Welcome to Court Piece!

Hey there! Have you ever played a trick-taking card game? If not, get ready to have a blast with Court Piece! This game is all about strategy and teamwork. Let me tell you all about it.

Court Piece is a game designed for 4 players. Don’t worry, it’s not just you against everyone else – you’ll have a partner on your team! You and your partner will be sitting across from each other, ready to take on the challenge.

The objective of Court Piece is to win courts, which are the game’s points. There are a few ways to do this. One way is by winning the most tricks in each round. Another way is by winning specific tricks that have a higher score.

Before the game starts, you and your friends will decide on the length of the game. You can either choose a specific number of rounds or play for a certain amount of time. Once that time frame or number of rounds is up, it’s time to tally up the scores and determine the winner!

Getting Set Up

When we start a game, we randomly choose the first dealer. However, in the following rounds, the dealer will be one of the players from the losing team in the previous round. Here’s how it works:

If the dealer’s team wins the round, the player to the dealer’s right becomes the new dealer. But if the player who called trump’s team wins without scoring a court, the dealer remains the same. However, if the player who called trump’s team does win a court, then the dealer’s partner takes over as the new dealer.

Now, let’s talk about how the cards are dealt. The dealer shuffles the deck and lets the player on their right cut it. Then, each player receives a hand of five cards, going in a counter-clockwise direction. The player who cut the deck gets to call the trump suit for the round. After that, the dealer distributes the remaining cards, four at a time, to each player. In the end, each player should have a total of 13 cards.

Card Rankings

The ranking for Court Piece is pretty straightforward. Ace is the highest card, followed by King, Queen, Jack, and then the numbers from 10 to 2, in descending order. This means that Ace outranks all other cards, while 2 is considered the lowest. The same ranking system applies to the trump suit.

THE GAMEPLAY

The game starts with the player on the right-hand side of the dealer. This player has the privilege to play any card of their choice. The other players in turn must play a card of the same suit, if they have one. However, if they don’t have a card of the same suit, they are free to play any card from their hand. In the end, the winning card is determined by two possibilities: either the highest-ranked trump card or the highest card of the suit led, in case no trump cards are played. The player who wins the trick gets to lead the next round. Whenever a player wins a trick, they place the cards face down in a pile next to them.

SCORING

After all the tricks have been played and won, the players start the scoring process. In Court Piece, teams keep track of their scores throughout several rounds, adding them up to create a cumulative score. This helps determine the winning team in the end.

When I’m playing card games, winning feels great. And in the game I’m about to tell you about, winning happens by winning the majority of the tricks. Let me explain.

First, let’s talk about courts. A court is scored when a team wins 7 tricks in a row. It’s like a little victory within the game. Once a court is scored, the count of consecutive tricks resets, but it carries over from one round to the next. Pretty cool, right?

But that’s not the only way to score a court. If a player on the other team messes up or cheats, the round ends automatically and the opposing team gets a court. It’s like catching someone in the act and getting rewarded for it.

Now, here’s a fun scenario: if a team wins the first 7 tricks, they have a choice. They can either start the next round or keep playing through the remaining tricks. But here’s the exciting part – if they manage to win all 13 tricks, which is super rare, they score a whopping 52 courts. That’s a massive achievement!

But wait, there’s more!

At the end of the game, it all comes down to the team with the highest score. The players decide on a time frame at the beginning of the round, and whoever has the most courts by the end wins. Simple as that. And if there’s a tie, well, sometimes ties are just left as ties without declaring a winner. It’s all part of the game.