Game: Sticheln

Thread: Re: Is it true you don't have to follow suit?

kvn299 — 2008-04-25T17:13:02+00:00

clearclaw wrote:
Huh? Heck no. I find Sticheln entirely a game about hand deduction and controlling who has the lead when.

I say po-ta-to, you say pah-tah-to.

Isn't that what I said?

Thread: Re: Is it true you don't have to follow suit?

clearclaw — 2008-04-25T17:06:47+00:00

kvn299 wrote:
It's very much a "take that" game.

Huh? Heck no. I find Sticheln entirely a game about hand deduction and controlling who has the lead when.

Thread: Re: Is it true you don't have to follow suit?

cdunc123 — 2008-04-25T16:59:05+00:00

Yes, and you know what? The more I write, the less sense I make. Once I thought about it, I realized that it is NOT standard in trick-taking games for there to be a follow-lead-suit-or-trump rule. In most trick taking games you can only trump if you are void in the lead suit (of course, if the lead suit is the trump suit, that's a different case). So really, this has been a wild goose chase for me. Sorry!

Thread: Re: Is it true you don't have to follow suit?

kvn299 — 2008-04-25T16:48:54+00:00

I think the unusual feeling of the game comes from the fact that your trying to set yourself up to take "safe" tricks, while dumping pain cards onto other players.

It's very much a "take that" game.

Thread: Re: Is it true you don't have to follow suit?

cdunc123 — 2008-04-25T13:39:43+00:00

thatmarkguy wrote:
I do believe this to be a faulty translation, and in fact the sample hand detailed later in those rules describes a player doing exactly that (Lore plays a Blue 0 on a Red lead, with a Green 4 still in hand).

Nit-picky point: If Lore is void in Red, she could play a Blue 0 on a Red lead. So I don't think the example settles things.

Here is something that does settle things, though. I've dug the official German rules out of my Sticheln box. They read:

"Kein Spieler muss irgendeine Farbe bedienen. Jede Karten ausgespielt werden."

I don't know a whole lot of German, but I know enough to recognize that the second translated set of rules that I linked to in my original post gets it right: "One need not follow suit. Any card can be played."

So the first set of translated rules, which says one must follow suit or trump, is mistaken. My question in my original posting is groundless.

Perhaps one interesting conclusion emerges from this confusion, though: If Sticheln has a different feel than most other trick-taking games, it is NOT because it departs from the usual trick-taking rule of one-must-follow-suit-or-trump. Instituting that rule would affect only the zero cards (as I pointed out in my first posting). So if Sticheln has a different feel to it than most other trick-taking games, this different feel comes instead from Sticheln's unusual definition of trump (all non-lead-suit, non-zero cards = trump).

Thread: Re: Is it true you don't have to follow suit?

clearclaw — 2008-04-24T20:14:46+00:00

atholbrose wrote:
I prefer to explain this rule as "zeros can never take a trick unless all zeros are played, in which case the lead player takes the trick". Then it doesn't matter if the zero is trump or not.

For similar reasons I also like the variant which has zero cards not worth points, no matter their colour.

Thread: Re: Is it true you don't have to follow suit?

thatmarkguy — 2008-04-24T19:40:32+00:00

By literal interpretation of the first rules translation:

"Every other color is called a trump color, and every card in a trump color besides a zero is called a trump card.

In turn, starting with the leader, and going clockwise, each player plays a card of his choice from his hand. You must either follow suit, or you must play a trump card."

That would imply that you cannot play a zero of any colour other than the led colour (because such a zero is not a "trump card"). I do believe this to be a faulty translation, and in fact the sample hand detailed later in those rules describes a player doing exactly that (Lore plays a Blue 0 on a Red lead, with a Green 4 still in hand).

I've always played by the "You can play any card at any time" interpretation.

Thread: Re: Is it true you don't have to follow suit?

atholbrose — 2008-04-24T19:35:48+00:00

cdunc123 wrote:
(Still, it might make for an interesting variant to play that you must either follow suit or trump, thereby limiting the play of zero cards. I don't have any experience yet with the game so I have no idea yet how this would affect game play.)
I'd think the impact would be negative -- ducking tricks with zeros is too important to strategy to restrict in this fashion.

