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Trick taking games are an old type of game. Parlour card games such as Hearts, Forecast or Knockout Whist have been around long enough that they are handed down mostly by grandparents to their unsuspecting grandchildren as they persuade the youngest generation to gamble away their pennies or matchsticks. Many an afternoon was spent with my great-grandma playing round after round of card games usually for used matchsticks but sometimes for penny suits or her stash of 5p’s (which we never got to keep, we just put them all back in the china toucan emblazoned dish on her dressing table).
Claim
Claim is a trick taking game that has rather than suits, factions. You will be playing a value 4 dragon against a value 9 dragon, or a 0 gnome being beaten by a meager 5 gnome. There are many versions of this game; Claim, Claim 2, and the Maps, Mercenaries and Magic versions of the Claim Reinforcements. These are all stand alone boxes, I am most familiar with Claim 2, but they all play pretty similarly with different twists using different factions.
This is a trick taker that is played in two halves. During the first half of the game you are playing tricks to win the card in the centre. If you win then you place that card into your pile for the second half of the game. If you lose the trick then you will have to draw blind. This means you could have a brilliant card, or alternatively it could be a value 0 gnome. At the end of the round once all the cards have been “claimed” (pun intended), you then pick up the cards you won during the round and progress to the second half of the game. This is the time when you are playing for points. Everything you did in the first round led up to curating this hand, and so now you must maximise your scores by playing cleverly. Or in my case watching your best laid plans blow up in your face as you are just not quite as smart as you thought you were…
This is a small box game that can be played on the go and takes up almost no space on the table making it perfect as a brewery or pub game.
Fox in the Forest Duet
Who said that trick takers needed to be cut throat though? What about working together harmoniously against the game? Well, enter the friendly brother Fox in the Forest Duet to the cutthroat Fox in the Forest. This is a co-operative trick taker where you will be working with your fellow player to beat the game. This is a tricky (oh pun!) game to win, but one I find thoroughly fascinating to play.
During this game you will be using your cards to win tricks in the traditional manner, except now the result of winning a trick is for the token to move towards you along the track. Throughout the course of the game, you will be collecting gems and trying desperately to remain upon the track in the forest. This would be relatively straight forward if it were not for the fact that each odd numbered card also has a special ability, which can affect how the trick causes the token to move. Additionally you are working together but are not able to communicate about the hand that you hold.
I would say that this is a game for the seasoned trick takers rather than one to learn trick taking with. There is a little too much independent thought required for it to be an easy teach if you do not understand trick taking already. I came to this game with my husband who is exceptionally adept at trick taking having grown up almost exclusively on them as a kid. I conversely was more of a set collection card game player, so there was a chasm between our abilities. I think that for him, being unable to win this game due to my inability to guess the intricacies did ruin it a tad in the beginning. Although thankfully for him I was a quick learner with this and it was only the second time of playing that I managed to get into the swing of things enough to be a worthy companion against the game.
The Crew Mission Deep Sea
A campaign game is an experience that you get to have with your fellow players as the game rules twist and turn around you game-to-game. But who ever heard of a trick taking campaign? Well probably quite a few of you dear readers since The Crew is incredibly highly regarded and won a lot of awards when it first came out.
Rounds in this game are very swift, playing up to about 15 tricks maximum each. The number of cards you hold is determined by the player count, which runs from 3 to 5 with a 2 player variant also available. You are limited in how you can communicate during this game, but otherwise this plays as a typical trick taker. There are four suits (pink, green, yellow and blue) and these are easily identified by colour but they have made it colour blind friendly with symbols too. You are working together to achieve a win each round, but the exact rules are set by the challenges for each round. These are explained to you along with a snippet of the campaign story in the log book. After completion of a challenge, you move onto the next story which most likely will be more tricky to complete. We have played about 50 games of The Crew in its various iterations and as yet are only about ⅓ way through the campaign. Now this is at 2 players, which is probably the hardest way to play this game, but it is still fun.
The first iteration was The Crew: Quest for Planet Nine, which was set unsurprisingly in space. The follow up and in my humble opinion better game is its younger sibling The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. Set on a submarine, the story of this campaign follows a scientist who is struggling to work out what is going on upon the ship she has been assigned to whilst also conducting her research in the deep ocean. It pleases me, as a scientist myself, that the main character in this campaign story is a woman.
Nyet
If you really want to shake things up a bit, then why not turn everything on its head with a game literally called Nope in Russian; Nyet? This is a true trick taker in the way that you play tricks each round, but the fun comes in the pre-round decision making over how each round is going to play out. It is a wild few rounds that you play where you can actually torpedo the scores of those with a strong hand by
In Nyet, you are deciding which suit is trumps, if there is a super trump, how much each trick is worth and who is the start player collaboratively by noping the things you don't want to happen. Each round starts with players going around and placing a token on something that is not going to happen on the central board. Then as you fill up the rows, the last thing left in each column will be set for that game. So for example if blue, green and red have Nyet tokens on them, then yellow will be the trump suit.
This game is a battle of wits as sometimes the tricks will be worth 4 points, sometimes negative points. You need to keep your head up as you try desperately to score yourself points in the best way possible, taking control when it matters most. If you want to be kept on your toes, then you need to try out this one. It's frenzied during the selection part and there will be cries out of “nooooo” as your opponent nopes your best bet at a high score.
Scout
Scout is a twist on a trick taker, and perhaps not strictly a trick taker at all, but hey it’s going to sit in here anyway because I think it is an absolute powerhouse of a game. This is a game where you are trying to “show” an unbeatable hand or get rid of all your cards. The win will come to you for either.
This is a hand management game, you need to put together runs or sets of the same number to beat out what is in the middle of the table. Generally higher cards beat lower cards, a run of two beats a single card of any number. Pairs beat a run of two, again regardless of value but a pair of 2’s will beat a pair of 1’s. If you cannot or do not wish to play cards on your turn then you can elect to scout instead, this will give a point to whoever played down those cards, but you can take either the front or back card of their “show” and place it anywhere in your hand. Well now this part is key, for I have yet to tell you of the most dastardly thing about Scout. When you get your hand you cannot move the cards in your hand. Each card has two numbers on it and you can pick to play the upside or downside way of your hand, but you cannot move cards to make sets. You have to keep them exactly in the order you were dealt them. And that my friends, is often a pain in the butt!
Have these suggestions sparked an interest in you? If so, comment and let us know which you think is most for you, or if you have another idea, let us know. The trick-taking space is so wide that there are so many different kinds available!
