Witan

Witan is a bit like Parliament.

It is a trick-taking game for three or four players. Cards are played to a shifting 4 by 13 grid where adjacent cards have neighbouring ranks and matching suits, as in the game Parliament (also known as Sevens, Fan Tan, or Domino). The cards in the grid determine the trump suit and the order of the ranks for trick-taking purposes, which may both shift from trick to trick.

Players score for winning tricks containing cards that connect with the grid, or collecting more cards in each suit that don't than other players. Players lose points for playing cards that prevent the grid from being extended.

How to play

Players

Witan can be played with three players each playing for themselves, or for four playing in partnerships, with partners sitting opposite.

Equipment

You will need a 'standard' 52-card pack of cards, and enough table space to lay them out in a grid of 4 by 13 (although ideally room for 14 or more would be ideal).

Each player will need two sets of markers distinct to themselves, and to one another. They can be distinct in either colour or shape, These are play markers and trickpile markers. If possible it would be useful for each player to have a distinct colour, with play vs trickpile distinguished by shape. These could be coins, poker chips, jetons, tiddlywinks, Looney pyramids — whatever you have to hand, and find visually appealling. For play markers, 9 each is certainly enough, but probably around 6 will do most of the time. You will probably need more trickpile markers, maybe 12 to 15 each. There should also be one other 'neutral' marker (for instance, if using poker chips, the dealer button would work well).

Finally, a means of keeping score. Pen and paper, slate, a Cribbage board — again, whatever suits.

The tableau

All cards will be played to a tableau, which is an imaginary grid on the playing surface. This will consist of four rows of cards with thirteen columns in each. The rows will be in a fixed position, but quite where the bounds of the columns will end up will not be entirely clear until play progresses sufficiently.

Each row will contain the cards of a single suit. These will run in sequential order from left-to-right (according to one player's point of view), with cards ranking in standard order, wrapping around. So from 2 up to 10, then Jack, Queen, King, Ace, then 2 again and so on. Which rank is leftmost and rightmost in the completed tableau will only become apparent during play. The suits should be in a fixed order, with Clubs at the top, then Spades, Hearts, and Diamonds at the bottom.

Cards will be played face-up, but may become turned down during play if they do not connect to the existing face-up cards (as outlined below in the section on 'Play'). These should be placed approximately in the correct spot of the tableau. Such cards may be inspected to check the rank, at any point of play. As the bounds of the grid become clearer these face-down 'floating' cards may need to move from one side to the other.

Terminology

At the start of the hand there will be a set of connected face-up cards, the initial grid.

The set of all face-up cards that are continuously connected to the initial grid at any point of the game is known as the contiguous grid. The contiguous grid can be extended left or right by adding cards to it as detailed below, but must never become more than thirteen cards wide. In other words, each rank must only appear in a single horizontal position. Cards of the same rank appear in the same column, and cards of the same suit appear in the same row. Neighbouring cards have adjacent ranks, wrapping round.

A contiguous grid that has all thirteen ranks present in it is said to be saturated. Whilst individual rows may be extended left or right, the grid as a whole cannot extend any further.

Empty spaces to the left or right of the contiguous grid are called adjoining. A card that would connect in one of those spaces is called an adjoining card.

Any face-down cards directly touching the contiguous grid (i.e. directly above or below a card in the grid) are called stops, as they prevent the grid being extended in that direction. This wraps round if the grid is not saturated, because if a grid is not saturated, entire columns of ranks at the extremes can effectively be on either side of the grid whilst they are 'floating'. In a saturated grid, there is no wraparound — any face-down card on the other side of the grid is not a stop.

Setup

Choose the initial dealer by any agreeable method. If you cannot decide one, shuffle and cut the deck to determine the dealer. The tableau should be oriented with respect to the initial dealer (or whichever way it will fit on the table, if that does not work), and will remain in the same orientation for the rest of the game.

The setup is the same for each hand. The cards should be thoroughly shuffled before the tableau is 'seeded' with some starting cards to form the initial grid. For three players this will be thirteen cards, for four players it will be ten.

Dealer then plays the first card face up to the tableau. It should be placed in the row corresponding to its suit, roughly centrally in terms of horizontal position. The other cards of this rank will also be part of the initial grid - the remaining procedure should continue as if they were already in place.

Dealer now goes through the pack, turning over the top card one at a time. This card should be added to the initial grid if it:

If the card does not fit on the new grid, it should be placed into a pile off to the side.

This process is completed until the requisite number of cards are present in the grid. If there are enough extra cards, but not all those of the initial rank yet, these should be fished out from the pack to be added. This procedure will always complete within two goes through the pack, but usually finishes around three-quarters of the way through or so.