I prefer to explain this rule as "zeros can never take a trick unless all zeros are played, in which case the lead player takes the trick". Then it doesn't matter if the zero is trump or not.

Thread: Re: Is it true you don't have to follow suit?

Scott Firestone IV — 2008-04-24T18:07:24+00:00

cdunc123 wrote:

These rules state you must follow suit or trump.

Well, technically that's true. By playing a card, you'll either be following suit or trumping (by playing a different color). I think they word it that way to emphasize you'll be doing one or the other.

Thread: Re: Is it true you don't have to follow suit?

cdunc123 — 2008-04-24T17:58:03+00:00

Ah, OK. I was following the rules here:

http://files.boardgamegeek.com/geekfile_view.php?fileid=936

These rules state you must follow suit or trump. Hence my previous posting.

But I see now that other rule sets posted to BGG state explicitly that you may play any card any time. For instance, these rules:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/info/20131

I'll go with the latter set of rules. Thanks.

(Still, it might make for an interesting variant to play that you must either follow suit or trump, thereby limiting the play of zero cards. I don't have any experience yet with the game so I have no idea yet how this would affect game play.)

Thread: Re: Is it true you don't have to follow suit?

Scott Firestone IV — 2008-04-24T16:49:31+00:00

You can play any card at any time--including a zero card. However, a zero card will never take the trick because it's never trump (except in the rare case where everyone plays a zero).

Thread: Is it true you don't have to follow suit?

cdunc123 — 2008-04-24T16:40:52+00:00

A number of commenters in various places remark that Sticheln is an unusual trick-taking game in that you don't have to follow suit. But is this, strictly speaking, true?

The rules say you must either follow suit or trump. That is in fact the standard rule in most trick-taking games. So arguably, Sticheln conforms to the standard rule. Now, in Sticheln it is true that every suit other than the lead suit is a trump suit. So you may think that in practice, the standard "follow suit or trump" rule amounts to nothing in Sticheln. That is to say, you may think that you can play any card you wish in Sticheln, since any suit is either a lead or trump suit.

BUT as I read the rules, that is not quite right. This is because zero cards are never trump. So I take this to mean you can only play a zero card if it is in the lead suit, or if you are void in the lead suit.

Is that correct?

(I should say that I recently purchased this game, but I have not yet had a chance to play it.)

Image

the_spy — 2008-02-27T14:38:48+00:00

Image

jsper — 2008-02-15T18:19:55+00:00

Rulebook cover

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jsper — 2008-02-15T18:18:29+00:00

Side of the box

Thread: Re: Sticheln is German for "screwage"

Scott Firestone IV — 2008-01-28T16:06:38+00:00

This has quickly become one of my very favorite card games. I love it.

Thread: Sticheln is German for "screwage"

adam.skinner — 2008-01-28T14:48:23+00:00

Sticheln is a card game about one thing: screwage. If you like screwage (aka "take that", "direct player conflict", et al) then you will take to Sticheln like a fish to water.

Sticheln is a fairly simple trick taking card game, with a couple of innovative inversions that make the game very interesting to play.

The first is that of the concept of "trump". In Sticheln, a trump is any suit other other than the lead suit. All suits have equal precedence regardless of their order of appearance - if a blue trump is played before a green trump, it doesn't matter. What matters is the number of the trump card. In the case where two trumps of the same number are played, it is the one first played that takes the trick.

The second is the scoring. At the outset of the game, you choose a card from your hand to be your "misery color", or pain suit. You blind bid this card face down in front of you. At the end of the game, any cards you have taken in this color will count against you - for their face value. Any other cards count as a single positive point for you per card. So if you're playing with 5 people, and you take a trick with the 3 card of your pain suit, you've netted 1 point: 5 cards, 4 for +1 each, one of which counts -3. 4 - 3 = 1. Had that 3 in your pain suit been a 10, you would have scored -6! Clearly, you want to do your best to avoid your pain suit.

So when you're playing, at the beginning everyone reveals their pain suits, and you look at the other players knowing what you want to stick them with. If Unique is sitting to my left, and her pain suit is brown, if I lead a brown she's not going to want to win it. If it does look like she's going to take the trick, everyone coming after her is going to try and slide brown into the trick for her.

