Vendetta

We made a card game yesterday. Well that is to say, my group mate Alex Mintsioulis came up with almost all of it, I was mainly responsible for a few extra rules and for creating a set of makeshift playing cards to test it with. It turned out to be an enormously fun game, especially considering it was basically designed in 15 minutes after an hour and a half of desperately trying to make a game that would elicit generosity from the players – damn near impossible design challenge, as it turns out. Anyway, I’ll skip the particulars of how the game was created this time, and just post the rules. Do give it a try if you find yourself in the company of a bunch of friends with nothing better to do, it’s a really entertaining game.

What you need

• 3-7 players. Hasn’t been tested with more, really wouldn’t work with less. 5-6 players is probably the sweet spot.
• One deck with 52 cards plus 2-4 jokers. Tested quite successfully with 2 jokers, but 4 would probably just make it even more anarchically fun.

How to play

Shuffle the deck and distribute 5 cards to each player. Other players may not see your hand. Put the remaining cards in a stack face down on the table.

Figure out which player goes first. Going first is a disadvantage, so draw straws, roll a dice, play rock, paper, scissors, or fight about it, whatever works for you. Turns proceed clockwise around the table.

On your turn, you can create a trick if you either have two or more cards with the same number or if you have a run of 3 or more cards. Tricks are placed face up in front of you unless it’s closed – a trick is closed if it consists of 4 cards with the same number or is a run of 5 cards. A closed trick is placed face down on the table.

You can steal another player’s open tricks by adding to them. If a player has a trick with three 7′s for example, you can add another 7 to that if you have one to steal the trick and close it. Tricks can easily be stolen back as long as they’re still open, for example: if another player has a straight of 6-7-8, you can steal it by adding a 9 to it, but another player can in turn steal it from you with a 5, and then it will be closed. A straight can never have more than 5 cards.

Closed tricks can only be stolen by putting down a joker. The joker is discarded by adding it to the closed trick, but it will not count when the score is tallied. Jokers can be played at any time and used to steal any trick, open or closed. Tricks that have been stolen by a joker can be stolen again with another joker.

You can play until you have no more cards on your hand or you can’t place your remaining cards anywhere. You don’t have to play, it’s perfectly okay to pass or to only put down some of the cards you can place. When your turn ends, you must replenish the cards you’ve played by drawing an equal amount of cards from the stack.

Winning

The game ends when all players have passed once, which is to say when the last player who played a card passes his next turn. The goal of the game is to be the player with the most points when the game ends, and points are awarded for each trick a player has. Tricks are worth as follows:

Match (2-4 cards with the same number)
One point for each card in the trick.

Straight (a run of 3-5 cards)
One point for a run of 3, two for a run of 4, three for a run of 5.

Straight flush (a run of 3-5 cards of the same suit)
Two points for each card in the trick.

Note: you can steal another player’s straight flush with a card of a different suit, but it will then no longer be counted as a flush at the end of the game.