Once this is finished, all cards not laid out on the grid are gathered, shuffled once more, and dealt out evenly amongst all players. This will make 13-card hands for three players, or 12-card hands for four.

Play

Play of each hand consists of tricks. However, as trick cards are played directly to the tableau, markers are used to indicate who played what. Players will play cards to the appropriate place in the tableau, with on of their individual 'play' markers on top. Additionally, the leader of each trick will place the 'leader' marker on their card. In this way, the grid has the information about which card was played by whom, and who led to the trick.

Left of the dealer leads to the first trick, with play to the left. At the end of each trick, the winner scores its value (if any) immediately. The winner then leads to the next, and this continues until all cards have been played, and the tableau is filled.

The leader of a trick may play any card. The other players must play according to the following rules:

Another way of putting this same rule is:

The winner of a trick is the player who played:

This is evaluated at the end of the trick, with the rank hierarchy and trump suit (see below for both) determined once every player has played their card.

Placing cards

If the card a player plays connects with another card in the grid, it is placed in the appropriate part, next to it. The grid must never be more than 13 columns wide, so if a card would violate this rule by 'connecting', it must be placed at the other end of the grid. This can only happen if the grid is saturated, meaning that the connected set of cards in it span all 13 ranks.

If a card is played that does not connect to existing cards, if there are other cards of the same rank already present, it is played in the same column as these. If there are not, then it may not be clear whether this rank will end up to the left or the right of the current connected grid once the hierarchy is settled. Place it in an appropriate position, on whichever side seems appropriate. If in doubt, place floating cards to the left of the grid. If there are already cards on the left lower than this card, or cards on the right higher, place the card in-between.

If the card you play connects a rank that was previously not corrected, and it ends up on a different side of the grid to the floating cards, move the floating cards to the now-correct side of the grid.

The rank hierarchy

The 'right-most' rank of the connected tableau (of any suit) at any given time is the highest rank. The ranks then run down from there in standard order, wrapping around as needed. So for instance if the right-most card were a 7, the second-highest rank would be 6, then so on down to Ace, followed by King, Queen, Jack, with the lowest rank an 8.

This is evaluated at the end of a trick. It counts cards that are connected when the trick is finished. As long as a card is connected at the end of a trick, it does not matter if it was not connected when it was played, it still counts towards the rank hierarchy. For example, if the right-most card is the 7 of Hearts, then playing the 9 of Hearts would not affect the hierarchy (and it would be ranked second-lowest). However, if the 8 of Hearts were also played to the same trick, this would force 9 to the top of the hiearchy.

The trump suit

The trump suit is determined based on the current set of connected cards for each suit in the following priority order:

This counts only connected cards — any cards in the trick which are non-adjoining do not count to the reckoning of the trump suit.

Resolving the trick

Once the trick-winner is determined, and their score increased (see scoring), the following steps must be followed before the winner leads to the next trick:

Scoring

Any adjoining cards in the trick count towards its value, with the following values:

The winner of a trick immediately scores the sum of all adjoining cards it contained.

Trickpile points

Each suit that ends up with any face-down cards ('trickpile cards') in the final grid is worth points, known as trickpile points.

The trickpile points for each suit are awarded to the player with:

This can be easily tracked by observing the trickpile markers on the cards. Looking at the grid with highest rank to the right, for players with equal number of markers, the winner of the trickpile is the player whose rightmost marker is furthest left.

For example, if Ace is the highest rank, one player having 2, 6, Jack will win the trickpile over a player having 3, 5, Queen, as their highest card (Jack) ranks lower than the other player's highest card (Queen).

At the end of the hand, each player scores 15 points for each trickpile they win.

Stops penalties

After trickpiles are scored, stops penalties are applied.

At this point, all the cards that were possible stops should now be definitively stops. For each stop that a player is responsible for (i.e. a card that they played), they lose 10 points.

At four

If playing at four, partners score as a single unit, with their individual scores combined.

Game end

The game ends as soon a pre-arranged score threshold has been reached or passed. 601 is a default that is a decent length. 301 would make for a shorter game. The player with the highest score is the winner.

Note that for game-ending purposes, these are applied strictly after trickpiles are scored. If the trickpile values take a player past a threshold, stops penalties are not applied, even if it would take them back below.

About Witan

Witan is said to have been the favoured game of Alfred, King of the West Saxons, who is said to have described it as "an anachronistic good time".

Contact

If you have any thoughts about the game, or questions / any other feedback, feel free to get in touch at: witan 'at' repiqued-interests.co.uk.