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.
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.
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.
The Dutch version of Black Lady, a hearts type game with some trick avoiding elements.
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.
Arcs 😅
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? :>