More and More Calypso

20-08-26

The Calypsoes that we have

As happens periodically, my slight obsessession with Calypso has experienced a resurgence in the last couple of months or so. I don't remember what sparked me to start thinking about again, but between getting an online game at Board Game Arena and finally getting hold of a copy of the Calypso book by Geoffrey Mott-Smith it has managed to start grazing on the downs of my 'current thinking'.

Thoughts of Calypso soon turn to thoughts of Calypso variants, and I have been able to try some of the versions I cooked up a while ago, so it seemed an apt time to share a couple of thoughts. And of course, who could resist trying to improve things further (under my claim that I have improved things at all in the first place!) by messing around with a few new ideas.

All Fours Calypso

I have had the chance to try out All Fours Calypso a fair bit more now, and I think that I do indeed prefer it to 'Standard Calypso' (i.e. the rules as published in the '50s). It seems to end with fewer Calypsoes, which is unsurprising, as it is quite an aggressive affair, with lots of attacking opposition suits. Trump leads are more reserved, as you either need to use high cards (and not save them), or first deplete opposition of some trumps (especially right-hand-opponent, as left-hand-opponent can be left with some trumps if you can rely on partner to overtrump). It means you don't get those less-satisfying moments in Standard where someone on lead can safely start the hand with their '3' to complete a Calypso, which up to that point has been a bit of a contest. In general I feel like there are more interesting decisions to be had, and less rote-play.

With that said, there is one part of trickplay that I have yet to make my mind up on, which I am calling a 'whirlwind' (in analogy to the phenomenon in Scopa / Scopone). It works like this:

It can feel frustrating when you are caught in a whirlwind. I worry sometimes that it is too powerful, but for now I am leaning on the side that it is not, for a few reasons:

Nevertheless, a game format that helps to further limit the power of the whirlwind would not go amiss.

Embers Calypso

I have slightly simplified Embers Calypso. Sort-of. Maybe it's actually more complicated, I'm not quite sure. Let's see. A definite complication is that there are now two 'handles':

We can refer to values in the format (P, S).

I have not yet updated the main page with these revised rules, but they only really matter when there is more than one sitout. I think I will probably revise terminology a bit as well. The rules as written currently correspond to three packs, with a single sitout round (3, 1).

The simplification, though, is that the 'default' option I suggest (at time of writing) is a double-pack game (which therefore by necessity must have no sitout rounds), so (2, 0). This is a bit more similar to Auction Calypso (as those rules currently stand).

This helps give (usually) a better idea of which cards are likely to be in play, without having to remember which cards were in trickpiles the hand before last (which I certainly wouldn't be able to remember, and I don't think realistically many would). From playing this version a bit I don't feel like anything is really lost by cards not sitting out. I had initially introduced it as a 'reward' for capturing opposition cards, but in reality I think just not getting them in the Calypsoes in the hand in question is reward enough.

Having played a little of this version now (mostly All Fours, but a little Standard), I think it captures the feel of Classic Calypso (what I call the version where a quad-pack is dealt out over four hands) well enough whilst making things more manageable and less random-feeling. Having two copies of each card doesn't feel too 'thin' (as I had worried), and the distributions tend to be a bit less unruly.

However there is some kind of dynamic I am unsure about. If all players are fairly close to completing a Calypso, and then one does shortly before the end of the hand, the pack for the following hand will be skewed to having way more of that suit. I think having more of your trump suit in the deal is a good thing, even if it is distributed round to all players (although I need to convince myself of this a bit more fully). This can then create a bit of a snowball effect, where this side can then dominate the next hand, and potentially repeat this dynamic. I don't know how big this effect is, but it has sometimes felt a little 'rich get richer'.

I don't think it is a huge issue, and I think I really quite like this format. But it is enough to make me start scratching my head about what we could do to address it.

The Calypsoes that we want

The rest of this post are just some sketches of other variants I am considering. They are not fully fleshed out or tested in any way, but if I upgrade them to at least 'worth considering properly' I will whack them on the main Calypso page, until I manage to figure out the Ultimate Combination of Calypso Variants.

Windmill Calypso and friends

When playing Embers Calypso, how can we make it so that completing a Calypso doesn't just make a whole bunch of your trump suit more available for the next deal? Obviously we could mess around with how cards go in the pack, or have some artifice around how the shuffle / deal works, but there's a nice simplicity to things that would be a shame to spoil. So the other answer I came up with is: collect cards of a different trump suit!

In what I am currently calling Syncopated Calypso, instead of collecting cards of your own trump suit, you collect cards of the trump suit of the player to your right. In all other respects the game is the same.

I have gone back and forth on which way round this should go, but at the moment I think the player to your right should make a more interesting game. I need to test this theory out in practice however, and I have no idea if either flavours of this version will work in any way. But it's worth a go!

Of course one idea inspires another, and so I will share a few further developments / elaborations of this. They do not aim to solve any particular problem, but are purely in the 'what would happen if...' category.

Windmill

In Windmill Calypso, the first hand is played as normal. Then after each hand, your Calypso-in-progress is passed to the player on your left to become theirs. Your trump suit is fixed, but you collect cards for your current Calypso-in-progress.

