A Miscellany of Ideas

Sometimes I write these posts with some sort of a theme, or topic. It may not always have laser- or razor-sharp focus, but there's at least a thread of some sort running through.

This is not one of those times.

Over the course of a couple of days, in the gaps of my usual activities, I came up with a couple of (pretty loose) card game concepts. I also cooked up another in the time between then and actually getting round to writing this up.

They are all trick-taking games, as my imagination rarely strays outside of that arena. If that's not your bag, then feel free to walk away now. Though I am fairly curious as to how you found yourself here in the first place.

So this is just a bit of a thoughtdump I'm afraid. As ever there is no guarantee that there will be any follow-up. But, darling, there's always a chance.

As I say, these concepts are fairly undercooked. So if you like the sound of one, feel free to build a game out of it, and get in touch with the results! You may well have had similar ideas to these already. Perhaps there are even games around along these lines. I'd love to hear about those too.

Idea #1: Building hands from tricks

Working title: Montieren

A game that I think is pretty cool, and often a bit overlooked, is German Whist. It's a nice two-hander — perhaps not as strategic as some more popular ones, but I think there's a bit more to it than may at first appear.

It's a trick-and-draw game. In each trick the card that the winner will get is publicly visible. The first half of the game you spend constructing a hand ready for the second half, where you score the points. So each trick you are weighing up whether the visible card is likely better than the unknown top-stock-card.

It's a fun concept. I've noodled around with an extension to more players in an attempt to avoid the 'memorisation'/perfect information issue in the second half, but that's something for another day.

My game idea is inspired by the idea of a first half of a hand that involves constructing a good hand for a second half, which plays out like a traditional trick-taker. However, in this version, instead of the construction being via drawing from a stock, the cards you have for the second part are determined (in part) by the cards you win in tricks.

The details are not really settled yet, but here's my current sketch. For now let's say four players, with thirteen cards each. Deal hands to each player.

The first hand plays out Whist-like (maybe even with the trump suit decided in same fashion). The difference is that when a player wins a trick, they take one or more cards from the trick, and lay them face-down in front of them. They should be laid out not in a pile, but in a way so that the number of them can be clearly seen. Any cards they don't take to lay face down are put into a face-down pile to the side. All players put cards in this same pile, the reject pile.

The single condition on this is that players may not accumulate more than twelve cards. Once they have twelve in front, all other cards they win go to the reject pile. If they have twelve and win a trick, all four cards go to the reject pile.

At the end of the hand, there will be at least four cards in the reject pile (but likely more). These cards are then shuffled, and distributed to players in turn so that each player ends up with thirteen cards (including the face-down cards they have accumulated previously). This is then their hand for the second part.

The player who had the most cards in front of them before this distribution is the 'declarer', and can pick a trump suit. If there is a tie, the eldest player of those tying (closest to dealer from the left) gets the privilege.

If declarer takes the most tricks they score for every trick they take in excess of the player with the second-most number of tricks. If they tie, or take fewer than another player, they score minus the highest number of tricks taken by any one player.

For example if declarer takes 5, and the other three take 3, 3, and 2, declarer scores 2 points. If instead declarer takes 4, with others taking 5, 3, and 1, declarer loses 5 points.

This sketch almost certainly has issues in practice. I've thought about it a little, but not massively. And I've not tried it. The nature of it feels to me like there could very easily be massive balance issues, which aren't apparent at first glance. But at any rate, I think the core mechanic is something interesting to pursue, even if this particular incarnation doesn't pan out.

Idea #2: Trick-taking fisher

Working title: Show Reel

Maybe you thought that idea could do with a bit more fleshing out.

Well I am about to blow your mind. After reading this one, the previous one will seem like I've laid out the official laws of the game, suitable for use in a professional tournament.

