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.

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.

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.

It’s like someone buying Kleenex and going “Nope, it’s called K now.”