Boil and bubble

Initially targetted as a perfect and certain information three player card game with both a high Take-That! factor and high control. This game is the product of roughly 15 minutes actual thought and a little mumbling to myself while taking a shower.

The game consists of two decks of cards. The player deck and the prize deck. The player deck consists of 31 cards: three suits of 11 cards (red, green, blue) with values ranging from 1-9 inclusive, plus three I Win! cards and three blank player identification cards. The prize deck consists of nine cards, three in each of the three player suits with values of 4, 6 and 9. The back of each prize card is coloured to match its player suit.

Setup:

1. Shuffle the prize cards and deal them out in a face down line
2. Pick a start player and give them the red player identification card and the red I Win! card. The green player identification and I Win! cards go to the player to their left. The blue player identification card and I Win! cards go to the player to the start player’s right. Each player publicly displays their player identification card and takes their I Win! card into their hand.
3. Separate the three player suits and sort the cards in each suit into ascending order.
4. Starting with the start player deal one red player card to each player until the deck runs out.
5. Starting with the player to the left of the start player deal out the blue player deal out the green deck in similar fashion.
6. Starting with the player to the right of the start deal out the blue player deck in similar fashion.
7. The dealt player suit cards form each player’s hand along with their I Win! card.

Rules:

1. Turn over the leftmost prize card and add it to the prize pile (beside the row of face down prize cards)
2. In turn order starting with the start player each player plays a card face up before them.
3. Resolve the trick.
4. Repeat from step #1 eight more times, starting with the winner of the prize suit in the last trick
5. Each player claims half their prizes
6. The player with the highest score wins.

Resolving the trick:

The trick is resolved by resolving each suit in order, starting with the suit of the prize card, then the remaining suit with the highest value card played (tiebreak goes to the player suit to the prize suit player’s left), then the last remaining suit. If no cards are played in a given suit, then that suit is not resolved for that trick. If no card is played in the prize suit then the other suits are resolved as necessary and the prize card is left in the prize pile. In this case the lead moves to the next player to the left of the previous lead.

Resolving the prize suit:

1. Whichever player played the highest valued card in the suit of the prize card takes the prize pile card(s) and places them along with the card they played in their score pile. If any player played their I Win! card then they automatically are considered to have played the highest card in the prize suit. If multiple players play their I Win! cards then the earlier played cards are considered “bigger” than the later played cards.
2. If another player also played a card in the same suit, then the player from #1 separates their score pile cards into two face up stacks. The player with the next highest card in the prize suit then takes their choice of the two stacks and places those cards in their scoring pile along with the card they played.
3. If the third player also played a card in the prize suit, then the player from #2 separates their score pile cards into two face up stacks. The player with the smallest card in the prize suit then takes their choice of the two stacks and places those cards in their scoring pile along with the card they played.

Resolving other suits:

1. The player identified by the suit divides their scoring pile cards into two piles. The player of the highest card in that suit takes their choice of the two stacks and places those cards in their scoring pile along with the card they played. If the player played a card in their own suit it is merely added to there score pile.
2. Likewise again for the next lower card in that suit.
3. And possibly yet again for the third lowest card in that suit.

Scoring:

Each player sums the value of the cards in their scoring pile. I Win! cards are worth nothing. The largest score wins.

Variant #1:

When dividing their scoring pile into two sets for another player to choose from, the splitting player must ensure that the two piles have as close as possible to the same number of cards as each other.

Variant #2:

A tenth trick is played, but without any prize cards. The suits are resolved starting with the suit of the player that lead the trick.