Game Review: Voleur

Poker cribbage. Not the most accurate way to describe Voleur, but you are forgiven for thinking it looks like it. It's mechanistically a last-trick-only piquet but with scoring based on poker-like hands.

Two players are dealt six cards and discards two each. Then a card is placed face-up for trump. Eldest hand leads and players must follow suit, if they can't they must trump otherwise may play any card, highest trump card or card of suit led wins the trick. Tricks aren't collected and are placed before the players. 

The winner of the last trick wins the value of his hand. You only score for one combination of cards but you can replace a card with the trump indicator to make a better combination. A basic combination scores while a special combination steals the points from your opponent (scores can't go lower than zero). First to 40 points wins. Unusually the deal continues with the remainder of the deck until it runs out, only then is the whole deck reshuffled.

Cribbage comparisons are thin, but strategy in discarding (albeit less consequential) and skillful card play remain. Should you discard for a high-scoring hand or a likely winner? After all, a high-value hand is nothing if it can't win even a trick.

Playing to win the last trick requires an approach different from simply winning a majority of them. Most last-trick games are luck-heavy and this is no different, the four tricks offset by only having two players.

A fine mix of games resulting in its own thing, though it does need to raise its stakes some more.

Game Review: Digging Graves

An interesting find in the 2024 traditional deck contest, a vying game with an unusual mechanic. In Digging Graves you bet on having the highest single card in your hand. Players ante, cards are dealt, then two betting rounds where betting consists of discarding a card first then staking. Highest card wins, ties broken by suit so the pot is never split. Whenever you discard a spade you are given another card.

How can you make a single card showdown interesting? The same way poker did: having more cards available for each player. Unlike most forms of poker in this game hand sizes can get uneven though having more cards isn't doesn't matter in the showdown. More cards does mean more bluffing power in the betting, so do the discards you make.

Discards are open information so you can do even more bluffing with what you discard, not just using it to get rid of low cards. The adding up of information for each round doesn't take a lot from betting, remember that the cards do not lie but the player can.

If you need a quick betting game for dealer's choice, this one works great for three rounds of betting.

A couple of variations are given, one is by comparing pairs and the other is where if you discard a spade you must keep discarding until your discard is no longer a spade. These give way different approaches to betting.

Review: Base of Spades

Base of Spades is Gregg Jewell's puzzler disguised with a theme for the 2024 traditional playing card contest, where you rearrange a row of cards to match them and score within a range. 

To bring down the defenses of the tyrannical Ace of Spades (whose only appearance is to take part in the pun), you must rally your nine even-numbered cards (kingdoms) by matching them with nine odd-numbered cards (champions) by suit. Every turn a commander dictates how a champion of a suit can move on the line, after a move another commander takes charge.

Once you match all cards by suit, you then make an attack based on how many matches total seven. You flip down the card that equals this total if it's still face up. Commanders can give champions optional movement range adjustments depending on how many defenses are down.

Taking down three cards of the defense is a win, a bigger win if it's one of each row of the pyramid. Once the deck of commanders is used up you shuffle it again, retiring a random card. If you use up all your turns this way without hitting three you lose.

Doing all this in 21 turns seems daunting, but matching suits is rather easy if you think of the other cards that shift to make room of your move. The extra moves you get whenever you take down a card means fewer moves thanks to additional options and thus finer moves

The goal is not to make as many sevens as possible, but you can't just match suits willy-nilly. If you have seen any skill-based arcade game that counts for example the number of spins a ball rolls around a circuit this game sort of works like that, overshoot or undershoot this six-number range and you've wasted moves.

There is a reference sheet for commander movements, the only real external piece of equipment. The gameplay is simple and works as a puzzle.