Welcome to Mariglia!

I’ll tell you all about Mariglia, a cool card game that 4 people can play. In Mariglia, the goal is to get enough points to win the game before your opponents do.

Before we start playing, we need to decide how many points we need to win. Usually, people agree on a score of 35 points or more.

Getting Set Up

To play Mariglia, we need a special deck of cards. If you have a regular deck, you can remove all the 10s, 9s, and 8s, which will leave us with a deck of 40 cards.

Before we begin, we need to choose who will be the first dealer. It can be anyone, really. After each game, the dealer passes the deck to the person on their right. The cards are then shuffled, and the player on the dealer’s left gets to cut the deck.

So here’s how the game goes: the dealer hands out 10 cards to each player, split into two batches of 5 cards each. As for the last card, it’s dealt face up to decide the trump suit. If that card has a point value attached to it, the dealer’s team gets that many game points when the card is revealed. Those points just might be what it takes to win the game!

Ranking and Values of the Cards

Let’s talk about the ranking of the cards in this game. The highest card is the 7, followed by the Ace, King, Jack, Queen, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2.

Now, each card has a value for scoring. 7s are worth 5 points, aces are worth 4 points, kings are worth 3 points, jacks are worth 2 points, and queens are worth 1 point. All the other cards don’t have any point value attached to them.

Let’s Get Playing!

When it’s time to start the game, it’s your turn if you’re sitting to the right of the dealer. You get to choose any card to play first. After that, the other players have to follow suit if they can. And if your opponent is winning, you have to try to beat them if you can. But if you can’t follow suit, you can play trumps. And if playing trumps won’t help you beat your opponent, or if you can’t beat them at all, then you can play any card you want.

If there were trumps played, the trick is won by the highest trump card. But if no trumps were played, then the trick is won by the highest-ranking card of the suit that was first played. The winner of the trick gets to collect all the cards in a score pile and leads the next trick.

SCORING

After I play all my tricks and win, I need to score points. I add up the value of all the cards I won and get one extra point for each trick I won. If my team scores more than 35 points, we subtract our total from 35. That’s how many game points we earn for the round. The other team doesn’t get any points.

The Game is Over

The game ends when one team reaches or goes over the agreed-upon point total. And that team is the winner!

The game ends when one team reaches or goes over the agreed-upon point total. And that team is the winner!