Just when you think you’ve seen every trick in the book when it comes to trick-taking games, somebody adds another page. Reinhard Staupe brings us David & Goliath, which thankfully has nothing to do with the old biblical claymation series (yes, I know- that’s Davey & Goliath). Staupe delivers a couple of twists on the old format which force you to turn your thinking about such games on end.
Five suits (colors) numbered 1-18 in each comprise the deck, which is dealt out completely with six players (cards are removed from the high end of each suit if playing with fewer). Lead, follow suit, play anything if void- the usual drill. Here’s come the catches. The winning card is the highest card played, regardless of color. So even though there’s no trump in the game, you don’t have to follow suit to win a trick. But here’s the even bigger catch, and the source of the game’s name: the lowest card played, again regardless of suit, captures the winning card. The player of the low card collects the high card, while the player of the high card gets the rest and leads to the next trick.
The significance of that becomes apparent once you learn the scoring system. At the end of the hand, each card you’ve taken is worth one point. For any suit in which you collected no more than two cards, however, each card is worth its face value instead.
Won a red trick? Congratulations- you’ve just taken five cards, worth a total of five points. Meanwhile I played the low card and took your winning card, a 17, which is worth 17 points to me as long as I avoid taking more than one more red card.
Clearly, the goal here is not to take tricks but rather to play low and steal the high card from the trick. Ties in either direction are won by the last of the tied cards played, so the ideal situation is to have your left-hand neighbor leading. If you’re trying to avoid taking cards, leading is bad. It’s all too likely that the innocuous-seeming 9 you lead will get underplayed all around the table with mediocre cards of various colors, leaving you holding the bag. Not so disastrous if you didn’t expect to get any cards of that suit anyway, but if you’d already picked up the 18, you just lost 12 points!
And that, of course, is precisely what everyone tries to do to each other. Michael’s taking that trick? In that case, I’ll duck with a green card which goes oh-so-nicely with the other two greens he’s already claimed.
High cards are good, low cards are good, and even medium cards are useful for ducking those tricks in which even the high card would hurt you (although an entire hand of medium cards, as in most card games, is lousy). You’d think that such a scheme would provide lots of scope for skillful cardplay, but I’m not so sure. Perhaps this is merely a subjective feeling- how many times have you played Settlers and felt sure that your numbers just never got rolled, when in fact they pretty much stayed to the statistical average?- but it often feels like one’s fortune is dictated far more by the luck of the draw. Obviously luck plays a factor in most card games like this, but here it seems amplified. Not only do you need cards at the extreme ends of the spectrum, but you usually need to play them late in the trick (and often, late in the hand). If the player to your right takes lots of tricks, your low cards won’t be as useful. Sure, you’ll play David to his Goliath, but the players after you will take every opportunity to make sure that you take too much of a good thing.
Is that a condemnation? Hardly. Even if this feeling is true- and I’m not convinced that it is- the actual play of the game certainly gives me the illusion of having some control. What suit do I void myself in? How can I make him overflow on yellow? Do I take the 15 or hold out for something higher? Should I go Goliath this hand or try to ditch my high cards? There’s no shortage of strategic and tactical options here. And, in the wake of numerous low-scoring card games where ties are too common, the scores are high enough to afford sufficient variance between players.
David & Goliath, which was nominated for last year’s Spiel des Jahres, may not revolutionize or even revitalize the trick-taking genre. But it has enough of interest to warrant a serious look.