Our first game in development here at Winged Sandals Games is a Trick-taking card game. Learning to play any trick taking game, including our game Castlore, can have a steep learning curve because of some of the terms used. Essentially, for trick-taking newbies, it’s a little like learning a second language.
That’s where this blog post begins. We will delve into what a trick-taking game is, how they are played, key terms, and some notable trick-taking games that inspired our game Castlore so that you can try out what you’ve learned until our Castlore games goes on sale!!! We’ll also follow up this article with more articles on strategy tips for trick-taking games in the coming weeks.
Contents
When did trick-taking games start?
What is a trick?
What is a lead suit?
What does it mean to follow suit?
What does sluffing a card mean?
What is a trump suit?
How to score a trick?
Why are trick-taking games interesting?
Which Trick-taking Games inspired Castlore?
When did trick-taking games start?
Trick-taking games date back to at least the 1400s. For those interested in doing a deep dive, The Penguin Book of Card Games has a comprehensive discussion of the topic. For the rest of you, we’ll summarize by saying the games are deeply intertwined with the 52-card deck familiar to most card players in the US. In particular the card suits: hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds the aces of which are pictured here.
For this article, just for kicks, we’ll use cards from the deck of Castlore. Castlore’s deck also features 52 cards divided into 4 suits based on phases of the moon, specifically, New, Crescent, Quarter, and Full. The Apprentice cards of each suit are pictured below.
What is a trick?
A central theme of trick-taking games is the idea of winning and losing tricks. A trick is just a term for a round of cards.
Players take turns playing a card from their hand to the play area in the middle of players. After everyone has a card in the middle, the cards are then ranked according to the game’s criteria. The card that meets that criteria the most wins the trick.
While not the case for every trick-taking game, a common criteria is the highest card of a specific suit wins the round. Accordingly, we will use this criteria for this article, as it also happens to be one of several criteria used for our game Castlore.
Throughout the remainder of this post, we will take you through a trick and talk through the different terminology used by answering a few questions common to all trick-taking games, including our game Castlore.
What is a lead suit?
The first card played within a trick sets the rules for the rest of the round because its suit becomes the lead suit.
In this picture, the first player plays a Full Moon Sorceress card as the lead suit.
The rank of cards for this example is the Arabic number on the right side. In this case, the ranking has been chosen to be the highest card is 13 and lowest 1. Player 1 decides to lead with this card since it’s the highest ranking card that they have in their hand.
What does it mean to follow suit?
If you’re not the first player to play a card in the round, then you MUST follow the lead suit played by the first player to play a card in the round if you have any cards in that suit. You do this by playing a card that matches the lead suit.
In this case, Player 2 must play a Full Moon Card because they must follow the lead suit. The player has several Full Moon Cards to choose from and decides to play their lowest ranked Inquisitor card because they can’t beat the Sorceress card ranked highest with a 13.
What does sluffing a card mean?
If you don’t have a card from the lead suit, then you can play any card from your hand. However, unless you have a card from the trump suit, which we will explain next, you can’t win the trick, even if you play a higher ranked card from a different suit. In this case, Player 3 doesn't have a Full Moon card, and also doesn’t have a card from the trump suit, which is Crescent moon.
So they decide to play either a New Moon Card or Quarter Moon card instead. In this case their lowest ranking card from either of those suits is the New Moon Paladin Card. Since they can’t win this trick they decide to play that card. Playing a non-matching and non-trump card is sluffing.
What is a trump suit?
A trump suit is a designated suit of cards that ranks higher than any lead suit when determining the winner of a trick. Playing a card from the trump suit will usually win you the trick. The exception is if another player plays a higher ranked trump suit card.
In this trick, player 4 does not have a Full Moon Card, but unlike player 3, Player 4 does have a card from the Crescent Moon suit. In fact, Player 4 has several Crescent moon cards.
Player 4 choses to play their lowest ranked Crescent Moon because they will win the trick with any trump card from that suit.
It’s important to note that some trick-taking games prohibit players from leading a trick with the trump suit. This type of rule holds until another player has played a trump suit card, or a player only has trump suit cards in their hand. This is often referred to as breaking trump.
How do you score a trick?
After the last player plays their card, the trick, or round, is finished. At this point, all cards are examined with a winner determined by the highest-numbered card of the lead suit, or if applicable, the trump suit.
The cards played are then collected and given to the winning player. This is how players track who won a particular trick.
In this case, the winner is player 4 since they played the highest ranking and only trump suit card. This player collects the four cards played and stacks them neatly near the player.
Just a reminder that if all players had cards in their hand from the Full Moon suit, then player 1 would have won the trick since player 1 led the trick with the highest ranking Full Moon suit card.
Why are trick-taking games interesting?
