Nestel, and also published by them (although there is also an Amigo edition). The rules state that this is a game for 3-6 players, and that it is best with 4 or 5. I'm told that it's at its very best with 5; this makes it unusual among WTTGs. I've only played it with 5, and it worked very well with that number. (What you actually buy is a box called Mü & Mehr (Mü & More), which also contains rules for 5 other games, none of which I've played.)

The cards are lovely. This doesn't make Mü unusual among Doris and Frank games, but it does make them unusual among WTTGs, not all of which display a lot of attention to the card art. There are 60 cards in the deck. In each of 5 suits there are cards numbered 0-9, with two 1s, two 7s, and one each of the other numbers. Depending on its number, each card has 0, 1, or 2 triangles on it.

There are two sources of points. The first is simple: you score a point for each triangle you capture. But the bulk of the points scored depend on whether or not the Chief and the Partner between them captured as many triangles as the Chief predicted. Who's the Chief? That's determined in an auction preceding the card play. A Vice also emerges from this auction. The Vice selects a trump, which may be a color or a number, then the Chief selects a trump, which may also be a color or a number, and which outranks the trump chosen by the Vice.

Then the Chief chooses a Partner (any other player except the Vice) and leads to the first trick. You must follow suit if you can. The player who wins a trick leads to the next. The Chief and the Partner attempt to make the Chief's contract, while the other players try to prevent them doing so, all using information gleaned from the auction. Of course, the alliances (Chief/Partner, and Vice/others) usually shift with every hand.

The rules state that the game continues until any player has reached a set number of points (and add that a 200-point game lasts about an hour). Aaron Fuegi's variants page contains an argument that this causes an endgame problem, and a variant that fixes it.

Njet is a game for 4 by Stefan Dorra. There is a 3-player variant, but it is really a partnership game, one in which the partnerships can change from hand to hand. In fact, lots of things change from hand to hand, including: which of the 4 suits is trumps; which of them, if any, is super-trump, which means that the 1s of that suit are the highest-ranking trumps; how many cards each player will discard prior to the trick-taking part of each hand. What makes Njet unusual is the mechanism for deciding these things: a grid on which the players take turns to play stones to cover cells, and thus veto possibilities. For example, if I place a stone on the red trump cell, red will not be trump for this hand.

Goldseiber have done a nice job on Njet. The soviet-themed cards come in 4 suits, each with a color and a symbol; of course, one of the suits is red star. You also get the above-described grid and stones, four cards, each with a different animal symbol to represent a different player, and a scorepad.

You and your partner each score for each trick won by either of you, and for each 1 you capture (although I was taught the game scoring only for tricks, not for 1s). The number of points you score for these things is determined in the Njet (grid) phase. There is a row on the grid with cells numbered 1-4. All but one of these cells will be covered, and the uncovered cell represents the number of points each trick and each 1 is worth. You play 8 hands (or you could play 4, or use some other end condition; see the last paragraph of this description), and then see who has most points.

Yet another thing determined in the Njet phase is the start player. This player chooses another to be her or his partner, thus also making the other two players partner each other, and then leads to the first trick. After this, it's a matter of following suit if you can, being able to (but not obliged to) trump if you cannot follow, winning player leading to the next trick, etc.

Some perceive Njet! to have an endgame problem. If you are not winning going into the last round, and the player who's ahead chooses you as partner, you have no chance of winning, since your score for that hand will equal theirs. I think that this could be fixed using the variant recommended for Mü (even though I realize that the games have differing endgame problems).

This Uwe Rosenberg game plays 3 or 4, but is a lot better with 3; this makes it unusual among WTTGs. The theme is that of bargain hunting and, for some reason, as you collect enough of a particular appliance, that appliance can be turned from junk to treasure.

The cards do a good job of supporting the thin theme, and of clearly indicating their number and suit. There are 6 suits, with 1-9 in each suit. Numbers correspond to appliances, and the suits are coded by color and also, mercifully since there are 6 suits, by shape. You can see the card art clearly in the photo at Boardgamegeek. There are also 2 supertrump cards; in fact, there are 2 of every card, giving a total of 110 cards in the deck.