You can "pre-seed" this kind damage into a trick for anyone - and this is particularly useful when you know that the amount of damage you could possibly take is less than the amount you're willing to dish out, thereby netting you the trick and positive points. It's not enough to just avoid your pain suit by sluffing everything off - you need to take tricks to get points!

Sticheln is good for 3-8 players, and has a hand size of 15 cards (a little large).

If you like games like Zing! or Wizard, you'll love Sticheln.

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moxtaveto — 2008-01-26T23:22:33+00:00

box of 2nd edition

Thread: A last second jab in the ribs

Gila-Man — 2008-01-25T19:28:23+00:00

Over the last few months, I've been rather terrible at trick-taking games. I used to be okay and sometimes pretty good at them, but, lately, I just embarrass myself.

Today, we decided to play Sticheln with five players. I don't think we've ever played with more than four before, and the last time, I believe, it was three.

After a brief refresher and an explanation for the player who was new to the game, we each selected our pain suit. Everyone chose something different, so it looked to be an interesting hand.

And, yes, it started out in similar fashion to most of my trick-taking efforts of late. After the first hand, I was tied for last with -11 points. The second hand I endeavored to do better. And I did, effectively righting the ship, as it were. I took the most tricks and pushed my score into positive numbers. I was now in third, with the second-place contender nine points off the lead.

After I announced that the lead player had nearly a double-digit lead on his closest competitor, it must've been the equivalent of shouting "open season!" In any event, he didn't help his cause much by throwing a high card in his pain suit that begged for some kind of punishment, and all the players at the table obliged by making him take the trick, which contained multiple cards with double-digit values in his pain suit. Ouch and double ouch.

When the scores were tallied up at the end of that hand, he'd dropped from first to third, and I'd moved up to second, just a few points behind the leader. It helped matters considerably that the player to my right shared my pain suit. I frequently led with my pain suit, knowing that a) someone was going to have to trump and b) he wouldn't want the trick. At this point in the game, he was also leading on the scoreboard.

My goal was then just to play conservatively and try to keep from taking negative points (a carryover from when I got decimated playing Where's Bob's Hat). I managed to finish the remaining hands without taking a single trick that included a card in my pain suit. In the back of my mind, I also held on to the goal of trying to stick the leader with a high card in his pain suit to try to catch up.

In the very last trick of the last hand, I managed to pull it off. I'd held fast to an 11 in his pain suit, and with another player leading, everyone essentially had to trump the trick. His trump card was a 14, so he had to eat the blue 11. Having taken two tricks that hand, he lost one point. I gained once again and, miraculously, had come from behind to win by a few points after going double-digits into the negative on my first hand.

Thread: Stuch

Paul Mackie — 2007-12-23T12:19:40+00:00

Another unusual trick-taking game from Pat’s vast collection. In this one, first you nominate the one suit (of five) you intend to avoid collecting by simultaneously revealing one of your dealt cards. The face value of any cards you win of this suit count against you, while all other cards count a single point for you. Tricks are played in an almost-usual way, but a player is never obliged to follow suit. In an interesting twist, all cards of a suit other than that led are considered trumps with the highest, oldest-played trump winning the trick (or the highest of the led suit if no trump is played).

An interesting tension arises therefore in one’s timing of their playing their “negative” cards and those of your opponents. With five players there is also a small element of luck, and with Pat gaining on my score I was quite pleased when in the last hand he was lumbered with a nice collection of negative cards, cementing my third game victory for the evening and canceling out my Goldland performance.
3 hands only. 7 mins rules, 53 mins game time.
Results: Paul: 18. Marcus: 13. Alex: 6. Pat: 4. Rick D: -12.

Thread: Two Games: 3 and 4 Player

Stormbull — 2007-11-12T19:34:07+00:00

Since our group is a fan of trick taking games, I've been keeping an eye out for this.

Game 1 (3 Players)
This was really a learning game, and we allowed take-backs of obvious misplays (such as forgetting that all suits except the lead (and 0s) were trump.

[c] J T Q
Round 1 9 18 5
Round 2 -6 14 6
Round 3 7 5 -3
Round 4 1 -4 8
Round 5 11 2 14
-- -- --
Total 22 35 30[/c]

Game 2 (4 Players)
As others have mentioned, the game dynamics change quite a bit when adding a fourth player, and some of what we had done in 3 player no longer applied. Also, adding the 9,10, and 11 cards meant that there was going to be a lot more pain.