I'm generally pretty interested in trick-taking games that don't quite fit directly into plain-trick or point-trick categories. I have waffled before about this, but it's an idea I keep coming back to. Purer games of 'this type' include Calypso, Quinto, and my own Havilering, but there are many other (usually point-trick) games that have additional things going on alongside the standard point-trick piece — most tarot games, notably tarocchi bolognese, and Doppelkopf.

But I'm not here to talk about all that. Really I was thinking about a couple of these (Calypso and Ottocento), where you score for winning different combinations in tricks. In some ways it feels like there is a slightly rummy-ish flavour to the trick-taking (I know plenty of other games have these sorts of sets, but in my mind at least I tend to categorise that sort of thing as rummyish). It got me thinking about whether any other class of games could provide the 'target' for a trick-taker.

An interesting option I think would be fishing games (like Scopa, Scopone, Cassino). To my shame that's pretty much the extent of my idea, but here's a really rough first cut sketch of a mechanism.

Start with some cards on the table. Play a trick in a normal trick-taking way, only the winning card is used to 'fish' a card from the table in the usual fishing way. One or more of the losing cards are added to the table (the trick-winner deciding which), and the others are discarded, to be unused. The score for the hand will be settled in a way similar to scoring in fishing games.

That's the pitch. We'll file that one for now in the 'needs a bit more work' category. But feels like, if it works, you could spin off a whole load of possible games. If it works.

Idea #3: Hidden cards trick-taker

Working title: Curtains

This idea wandered out when I started to write the previous ideas down, as I was mulling over my pretty frequent lack of follow-through.

In particular I was just having the briefest chew once more on the concept of Cube Whist. The core of that idea is having a trick-taker with some uncertainty around the rank of the card being played, and I wondered (as I am sure I have done previously) whether you could acheive something similar with a deck of cards. So here's the loosest of sketches of that.

The game itself is some unspecified trick-taking game. But players sometimes play their card face-down (the circumstances of this are yet unsettled). The next player may then either accept the card as played (revealed at the end of the trick), or force them to play another card instead. Both of these cards must be legal to play at the point of playing.

The idea would be that:

• sometimes you would play a crap card face down, hoping you will be forced to play another, and thus you have got rid of a loser,
• sometimes you would play a good card, hoping to not have to play another, and thus you win the trick.

The next player will then have the corresponding considerations about whether or not to 'challenge'. Trying to balance these options will probably direct how the rules around playing face-down work (optional? compulsory at certain points? need to do a certain number in the hand?).

There is one other issue to be sorted (aside from the small uncertainty of literally almost the entire game), which is around hand balance. With players playing an uncertain number of cards in some tricks, there needs to be something that keeps the hand-size between players roughly in-sync (at least to some degree). If e.g. hands can finish with some players still holding cards, then it somewhat undermines the point of trying to smuggle away losers face-down.

A spin-off: Tricky cheat

An obvious follow-up idea to this is to lean more heavily into the potential bluffing aspect of this. Working that through it kind-of feels like a trick-taking version of Cheat.

In this game all cards would be played face-down. The player of the card announces which card it is. Another player can challenge this — if a player is caught bluffing then they cannot win the trick, and are penalised, whilst if the accuser is wrong they are penalised instead.

Probably one would want to not have all the cards in play. And there are maybe some things to consider in terms of what cards you can claim to have played (is it legal to claim to renege when you are able to follow suit? is it legal to claim to follow suit when you are void? These sorts of questions).

Beyond that I haven't really thought about it too much. To be honest, although I think the idea is interesting, it's not really the sort of game I tend to enjoy, so this is perhaps one of the least likely ideas to be pushed over the line. Who knows though!

There you go. An unpolished pile of almost-certain gems. Very unlikely to have massive fatal defects, and sure to become classics within the next decade. And you can say that you were here first!

At the moment I am mildly obsessed with a different idea (Sussex Tarot - watch out for a future post), but perhaps once that has reached a natural stopping point I will revisit these ideas and see if any of them have legs.