Game: Hattrick

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jdbvol — 2008-03-03T19:51:30+00:00

Box front U.S. Games Systems edition

Thread: Re: what is meant by "the last card is not played?"

gamesgrandpa — 2007-12-23T18:04:39+00:00

All players will have one card left in their hand when the game ends. That last card is not played or scored. So, you have one card in your hand that you are not forced to play, which gives you a little leeway not found in most other card games.

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kpetzing — 2007-10-21T16:19:21+00:00

example cards

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ArtEmiSa64 — 2007-08-07T22:24:29+00:00

Promotional Card included in games

Thread: Re: Does anyone have the full set of rules?

markhu — 2006-11-08T21:16:53+00:00

If the above links don't help, then ask a question and maybe I can clarify.

Thread: Re: Does anyone have the full set of rules?

Verkisto — 2006-11-01T16:19:01+00:00

Well, you can find them here:

http://gamecabinet.com/rules/Hattrick.html

... or here:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=2393

Hope this helps!

Thread: Does anyone have the full set of rules?

checkmate123 — 2006-11-01T15:56:41+00:00

The game description doesn't cut it for me. Does anyone have the full set of rules?

Thread: One quick hand while we wait for the rest of the players

daw65 — 2006-05-12T05:19:38+00:00

OK, the girls still hadn't arrived. But since we expected them at any moment, we decided to just grab a little filler to play until they arrived. Jim went to his game cabinet and brought out the odd trick taking card game, Hattrick, which we hadn't brought out at game night since 2003!

Dave started by leading the 17 blue, only to see Heather beat it with her 18. That fortold the competition the two would have for the color this hand. Dave took tricks with 19 and 20, but Heather's 15 and 14 also took tricks, and of course Carrie and Jim were both happy to dump their blue cards. Carrie, unfortunately, had a difficult hand, in that it was equally balanced in red and green. So when Jim claimed green as his color, Carrie was kind of "given" red. That should mean that she'd score really well, right? Unfortunately, no. She had enough good green cards as well that she couldn't dump them on any of Jim's tricks. As a result she found herself taking nearly as many green cards as red cards. And since Jim couldn't get those tricks, his score wasn't as high as you'd expect. We got down to the final card, which of course doesn't play, and lots of folks were hoarding high red cards. We then added up our scores. Carrie had a bit more red than green, giving here only 2 points. Jim had a few green cards, and also took a red trick or two, giving him six. And both Dave's and Heather's tricks were nearly exclusively blue. But it was Heather who had just bit more, topping Dave's score 9 to 8. And since at this point the girls had arrived, we called the game here, which made Heather the winner!

This is a pretty simple little game, and I have to admit that I didn't think that it'd play all that well with only four, since it seemed likely that only one suit would be contested, like blue was in our hand. But I see now that fewer players make it more likely that people will get negative points as well. I like that.

Thread: what is meant by "the last card is not played?"

markhu — 2005-09-13T17:56:37+00:00

I have not played this yet, but in reading the rules, I am curious. What does it mean when it says, "The last card is not played" under the "The game continues:" sub-heading.

I assume it might mean that the last card that ends a round...but which round?

Above the "The game continues:" sub-heading it says "The round finishes when all players have played a card and the winners have picked up their tricks." It makes no sense for the last card of this round to not be played.

It sounds like there might be two different sorts of rounds: one is the "short round" just described, and another is a "hand round" which ends when the last player empties their hand. I assume it is this last card that is refered to by my primary question.

Maybe I answered my own question: but can someone verify this line of reasoning?

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EJKemp — 2005-03-19T14:25:38+00:00

Thread: Session Report

brianeikunst — 2005-02-28T02:43:22+00:00

Players: Brian, Justin, David, Ravindra
# plays before today: 0, 0, 0, 0

We played this trick-taking game twice. Didn't like it after the first play. It seemed heavily luck-driven. In particular, I had a mix of the three colors... and mostly the highest and lowest cards of each color... so I was everyone elses pawn. I handed out a bunch of cards and got force-fed a little of everything. Final score was something like 30, 27, 14, and 3 (me).

Second play was better. We learned how to execute the "take that" or hurt-your-neighbor moves. I had a lot of purple in the second game so that was my obvious choice... but I chose to do a little bluffing with red. I ate a few cards, but eventually cleaned up on purple. Final score was roughly 18, 14, 12, and 6. A more balanced game due to the hurt-the-leader(s) approach.

HINTS & THOUGHTS:

1. luck of the draw is a big factor

2. you must coordinate with other players to hurt-the-leader by force-feeding him cards that will be negative points. REPEAT -- this effort must be coordinated. If the leader is collecting purple, the best way to hurt him is for the other players to make red & green the active suits... thus forcing the leader to take non-purple cards.

