Innovative trick-taking

🕍 LUZ is a trick-taking card game for 3-5 players. But not just like any other trick-taker! ☝️

The main twist is that you can see the values and colors of the cards of your opponents, but only the colors of your own cards! 😮 Additionally, you have to bet how many tricks you win each round, so you cannot just mindlessly play cards. 

To actually have some agency and possibility for strategy, cards in your hands will be arranged in an ascending order. 👉Every player gets 10 cards at the beginning of the round and they have to arrange them, putting a card on the edge to show that cards ascend in that direction - then everyone passes these cards to their neighbor. With this clever solution everyone gets an orderly hand of cards, but no knowledge of the values. 😉

Then you can start looking at the other players’ cards, and bet on how many tricks you believe you’ll win. But beware, you have to win exactly that many, or you lose points! 😱 You can choose to take a “safety” token which allows you to potentially win one more trick, but it halves the amount of points you can get. Later rounds have bigger rewards.

From then on it’s pretty basic trick-taking rules. 🧐 Players have to follow suit color and the biggest value wins. The trump color is yellow, so yellows can defeat tricks with another lead color. The dynamic of the game is completely changed though due to the knowledge of who has what. Oh, and you only know what value you have played after the fact. 😅 (Of course some cards are removed each round so you don’t have perfect information.)

The reason we are choosing LUZ for #firstimpressionsfriday🎲 is the fact that we played it at an event before the official release at the full player count, and what can I say... It was pure chaos but in a good way. 😄 The funniest part is definitely when everyone holds up their cards and people start checking the values, trying to figure out how valuable their own hand is. Guessing how many tricks you will win is super hard too - well, either that or we are just very bad at trick-taking. 🤭 Just don’t feel bad if you still have minus points after the final 4th round, someone might be even worse off. 😂