TROEVEN

Hey there! Let me tell you all about Troeven, an exciting card game that you can play with four people split into two teams. The aim of the game is to be the first team to reach a score of 0. But how do you do that? Well, let me break it down for you.

SETUP

Alright, let’s get started with the setup. The first thing you need to do is choose a dealer. You can do this by picking someone randomly or using any other method you prefer. Once you have a dealer, the role will pass to the next player clockwise with each new round.

Now, to prepare the deck of cards for Troeven, we need to remove all the cards numbered 6 and lower. This means you’ll be playing with a deck of 32 cards. Ready? Let’s dive into the game!

When we play this card game, the first thing we do is shuffle the deck. Then, the person sitting on the right of the dealer cuts the deck. The dealer proceeds to give the person sitting on the left a 4-card hand. Now, here comes an interesting part. This player gets to choose the trump suit, which can be any suit, even if they don’t have any cards of that suit. Once the trump suit is chosen, the dealer deals everyone 8 cards each for their hand.

Now, let’s talk about the order of the cards and their values. The order of the cards goes like this: Ace (which is the highest), followed by King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, and 7 (which is the lowest).

But wait, there’s more! The cards also have values associated with them for scoring. In the order I just mentioned, the cards are worth 4 points, 3 points, 2 points, and 1 point, respectively. That means there’s a total of 40 points up for grabs in each round.

And now, let’s get to the gameplay!

When we play the game, the person on the left of the dealer always starts. Then we go around in a circle, going clockwise. The person who starts can choose any card they want to play, and everyone else has to either play a card of the same suit or play a trump card if they have one. If they don’t have a card of the same suit, they can play any card, even a trump card.

The winner of each round is determined by the highest-ranked trump card played, if there is one. If there are no trump cards played, then the highest-ranked card of the suit that was led wins the round. The winner of each round gets to keep the cards, which they place face-down in a pile. They also get to start the next round.

SCOREKEEPING

Once all the rounds have been played, we can start keeping score.

When we play this game, each team starts with 7 points. The team that scores the most points in the round decreases their score by one. On the other hand, if the dealer’s team wins the round, my team, the trump caller’s team, has to add a point to our score. If both teams score the same number of points in the round, then no one’s score changes.

If we want to play using traditional scoring, we need a sheet of paper. We can fold the paper in half and draw a long vertical line. Each side of the line will represent one of the teams. We start with 7 horizontal lines on each side, like branches. When my team wins more points in a round, we can add a ball to one of our lines to cancel it out. But if we lose as the trump caller’s team, we have to add a branch to our side.

THE END OF THE GAME

The game ends when a team reaches a score of 0 or cancels out all of their team’s branches. The first team to do this wins the game!