Tabletop

Today's game of the day is... 🥁 
🃏🐉 TICHU 🐉🃏

✔ Trick game with a great depth
✔ 2 teams of 2 players
✔ Bet and try to rekt your opponents
✔ Only a few cards give you points
✔ Beautiful design 👨‍🎨 
✔ Play for hours without realizing

🎂10+  👥3/4/6  ⌛60'+

The game is supposed to be played with 4 players. 3 and 6 is also possible but not recommended.

Each player is sitting between the other team's two players.
The players decide what score must be reached to win the game (usually 1000). A game is played in a succession of rounds.

Everybody draws their cards, one by one. Once you get 9 cards in your hand you can call a "Great Tichu". Once you got the 14 cards in your hand, and until you played any, you can call for a "Tichu".

These two calls means that you believe you'll get rid of all your cards first. If you succeed, you get 100 points for a Tichu, 200 for a great one.
If you don't, these become negative points (-100/-200).

Before anybody starts to play, you have to give away 3 cards of your own deck : one for your partner, one for each of your opponents.
Once you're done you can add the three cards you received fro mthem into your deck.

Cards are basically the same as in a traditionnal card game, but for the 4 special cards :

✔ the bird 🐥  : the only card with a value of 1 (aces are above kings). The one holding it opens the game (it's not mandatory to play the bird). When you play it, you can request players to play a certain card, and the first player who can in the current combination must obey and play it.

✔ the dog 🐕  : can only be played when you open a trick. It immediately gives the lead to your partner who becomes the one opening.

✔ the dragon 🐉 : strongest simple card in the game, and beats any other one. It grants 25 points, but when you win a trick with this card, the whole trick has to be given to one of your opponent, you'll understand later why.

✔ the phoenix 🐦: grants you -25 points but can be played to replace any classic card in any combination (but a bomb 💣, we'll see that soon), or it can be played as a simple card and is always stronger of 0.5 points than the card previously played (but the dragon).

In order to win a round, one must play the highest set of the exact same combination. 
For instance, to win against a [2,3,4,5,6,7] one must play at least a [3,4,5,6,7,8] too bad if he had a 9. He either breaks his longer suite or pass in order to attempt playing it later.
Round goes till nobody can/want to play higher

Passing is temporary. If the trick goes on, you can still come back once it's your turn again. Passing is not definitive.

The one last combination I haven't talk about is THE BOMB 💣 
It can be played anytime, even if it is not your turn, and wins the trick. It can only be beaten by a higher bomb.
A bomb is made of :
✔ a four of a kind
or
✔ a straight flush

The current round ends when :
✔ there's only one player left with cards in his hands. He has to give these to the other team as points for them. He also gives all of the points he won during the round to the first player wo emptied his hands (that's why you give the dragon, you expect it to come back in your score)

Points are counted : special cards points, 5 are 5 points, 10 and kings grant 10.
✔ the two player of a team finish first and second : they built an empire, so the points are no counted : they simply score 200 points.

Now you're all set to discover that amazing game that you can even try on BGA : https://fr.boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=tichu

Thanks for reading till there and have fun !

The first player (owning the bird 🐥) opens the first trick of the round and decides of the combination by playing :
✔ a single card
✔ a pair
✔ three of a kind
✔ full house (eg: 6,6,6,k,k)
✔ a straight of following pairs (eg: 5,5,6,6,7,7...)
✔ a suite of at least 5 consecutive cards (bird,2,3,4,5...)