3. in absence of the hurt-the-leader(s) approach, the game will break down (like our initial play) and one or two players will run away with the game

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Verkisto — 2004-06-02T11:46:35+00:00

Thread: Session Report

daw65 — 2003-03-17T14:37:59+00:00

While we were on the Munchkin learning curve, the others sat down to a game of Hattrick

Since your humble author wasn't involved in this game, I don't have a whole lot to report. But I did get the scoresheet, so I'll use that here, and embellish upon it as best I can.

The game lasted eight hands, which meant that everyone had the opportunity to be the dealer twice in the game. The first few hands looked to be a pretty topsy-turvy affair, as the lead changed hands (Sue, then Jim, then Carrie). Adam took a negative in his first hand, and it appears to have kept him mostly out of the running. Carrie took the only other negative in the game, which forced her to relinquish the lead to Jim after hand #5.

In the second half of the game Jim found his stride, scoring the most points in each of hands 5, 6, and 7. Carrie appeared to run into a string of bad luck that continued after the negative score. Sue made a valiant effort to regain the lead with a 16-point hand #8, but in the end it wasn't enough to overtake Jim, who won the game.

Thread: Session Report

garrylloyd — 2003-02-26T02:59:34+00:00

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Garry

John had to leave at that point so we finished up with a couple of hands of Hat trick. This is one of my favourite little card games and can be quite nasty if people concentrate on scuppering their opponents’ hands rather than benefitting their own. This game turned out to be fairly friendly. In the first hand I had a long red suit and declared that early on, only to find the next minute that Mark G had decided to play for red as well. Nobody had much in the way of negative cards, leading to Mark K and Nige getting good scores, while Mark G and I shared the red ponts. In the second hand, everyone got balanced hands of five cards in each suit and nobody seemed very keen on committing themselves too early. Mark G ended up collecting cards in all three suits (not too good an idea) whereas I engineered a good enough score to tie with Nige at the end.

Result: Nige=Garry 19, Mark K 18, Mark G 7

Ratings: Already rated

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jeffcarey — 2002-08-30T18:59:45+00:00

Thread: Session Report

telbert — 2002-01-14T23:27:04+00:00

We were down the pub, we'd managed to get a table and Kev mentioned games - what more excuse do we need then to introduce him to Hattrick. After explaining that it was a trick taking game, with each hand playing up to two of the three colours and your score being the number of cards won in one colour minus the number of cards won in the other two we were off.

Beers were drunk and 5 hands were played before we got kicked out of the pub. Kevs good start tailed off with him finishing last scoring just 1 point over the last three hands. A decent last hand by the Boog only just saved him from the wooden spoon. Andys consistent scoring gave him third. Paul managed a couple of big hands in the middle of the game to take second. But Tel won the game thanks to two big scores at the start.

As the ratings show a corking game thoroughly enjoyed by all.

Scores by round
Boog 1 1 8 -2 10 = 18
Andy 3 6 8 7 7 = 31
Kev 7 6 1 1 -1 = 14
Paul 6 11 11 3 4 = 35
Tel 14 12 9 7 6 = 48

Ratings /10
Tel 9, Paul 8, Andy 8, Boog 9, Kev 9

Thread: General Comment

BoardGameGeek — 2002-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Hattrick should only be played with 5 or 6 players. As with Adel Verfplichtet and David & Goliath, the splits (for playing to 2 different tricks, or Auctionhouse/Castle or high card/lowcard) improve and give more variety with more players.

When we played Hattrick 3 years ago with 4 we were very dissapointed. When we tried again with 6 a few months later we couldn't believe how different it became (and how much it improved)

Thread: General Comment

BoardGameGeek — 2002-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

I had also heard that Hattrick only plays well with the full complement of players. But after trying it several times with both 4 and 6 players, I actually think Hattrick plays better with 4.

With 6 people, all the hands play out similarly and it gets quite dull. Often there is a 3-2-1 split in which there is only one person interested in a given suit and that person rakes in the points, and occasionally you get the more fair 2-2-2 split. But both scenarios lack tension because it's far too easy to lose the tricks you don't want. In a 6-player game, your hand pretty much determines the suit you need to go for, and your success is determined to a large extent by luck.

With 4 people, there is a lot more of "sensing out" which suit is the appropriate one to go for because a fairly weak suit may become a winner if the other players aren't interested. It is very common for one suit to be scattered among players so that no individual will think he has a strong enough hand to go for that suit. The play often starts to progress as a 2-2-0 split, but then as people realize that one suit is unclaimed, one or more players may shift goals midstream. Also, since it is harder to duck tricks with 4 people, you end up taking some lumps along the way. Minimizing these lumps, or sensing when to shift goals becomes a much bigger part of the game, resulting in much more fluid and dynamic play.

Thread: Session Report

PBrennan — 2001-06-29T11:50:07+00:00

First time out and I quite like the brain food this one offers in such a simple idea. 60 cards, 3 colours numbered 1 to 20. First player leads a card. Next can play a card of the same colour or a different colour. Only two colours can be played in a round, so if two colours are out already, the next must play in one of the colours out there, otherwise they have a choice. And so on, until each player has a played one card. Whoever has played the highest in each colour takes all the cards played in the colour (so there's usually two winners). The tricky thing is the scoring after all cards have been played - you score 1 point for each card captured in just 1 colour (you're largest) and lose 1 point for each card captured in the other 2 colours.

