Tricky climb

An odd idea, not yet fully enfranchised into a game. Consider a (relatively standard) climbing game, perhaps along the lines of Mu, however rather than players playing cards in sets they would iteratively play them one at a time until everyone passes¹. The key element would be that rather than a player’s played cards forming the sets within themselves, they would instead form sets within the space of all cards played for that “trick”. For instance:

1. PlayerA: Leads an Ace.
2. PlayerB: Follows with another Ace and is therefore winning with two Aces.
3. PlayerC: Follows with an 8.
4. PlayerD: Follows with a pair of 8s and is therefore winning with three 8s. …etc.

Problem:

• Determining who is winning the current “trick”.
• Requirements for following.
• How points are assigned
• Method required to denote who is currently winning the trick

Initial thoughts:

• 5 suits (perhaps a Sticheln deck)
• Do not need to follow suit
• May play any number of cards so long as the total number of cards played by that player in the trick is no more than one larger than the total number of cards played by the previously card-count leader[^2].
• Suits are circularly ordered with the lead suit high and the others following in a constant rotational order
• Standard meld definitions including Tichu’s stairs.
• Each meld in the taken trick scores the value of the highest card in the meld, with arrangement of melds organised so as to minimise left over cards
• Left over cards and singletons don’t score