Welcome to Mustamaija
Mustamaija is an exciting card game that you can play with 2 to 6 players. The goal of the game is simple: avoid being the last person holding cards by either successfully attacking or defending.
Unlike other games, Mustamaija doesn’t have a winner. Instead, there’s only one loser at the end.
Getting Started
To begin, we need to choose a dealer. This can be done randomly. The dealer will then shuffle the deck and deal each player 5 cards. The remaining cards will form a face-down talon, which we will draw from later.
The trump suit, which determines the most powerful suit in the game, will be revealed after the first player plays their card but before they draw for their turn. The dealer will flip the top card of the talon to reveal the suit. If it’s spades, the card is buried in the middle of the deck and a new card is revealed. The suit of the newly revealed card will be the trump suit for the game. The revealed card is placed face-up underneath the talon so everyone can see the suit. Just remember, the last card drawn will always be the trump card.
Card Rankings
The card ranking follows a traditional order, starting from Ace (high) and going down to King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2 (low).
In the game, the trump suit always has a higher rank than a non-trump suit. However, there’s an exception for the queen of spades. The queen of spades is the lowest-ranking card unless it is led in an attack. When the queen of spades is played alone or with other spades, it cannot be beaten, even by trumps or higher-ranking cards.
GAMEPLAY
The game begins with the player sitting to the left of the dealer and then continues in a clockwise direction. In each round, there will be an attacker and a defender. The defender is always the player to the left of the attacker.
During the attacker’s turn, they can play any number of cards with the same suit. These cards are placed face-up on the table. If the attacker has fewer than 5 cards in hand at this point, they will draw up to five cards from the talon.
Now it’s my turn to play. I can choose to beat some of the cards by playing a higher-ranking card or a trump card if the lead cards were not trumps.
If I beat any cards, I take them and put them aside with the ones I used to beat them. The cards that I don’t beat go back into my hand. If I have less than 5 cards in my hand after this, I have to draw cards from the talon until I have 5.
If I beat all the cards, I become the new attacker. If I don’t beat all the cards, the next player to my left becomes the attacker.
While there are still cards left in the talon, I can lead more cards than the defender has in hand. But once the talon is empty, I can’t do that anymore.
So, here’s the deal: once all the cards in the talon are gone, things start to get interesting. You won’t be drawing any more cards for your hand. Nope. Once you’re out of cards, that’s it. You’re done. No more playing. But hey, at least you’re safe!
The Grand Finale
This game keeps going until there’s only one player left standing. And guess what? That player is the loser. Yep, it’s game over for them.
This game keeps going until there’s only one player left standing. And guess what? That player is the loser. Yep, it’s game over for them.