Well, it's official -- Doppelkopf fever is sweeping the nation. Okay, maybe not the nation...but my small world, which counts as an odd sort of nation to me. A very odd one indeed.
Doppelkopf is this fantastic card game that I've been playing with friends for a few years, and it hasn't really gotten old. It's a four-player trick-taking game, and what makes it particularly exciting and fun is the way that partners are determined each round: by (in most cases) the cards they hold in their hands. You can read through wikipedia's
rules/summary for details, but what this means is when you start playing each round, you don't know who your partner is yet -- and you have to figure it out based on clues/calls/cards as the game progresses. If you are reading the rules page, we play Doppelkopf with all of these variants: Dullen, Foxes, Charlie, and...Doppelkopf! We also include a variant (apparently not listed?) where the aces of diamonds count as special cards -- if one team "captures" an ace of diamonds belonging to the opposing team, it's an extra game point for the former team. Additionally, there are special calls that can be made when a player starts the game with both aces of diamonds (they become the highest trump in that case), and when an additional player then has both nines of diamonds (in which case THEY become the highest trump).
EDIT: Here's an
awesome summary of the rules we use in our Doppelkopf games -- thanks goes to Carlos for the detailed and organized webpage.
Anyway, I absolutely love that game. Here are other strategy games I really enjoy, in approximate descending order (the order will change slightly almost weekly). Thanks to the game night crowd for introducing me to most of these!
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Princes of Florence (especially when I get to build the mathematician or bell maker, but not when I have to bid 22oo florens for a stupid forest in the last round!) ;)
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Clue: Master Detective (1 + 1 + 2 + 1...)
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Goa (learning slowly, but already love it! I like spending my game-money on pumpkin pie spices) :)
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Settlers of Catan (plus variants: Cities & Knights and Seafarers)
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Ra (Rah for Ra!)
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St. Petersburg (I like trying to beat certain people at this game...)
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Citadels (I both enjoy and am driven nuts by the psychologial aspect of trying to guess what roles others will choose each round)
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Tigris and Euphrates (I still have no clue what I'm doing in this game, but I like the spatial aspect of it)
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Suicide spades (except when I have a null hand + the ace of spades)
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Traders of Genoa and
Caylus (both are very complex and fun, but both are very long)
What are your favorite board or card games?