The concept of tricks is straightforward and by itself would not make for the most interesting of games. What has made trick-taking games so compelling for over 500 years is the game rules that cause players to pursue strategies above the trick-taking layer. These rules often present players with alternative goals.
A common theme in games like Bridge, Spades, Euchre, and, at times, our own game Castlore, involves players trying to win a certain number of tricks. Although simple in concept, it ends up being far more complex because at times a player must try to win tricks and other times attempt to lose some tricks. When combined with the random shuffling of the deck, a set number cards, and well defined criteria for winning tricks, players are presented with puzzles of logic, deduction, and calculated risk-taking that have fascinated people from every corner of the globe for centuries. As an example of such a puzzle, in certain games like Hearts, and our own game Castlore, you know that there’s a certain amount of cards in each suit. If you have a high card in a particular suit, like the Ace in Spades, or the Sorceress Card pictured here.
Then you will most likely win the trick if you play that card, unless another player plays a trump card, if the game played has such a suit. However, if the game rules provide that a player effectively “loses” points by taking a trick with that card, then instead of playing that card to win a trick, you need to look for chances to sluff that card throughout the round so that a player other than you loses points by taking a trick with that card.
Which Trick-taking Games inspired Castlore?
Given the age of the genre, there are an incredible amount of games that use trick-taking concepts. The Penguin Book of Card Games has a comprehensive list of card games, including trick taking games. But here is a list of the games from the trick-taking genre that we drew inspiration from as we developed our trick-taking game Castlore.
Euchre
In 1877, it was said, “no sedentary game is more popular, or so generally played for amusement” in the United States “as Euchre – the Queen of all card-games.” *https://archive.org/stream/lawspracticeofga00meeh/lawspracticeofga00meeh_djvu.txt.
Although its origins are lost, as early as Andrew Jackson’s presidential term, decades preceding the above statement, one of President Jackson’s friends observed Euchre is “hazardestest game on the keards”. At any rate, the game has many variants that each feature a bidding system and trump system. There are a number of variants, several of which are here:
Hearts
Hearts is believed to have originated from an earlier game called Reversis, which was popular in Spain during the 1600s. Reversis involved players attempting to avoid capturing certain cards, much like the concept of Hearts. In the US, the game became popular among soldiers on both sides of the Civil War conflict. The game was also one of the first card games to be adapted digitally due to its inclusion in the Microsoft Windows Operating System, and the AI players were good enough to provide a challenging and competitive experience for solo players. There is the classic verison, as well as variants, videos can be found here:
Ombre
Ombre is the trick taking card game from which all bidding games, including Bridge, owe their ancestry. For doubters, check Alexander Pope’s The Rape of The Lock, it’s a game of Ombre that sets in motion the Baron’s assault on Belinda’s hair. Player’s determine the Hombre, or man, through a bidding system. The Hombre chooses trump and then tries to win more tricks than their opponents. ***There a number of variants, videos can be found here:
bridge (contract) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IomnCvxWzM
bridge (turnover) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4k80nEAMdo
Sheng ji
Sheng ji is a trick-taking card game played in China. Similar to Thousand, and our own Castlore, the game features a dynamic trump suit and is part of the family of point based trick-taking games in which players score points by taking tricks that include certain cards rather than scoring points based on the number of tricks taken. An explanation video can be found here:
Spades
Spades owes its origins to the Midwest region of the United States during the late 1930’s. The game rose in popularity among U.S. soldiers during World War II as a simpler option to Bridge and Euchre, both of which were popular at the time. The game spread to college campuses throughout the United States when former soldiers went to college under the GI Bill. The game also remained popular in countries where U.S. soldiers had been stationed during WWII. The game features bidding and spades as the permanent trump suit. The classic version of Spades can be found here:
Spar
Our search for inspiration took us all over the world, and we discovered a few gems that even works as comprehensive as The Penguin Book of Card Games in its 600+ pages of card games did not cover. One of which was Spar, a trick-taking card game from Ghana, in which the player taking the last trick scores points based on the type of card the player uses to take the last trick. The game is likely a local variant of one of the European last trick games brought to Africa by colonists or traders, as the game is reminiscent of games like Femkort from Sweden, or the Dutch game Toepen. The classic version of Spar can be found here:
Thousand
Thousand is an east European trick taking game popular in countries like Poland, Serbia and Ukraine. A feature that makes the game unique is the ability to change trump suit during a round by declaring marriages with a king and queen of the same suit. A video explaining the game can be found here:
As you can see, people have been playing a variety of trick-taking games for centuries, which has inspired us to dig deep and combine rules from all these games into our upcoming Castlore. With each round of play having a new trump suit, and new order of ranking the cards, and even implementing Chaos to change rules in the middle of the round, Castlore is dynamic and requires shifting strategy to become the reigning card mage of the realm!
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