Welcome to Farmer Henry!

I’m here to tell you all about the exciting game of Farmer Henry. It’s a game that’s played in Germany, but don’t worry! You can easily play it with a regular deck of cards too.

In this game, we have different suits that are ranked, and each player gets their own special suit called a trump suit. We even have bowers, which are like super powerful cards!

Let’s Talk About the Cards and How to Deal

First, we need to get our deck of cards ready. Take out all the 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, 5’s, and 6’s from each suit. We won’t be using them in this game.

Now, let’s talk about the special cards called bowers. In Farmer Henry, all four Jacks are bowers. They have a special ranking too. The J of Diamonds is the lowest, followed by the J of Hearts, then the J of Spades, and finally, the J of Clubs is the highest.

The rest of the cards rank like this: The 7 is the lowest, and the Ace is the highest. When it comes to suits, Clubs is the highest, followed by Spades, then Hearts, and Diamonds is the lowest.

Alright, let’s get started! Shuffle the deck of cards making sure all 52 cards are mixed up. After that, deal out 8 cards to each player.

Here’s how the game goes:

Time to determine the trump suits:

I’m going to assume you know what a trump suit is, but just to be sure, it’s basically a suit that outranks all the other suits in the game. The player who happens to have the Ace of Clubs starts us off by announcing it and declaring that Clubs will be the trump suit for this round. Now, let’s continue assigning the remaining trump suits in a counter-clockwise direction. The player to the right of the one who picked Clubs gets Spades as their trump suit, and then the player to their right gets Hearts, and lastly, the player to their right gets Diamonds.

Now, let’s tackle the first trick:

When we play a card game called “Ace of Clubs,” the person who has the Ace of Clubs starts the first round. It can be any card they choose. The next player’s goal is to win the round using a card from the same suit. If they can’t do that, they must play a trump card or a Jack. Keep in mind that each player has a trump suit assigned to them. They can use a card from that suit to win the round. If a player can’t beat the previous card played, they have to pick up the round and add the cards to their hand. Then, the next player starts a new round.

Once four cards have been played in a round, the winner of that round collects the cards and sets them aside. They are then responsible for starting the next round.

As the game goes on, players will run out of cards and be eliminated until only one player is left with cards in their hand.

LET ME SHOW YOU AN EXAMPLE

Here’s a cool trick you can try out:

Let’s say I have the Ace of Clubs in my hand. I decide to start the game by leading with a 9 of Diamonds. The player sitting next to me, Player 2, has to play a higher Diamond if they have one. And guess what? They do! They play a 10 of Diamonds. Now it’s Player 3’s turn. They have to beat the 10 of Diamonds with an even higher Diamond, but unfortunately, they don’t have one. So, they have two options: they can either play a card from their trump suit (which is Hearts in this case) or they can play a Jack. Player 3 decides to play it safe and goes with a 9 of Hearts. Now it’s Player 4’s turn. They have to beat the 9 of Hearts with a higher Heart card if they can. But if they can’t, they can either play a card from their trump suit (which is Spades) or a Jack. Player 4 plays a Queen of Hearts, successfully beating the 9 and winning the trick. Good job, Player 4! They take the trick out of play and then lead with the Jack of Hearts to kick off the second trick.

That was the first trick.

Now, let’s move on to the second trick.

So, here’s what happened. It’s my turn to play, and Player 4 starts off the second round with a Jack of Hearts. Now, I know I have to play a higher Jack if I can. Luckily, I have the Jack of Spades, so that’s what I put down.

Player 2 doesn’t have the Jack of Clubs, so I gather up the cards from the trick and add them to my hand. Now it’s my turn to lead the next trick.

WINNING

The goal here is pretty simple: the first player to get rid of all their cards is the winner. Easy, right? It’s all about strategy and knowing when to play your cards!