TRIAD (1990)

Sid Sackson developed the game Triad in 1957. In 1970, the game, slightly modified appeared as Pe-Ling. In 1989, this last version was presented in Essen and in 1990 it was published in spielbox # 5. Triad is a card game, resembling to both Rummy and Mahjong, played with regular decks of cards without the Jacks, Queens and Kings (i. e., only the Aces and the numbers from 2 to 8). In this game, players try to combine 12 cards in three sets of 4 cards, each set belonging to one of the three classes allowed. For this purpose, players can choose to take up a new card (visible) from the draw pile or a card (not visible) from the discard pile. A set of the Class 1 type consists of 4 cards of the same suit. For Class 2 sets, each 4 cards should be arranged as two pairs, the sum of the values must be 9 (e.g., 2, 2 and 7, 7). Class 3 is about making groups of 4 cards of the same number (e.g., 2, 2, 2, 2). In each Class, there are cards combinations considered weak, easy or strong, giving 2, 4 or 8 points, respectively. Moreover, there are several conditions and cards combinations that add doubling factors progressively to the total sum. In this way, one doubling multiplies the points by a factor of 2, two by 4, three by 8, etc. The game goes on through several rounds until the first player reaches a predetermined amount of points.