It’s the last Friday of 2023, and possibly my last post, so I hope you all have a wonderful new year’s celebration and everything that is good in the upcoming year. I want to thank you again for stopping...
It’s the last Friday of 2023, and possibly my last post, so I hope you all have a wonderful new year’s celebration and everything that is good in the upcoming year.
I want to thank you again for stopping by, having a libation or two, and chatting about some boardgame stuff.
These Friday Night Shots posts have been a blog-saver this year and I plan on continuing them into the new year as well.
So I hope you’re thirsty!
Tonight, let’s talk about something that you could play at a New Year’s party, because these games are pretty simple.
As long as you can explain what a trick is, anyway.
Yes, I’m talking about trick-taking card games.
I think those of us who are of the older generation have a step up on the younger folks when it comes to this idea.
Trick-taking games, from Hearts to Spades to 500 to Bridge to…well, you get the idea, were a staple of so many social occasions that didn’t involve joints back in the day.
So everybody knew what a trick-taking card game was.
Not so much these days!
To help those of you who might not know, a trick-taking game involves rounds (or tricks) where each player plays a card out on the table (though with games like Tichu, it may not be a card, but cards).
Each player usually has to follow the same suit (clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds, coral, typhoons, whatever the suits in the game are) if they have a card with the same suit in their hand.
Otherwise, they can play something else.
Usually, the highest card of the suit that was led wins the “trick,” though some games change that up some.
Scoring can vary depending on the game, but that’s ultimately what the game is.
Now that you’re an expert on them, here are some of my suggestions (and one that’s not really a suggestion but really just saying that I want to play it again).
For a while, my favourite trick-taking game was Diamonds (Stronghold Games).
This is the game that would be most familiar to those who know trick-taking history, because it follows all of the same rules (except there is no trump) as them, it has the same suits (spades, clubes, diamonds and hearts), but it just adds some stuff.
What does it add?
It adds actual diamonds!
(Ok, not “actual” diamonds, as they’re plastic, but you know what I mean)
Each suit has an action associated with it.
Winning a Diamond trick lets you take a diamond and put it in your vault. Once it’s there, it can’t be taken away from you and it’s worth 2 points at the end of the game.
Winning a Heart trick lets you take a diamond and put it in front of your vault. It’s only worth 1 point and could be taken from you.
Winning a Spade trick lets you put one of the diamonds in front of you into your vault, safeguarding it.
Winning a Club trick lets you steal a diamond from in front of one other player.
You have to follow suit when it’s played, unless you don’t have any of that suit. Then you can play anything, and take that suit’s action!
Wow.
At the end of each round, you go in that suit order and see who has won the most cards of that suit. That player gets to take that suit’s action.
The game lasts for a number of rounds equal to the player count and it plays up to 6.
This game is a blast and I’m always willing to play it.
It would make a great New Year’s Eve game if you have a smaller gathering.
This was superseded by a different favourite trick-taking game, Cat in the Box (Bezier Games).
This is a quantum trick-taking game with some really interesting mechanics.
In this game, none of the cards have a suit.
Instead, you assign the suit when you play the card.
When you play a card an assign a suit, you place your marker on that card’s section on the main board.
Now that card can never be played again.
You can say that you don’t have any of a particular colour (again, you have to follow suit if you can). If that happens, you say you don’t have a green 4 (for example) and then can name the card any other colour that hasn’t already been played with that number.
This could cause a paradox to happen, though.
Let’s say you have said you’re out of blue but you only have two 2s in your hand.
You’ve said you’re out of blue but the 2s can’t be any other colour as the rest of them have been played already.
PARADOX!
The round ends immediately and you’re going to lose a point for every trick you’ve won.
Read the review (linked to above) for all of the other stuff that’s going on in the game (there’s a lot more), but the paradox idea is what really draws me to this game.
It can cause a lot of laughs and groans, and it’s so much fun.
I’ve been about to paradox but the player before me paradoxes first (yes, that is a verb now!), saving me.
This was my new favourite trick-taker…until I played Schadenfreude (Studio Turbine), the trick-taking game where you don’t actually want to win…so to speak.
This is the game where coming in second means you come in first.
There are no trump suits in the game, but there are some cards with negative numbers. You also have to follow the led suit if you can.
However, the winning card is the second highest, not the first.
When you win a trick, you collect the cards in numbers in front of you (but only your card and any cards that did not follow suit). However, if you get any of the same number (different suits) throughout the round, they cancel each other out. Both are removed and you get no points.
At the end of each round, all the points in front of you are scored.
As soon as somebody hits 40, they lose!
But the endgame is triggered and whoever is closest to 40 without going over is the winner.
I’ve only played this once, but it is an amazing trick-taking game, turning the concept on its head but still giving a bunch of familiarity to those who like trick-taking games.
The strategies are different, because you want to get a bunch of points but not too many points.
And certainly not too quickly.
I need to play this one again, but even with just the one play, it’s now up there in my favourites.
Finally, let’s talk about a trick-taking game that doesn’t feel like a trick-taking game.
It’s one I really would like to play again.
The Barracks Emperors (GMT Games) is a card game based on Wray Ferrell’s and Brad Johnson’s Time of Crisis, but only as far as artwork and time period is concerned.
The games are nothing alike otherwise.
The game lasts 3 rounds, and each round 13 Emperor cards are placed out on the board.
Players will be playing a card from their 4-card hand to one of those emperors, taking the action of the card if there is one.
However, each player has a side of the board with their symbol on it (pillar, wreath, swords and eagle).
When you play a card on an emperor, that card is also affecting any other emperor around it, and for the benefit of an opponent.
When an emperor is surrounded, it’s going to score.
All cards of the same number cancel each other out (thus the two 7s above) and the highest number of the emperor’s colour (blue, yellow, red) that is still next to it after that is the winner. That player keeps the emperor and will score it at the end of the game.
Again, much more going on in this game (I did explain more about it in my “new to me” post), but this aspect of the game is just really intriguing to me.
It’s a longer game than most trick-takers (almost 2 hours, but we’ve only played it once so that might get cut down), but the concept of playing cards that will help both you and some opponents is really interesting. You want to minimize the help given to an opponent as much as possible.
But sometimes you can’t help it!
I can’t call this my favourite or anything. I haven’t played it enough.
Who knows what will happen if I do get it played more, though?
All of these (ok, maybe not Barracks Emperors) would work great at a low-key New Year’s celebration.
Or any other party.
What are some of your favourite trick-takers? Did you even know what they were before reading this post?
Let me know in the comments.
This post brought to you Amrut Old Port Rum, the number 7141, and the letters B & E