At the end of the game, you have 2 piles, one of appliances you were collecting, one of appliances you weren't. Your score is the difference between the size of the piles (and yes, it can be negative). "Clearing," one of the main ways in which you can manipulate this, is the main mechanism that makes the game distinctive. At the end of each hand, you look through your junk pile and you can choose one appliance to clear (two appliances after the final hand). If you have 3 or fewer of this appliance, the cards go at the bottom of the draw pile. If you have more than 3, then 3 of them go to the bottom of the draw pile, and the rest go to the top of your bargain pile, hence adding to your score and changing the appliance you are collecting. With 4 players, the magic number is 2 cards rather than 3, and the game, although it's still fun, does not feel as right.

The twist in the trick-taking comes when you are unable to follow the suit led. You play a card in another suit, and immediately declare whether or not the suit you play is trump for the trick. (There are a couple of constraints: a previous player unable to follow suit might already have made the decison; and the 2 supertrumps are always supertrumps.) If you win a trick, you put any bargains into your bargain pile, and any other cards into your junk pile (e.g. if you are collecting 4s and win a trick with a 4 and 2 other cards, the 4 goes into your bargain pile, the others into your junk). The balance between filling your bargain pile, forming set in your trash pile so that you can clear them, avoiding unclearable trash, and getting in the way of other players' plans, makes this an absorbing game.

Was Sticht? apparently means "What bit me?" That's an appropriate name for a game in which there is plenty of opportunity to foil other players. The game plays 3 or 4. So far, I've only played it with 4, but I see no reason it wouldn't work well with 3.

The cards used in trick-taking are numbered 1-9 in each of 4 differently-colored suits. They are illustrated with cute pictures of mosquitoes and other sources of pain, such as cacti. There are also cards that determine the trumps for the trick-taking phase of each hand.

Scoring is simple. The game starts with players drafting, one at a time in order, 5 tiles each. Each tile specifies an objective for a hand, such as Fewest Tricks, No Red Cards, Exactly 3 Tricks. Just before the trick play for each hand, you declare which of your objective tiles you are trying for in that hand. If you meet the objective, you turn the tile over. The first player to do this for all 5 tiles wins.

The distinctive things about this game are: the phase that happens before you declare which of your tiles you are going for; and the role of the player "in the know." For reasons that will become obvious, this role rotates from hand to hand. The 36 trick cards are laid out in an array (4 x 9 in the 4-player game, 3 x 12 in the 3-player). You form your hand of cards by taking from this array. Each player in turn takes one card from the first column. The player in the know then announces who would have won had the cards taken been played in a trick. What this player knows is the number trump and the letter trump, decided by the special cards. An example will help. Suppose the trumps are 7 and Green. Then the Green 7 would take any trick. Next in rank are the other 7s. Then come the Green 9, 8, 6, 5, and so on. So if from the first column, Blue 6, Red 8, Red 4, Yellow 9 are drawn in that order, B6 would win, since it was taken first, and not beaten by a higher Blue card or by a trump. If then Yellow 6, Green 8, Blue 7, Blue 2 are drawn, B7 would win the trick, since the number trump overtakes the color trump. Hence the players not initially in the know have a chance to deduce the trump as they are taking cards. Once all the cards have been taken, the trumps are revealed, each player except the one in the know chooses an objective tile, and the tile are revealed simultaneously.

The comes the trick-taking. The cards you drafted from the array are your hand. Trumps (7s and Greens) are treated as a fifth suit. You must follow suit if you can. You are trying to meet your objective and turn the tile... unless you are the player who was in the know. When you play that role, you are trying to achieve the objective of another player, while making sure that they do not achieve it. If you do this, you can choose any one of your objective tiles and turn it. As you see, being in the know gives you an advantage in the card-drafting phase, and the incentive, in the trick-taking phase, to... bite another player. Hence the name of this absorbingly nasty game of trick-taking and deduction.

AndAgainMA
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