It may sound like sacrilege, but I’ve never liked trick-taking. I grew up around Bridge and Euchre and Hearts, but they never really did anything for me. As a result, I’ve ignored all the “modern” trick-taking games like Wizard, Skull King, and The Crew. Something changed the other day when I watched a video of Cat In The Box, and suddenly I realized that there were interesting things happening in this space and I should pay more attention.
Now I’m on a quest to buy up all the greatest trick-taking games out there! My only caveat is that they should work with 2 or 3, as I’m not really a fan of team play and I don’t often have 4 available.
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i don’t know what this is, is it like Tic Tac Toe with more rules?
No, card games. You never played Hearts or Spades?
Usually 4 players, two teams of two. People take turns playing a card and the highest one takes the trick/book. Team with the most books, or closest to their bid without going over, wins.
Arcs 😅
My man, are you the same db0 that designed doomtown awhile ago? :o
That I am 😁
You are a straight up legend sir! I loved that game to death! No other card game I’ve played since has had the same level of crunch in deck building and gameplay that doomtown had.
Are you working on any other games atm or you got your hands full with managing the lemmy instance? :>
I got my hands full by managing the Ai horde 😅 but before that I made my own little FOSS Slay the spire clone called Hypnagonia 😉
Those sound like awesome projects! I’m a big fan of slay the spire so definitely gonna give your take of it spin. Keep up the good work man!!
My family always played a variation of “oh hell” that we named “oh blueberry” because no one ever saw grandma say a negative word. Basically same rules but instead of going 1 up to 7, back down to 1, we went 1 up until we ran out of cards, which varied depending on players. If the table was large we would add a deck which altered the rules, I think first played was higher for ties.
六虎/Six Tigers. The most common (eponymous) game is suitable for 3-player or 4-player games. 六红牌/Six Red Cards (link is in Chinese). Several games are played with these in a variety of styles (rummy, climbing, and trick-taking among them, as well as a summing game similar to Pai Gow or Blackjack). The trick-taking game most commonly played ranges from 2 to 4 players.
I actually usually feel the same way as you about most trick-taking games, so I usually avoid them.
I did play “Scout” with my group a couple months ago, and found it to be pretty good, so you could give that one a try.
I did recently purchase a copy of Scout, which I’ve heard described as a Climbing game rather than strictly a Trick-Taking game - but they seem to share a lot of the same DNA, same as Haggis or Tichu.
Not usually a big fan of trick taking games, but I got the opportunity to play Cat in the Box the other day and thoroughly enjoyed it. To the point that I actually intend to add it to my collection at some point.
It looks delightful and that hook (no suit until you declare it) makes the game, in my mind. That’s when I started exploring other modern trick-takers and really, my interest in them is directly informed by their various hooks. Ghosts of Christmas has you playing three tricks at once, and the lead card in the following trick is impacted by the winner of the last trick, even if it wasn’t led first. It’s crazy, and I’m excited to try it out. In Potato Man, you’re specifically not following the suit. You must play a colour that nobody else has played. So many clever ideas that just put a little spin on the core idea.
I’m sure, at some point, designers will start rehashing ideas and the freshness will wear off, but right now it’s an interesting little space.
Rook
I really like The Crew due to how it turns whole concept on it’s head. Shamans is also great in my opinion, it combines trick-tacking and hidden roles.
I’ve heard of Shamans but I don’t know anything about it. I’ll look it up.
I did go on a bit of a purchasing bender over the last couple of weeks:
- Scout
- Ghosts of Christmas
- Sluff Off!
- Potato Man
- Fox In The Forest
- The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
- The Crew: The Quest For Planet Nine
- Cat In The Box Deluxe
Not to mention Arcs, but while that uses trick-taking for it’s action selection mechanism, it’s not really the same family as these card games.
I have the new version of Bottle Imp preordered, and I’m hunting Hund and Nokosu Dice, but some of these Japanese publications can be tough to find.
The biggest gap I see in your picture above is Robotrick!
Absolutely awesome game for exactly 3 players, where a 4th robot player follows a card of instructions. The scoring is built off of what cards you win from the robot, or what cards the robot wins off of you, but with fairly “standard” rules for following, trump, etc.
It’s just brilliant, and always the game I suggest if we have 3 people and are looking for a filler card game.
Another vote for the crew being excellent, and with a completely different puzzle feel than other trick taking games I’ve played. It’s as much about the other people as the card strategy.
The Dutch version of Black Lady, a hearts type game with some trick avoiding elements.