You score Calypsoes as usual, when you complete it. At the end of the game, you score for those remaining in front of you.

Reverse Windmill (or 'Fan')

Reverse Windmill Calypso plays the same as Windmill Calypso, except that the suit you collect remains fixed, whilst the personal trump suits rotate to the left after each hand.

Rainbow

In Rainbow Calypso your Calypso remains fixed. After each hand personal trump suits rotate to the left. You always collect cards of your current trump suit, so that your Calypso-in-progress ends up with mixed suits.

Another version could also be played with only the collection suit rotating, but with personal trumps fixed.

Bid Calypso

When reminding myself of how the scoring works in Auction Calypso I was struck by how complex the whole thing was. I knew it was fiddly, but I had forgotten how fiddly. So I have made a plan to go over things and see if I can simplify things. Or maybe see if there is a different, simpler approach to the same concept that still achieves some of the things I am aiming for with that game.

What I propose here isn't really such a simplification. It is for a different purpose, and so belongs to a different stream of things. But some of the problems I have are the same, so it may end up with some similarities.

In Syncopated Calypso the idea was that, by collecting an opponent's trump suit, when you complete a Calypso you are more likely to make their hand good for the next hand than your own. This sort-of reverses the concept: given a particular hand, what would be a good trump suit for it, and how can we allow players some agency over that choice?

I wanted the auction to be simple, probably just a single round (I had Bid Whist in mind as a template). Declarer can name a trump suit, but without the back-and-forth Bridge-like bidding of Auction Calypso there needs to be some mechanism for deciding the trump suits of the other players. My mind immediately went to an undeveloped idea I had last February with the working title Silver Bullet based on the idea of a Dollar Auction. Adapted loosely here, the second-highest bidder would then have next choice of trump suits, but with some obligation still. Putting the idea of all players ending up with some level of obligation and the bidding looks a little like Spades. It's probably an elaboration I didn't need, but the 'kitty' was already in my head from Bid Whist, and with the bids being less 'auction' and more 'bidding' the idea of sharing it around seemed like a good fit, with some shades of Ulti, and possibly opening the door to Skruuvi-like communication.

Putting these together I have a sketch of rules, although still with some questions to resolve, and of course completely untested.

Rules, such as they are

I realised at the point I came to write these rules down that I didn't really have anything that concrete. But I have been up and down a hill since, and so that has afforded me the time to get my act together and gather some ideas, including a potentially interesting innovation that I might try and adapt into Auction Calypso (the idea of scoring in-progress Calypso cards as we go, and then having the Calypso bonus be the excess, although here I have changed the value of Calypsoes. Another idea I probably won't take over, but worth mulling, is the neutral shared Calypsoes.).

Play with a double-pack - the format is like Embers Calypso (the (2, 0) version). The key difference in terms of layout is that Calypsoes do not have permanent 'owners', so they may wish to be layed out more neutrally.

After each hand is dealt, each player in turn (starting with left of dealer) has one opportunity to bid. This consists of stating a strictly positive multiple of ten. It need not be higher than previously stated bids.

The next stage proceeds in order of the value of the bids, from the player who bid the highest to the player who bid the lowest. If any bids were the same amount, whoever spoke first counts as higher. So in order to rank higher for this purpose, a player must announce a strictly higher bid.

The highest bidder takes the top 4 cards from the undealt pack (there will always be at least 4, though often more) into their hand. They then announce one of the four suits as their personal trump, whilst discarding 4 cards face down. These can be any cards, including some of those just picked up, as they wish.

The second-highest bidder then picks up these 4 discarded cards into their hand, and repeats this process. They must not name the same suit as the highest-bidder.

This continues to the third- and fourth-highest bidders. Each must name a distinct suit, and takes up the cards discarded by the previous player. The fourth player simply places their discards back into the undealt pack.

Now play begins as usual, with left of dealer, and each player collecting cards towards the Calypsoes of their side's current trump suits. Additionally, each side must keep a running total for points scored during the hand, counting 10 for each card in a trickpile, and 20 for each card added to a Calypso. Note down completed Calypsoes, but do not score them yet.

At the end of a hand, it is scored. For each side, their bids are summed together, and compared with the running total the side collectively scored for that hand.

The four Calypsoes-in-progress remain as they are, the cards from the trickpiles are shuffled into whatever leftover pack remains, and a new hand is dealt, as at Embers Calypso. Play for a fixed number of deals.

Variants I didn't make

The other stream I thought of, but ignored, was having a different 'unit' of combination for scoring, smaller than a Calypso. Maybe a run of 5 cards, or something along those lines.

I don't think it's a bad avenue. But it feels like a different thing, and I wanted to at least slightly limit scope. Ultimately it may end up in the territory of Kaiso variants, perhaps meeting somewhere in-between.

A muddy wall

This is the kind of thing that I tend to dislike when designers do: lots of ideas, no real direction. But I am not really a proper designer, and this is just some little corner of a blog post, so I will graciously allow it.

I will try to explore some of these options, and if they seem interesting enough, then I will put them into the variants section of my Calypso page, with whatever tweaks are necessary.

Until then, feel free to try any out and let me know how it goes! Or let me know about other variants you may have cooking!