Which makes for all sorts of interesting decisions - I really need to offload this highish red card, but I can't afford to win any reds as I'm collecting greens, so should I play it under the 20 Red just played, but that means I'm donating points to the 20 Red player who's collecting reds, or should I hold on to it to see if I can offload it later on to someone who's not collecting red but has a higher red than I. Hmm, need to start counting the high cards at least. As there's few 'forced' plays (you can always play in either of 2 colours), you can't actually determine other players' hands so the educated guess runs rampant.

With 4 players there was always one suit being fought over. With just 4 cards in the round there were also good opportunities to stitch 'bad' cards onto other players. We enjoyed it very much. 4 hands took about an hour, but we were playing slow. Scores for a round were typically between 2 and 5, but if you were lucky enough to get only 1 suit, you could jump up to 11 or so. These made the difference in our game, as I was able to do it twice to Kevin's once.

Scores: Pat 30, Kevin 21, Rob 16, Nick 14

A rating of 7 after 1 game for 'good game, usually willing to play'. I'm looking forward to giving this a few more outings, particularly with 5 where there'd be a bit more contention over suits.

Thread: Session Report

dougadamsau — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Doug writes:

Given the advice that we should try Hattrick with six players instead of four, we gave it a go. The game didn't seem to work as well, to me, and I think others felt the same. Roger's three strong opening hands couldn't stop Craig charging home. Lots of kingmaker potential in this one.

Craig: 8/9/3/12/8/7 = 47
Roger: 10/11/10/3/5/3 = 42
Janet: 10/6/0/8/8/6 = 38
Tina: 6/7/3/2/7/5 = 30
Debbie: 2/3/6/1/7/10 = 27
Doug: 7/-2/6/11/2/-2 = 22

Thread: Session Report

dougadamsau — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Present: Roger, Doug, Glenn, Janet, Julian, Tina, Debbie, Craig Mac., Alan

Doug Adams writes::

A short glance at the played list tonight sees a lot of trick taking games played at the Billabong Cardgamers. Reporting will be brief this week, apologies for that. Apologies also for the typos that I'm sure are following!

Roger, Glenn, Craig, Doug

A new game of Roger's that made its first appearance. Roger picked up this along with Sticheln, both by the same author (Klaus Paulesch [sp?]). Sticheln has been received well here, so we were interested in giving this one a try.

In this very simple game there are three suits of 20 cards. The object is to take lots of one single suit, while avoiding the other two suits. Points at the end of the hand are good suits minus bad suits, one point per card taken. The weevil in this game is you can have two tricks running in the one "trick" - ie. two suits can potentially be played to.

This last feature had us all saying "huh" to each other, but in fact worked rather well. Some trick taking games I can "connect" to, while others such as David & Goliath I struggle with. This one was simple enough for even me to pick up, and the tight finish says good things for the game. The game also has some good nobble potential, as demonstrated by Glenn handing me a bunch of cards she should have rightly been collecting for herself!

Scores (totalled at the end of each hand):
Glenn: 5 - 12 - 19 - 25
Doug: 8 - 17 - 11 - 24
Roger: 1 - 8 - 11 - 23
Craig: 5 - 14 - 22 - 21

Doug's rating: 6, solid game, probably deserved higher but I'm feeling tough this morning. No more soft 7's!

Thread: Session Report

BoardGameGeek — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Players: Marianne O, Steve O, Trev, Steve G, Mick, Garry

This is one of my favourite little card games – very easy rules but plenty of difficult choices to make. It is another trick-taking game, with three suits each having cards numbered 1 to 20. One player leads to a trick and the other players either follow suit or play to a second trick in one of the other suits. A third trick cannot be introduced, but if a player cannot or chooses not to follow the two suits in play, he can put to one side a card in the third suit for –2 points.The winners of the two tricks take the cards won and the player of the highest card leads to the next trick. Scoring is simply the number of cards in your longest suit less all other cards won in the other suits ( less any –2 point cards laid aside).

Result: Trev, Mick, Steve O, Garry, Steve G, Marianne.

Thread: Session Report

BoardGameGeek — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Players: Steve G, Mick, Geoff, Steve O, Trev, Garry

Trev was next to arrive and told us Chris was on his way, so we decided to play a few rounds of Hat Trick. This is one of my favourite card games, which I’ve described before. My first hand played like a dream: I had high cards in my longest suit and was able to make the most of it and discard the ones in my other suits at the right time. Second hand wasn’t so good. High cards in two suits and a single card in the third. Needless to say, I got stuffed. Steve G, however, seemed to get stuffed even more, while Geoff for the second game tonight managed to seal a victory.

Result: Geoff, Steve O, Mick, Garry, Trev, Steve G