[c] J T K Q
Round 1 12 8 2 0
Round 2 -1 -4 6 -6
Round 3 -7 5 6 11
Round 4 1 -5 -4 0
Round 5 -4 7 -10 -16
-- -- -- --
Total 1 11 0 -11[/c]

Comments
Sticheln seems to have a lot more depth than the old standards of Hearts and Spades -- After 10 hands we were still trying to get down strategies.

Tim was a much bigger fan of 3 player where you have more control. I preferred four player as it had a little more unpredictability.

A couple of times it came up that two players shared a pain color -- this makes for some interesting play -- we're not sure how to play it best, but as I said, it makes the round interesting.

High cards are problematic -- you generally don't want them and it's best to take a few tricks early and lead them to get them out of your hand.

To Prick or not to Prick -- often a situation came up when you were the last to play that you could either take the trick for points, or stick someone with a few negative points. We generally felt it was better to take the points unless you could really stick them really hard by playing a misery card of 5+

0s are king. The value of being able to dodge any trick was obvious to us after our first hand. We haven't mastered 0s completely, but we never saw one used as a pain color after that first hand.

It's very difficult to stick someone with a really high card in their pain suit, so holding on to them is very risky.

Chosing a pain suit where you have an 11 (4 player) and/or a few of the very high cards is going to end in misery.

Thread: Re: Is there an ideal number of players?

Reish Galuta — 2007-10-15T11:28:38+00:00

I like it best with 3, as I prefer to reduce chaos in games.

I still like it with 4. 5 starts to get a bit out of control and I'd rather play something else.

More than 5 is barely a game anymore.

Thread: Re: Is there an ideal number of players?

BrenoK — 2007-10-15T09:31:48+00:00

Thanks, guys

Thread: Re: Is there an ideal number of players?

MrUnicorn — 2007-10-15T06:06:35+00:00

I would stick (pun intended) with 3, 4, or 5...I have played many games with each of these counts and enjoy them all! Interestingly, and I think this is one of the reasons I really like this game, is that each of these player counts feels very different in play (IMHO).

Three player Sticheln probably offers up the least amount of chaos. This makes the game have a sort of luckless--or at least very calculated--feeling. With this number of players remembering what cards people have and have not played really seems to come into play. I find 3 player to be somewhat brain-burning...really great with 2 other people who have played this game to death and "know" what card to play and when to play it. It can feel really cutthroat at times. Three players can also finish a game fairly quickly!

Five player Sticheln teeters on the edge of too much chaos. Still a fantastic game with 5, but expect some unexpected stuff to happen! Also, expect to forget who has played certain cards and expect to occasionally feel some pain when you least expect it. All I in all I would recommend the game at this count to a group who is looking to have fun, feel like they are a bit more at the mercy of randomness, and looking to quickly play an awesome card game with big smiles...maybe throw some beer into the mix if that is you thing. Don't play with 5 "thinkers" as the game might drag on.

My personal favorite is with 4...at this count Sticheln is just the right mix of fun and calculated play. Easy to keep it moving quickly, easy to thoughtfully play offensively/defensively, but with plenty of chances to laugh at yourself or your opponents when someone gets "stuck" unexpectedly (or expectedly)!

I have only played a few times with higher player counts...really didn't like them. So...my personal preference is 4, 3, 5.

Thread: Re: Is there an ideal number of players?

clearclaw — 2007-10-15T02:51:27+00:00

I like it best with 3 players but I know others that that prefer 4 or even 5 player games.

Thread: Is there an ideal number of players?

BrenoK — 2007-10-15T01:55:09+00:00

Does this play well with any number of players? Or is there a number that's too many/few?

Thread: Stressfull 3 player games

Reish Galuta — 2007-10-11T11:11:29+00:00

Players: Avri, Gavriel, Mory

I think this game may be too stressfull for Gavriel. As we got to the end of each round he would be wracked by nerves and indecision as he tried to shape his hand not to get stuck at the end of the round.

We played three hands of Sticheln so everybody had one deal. Sticheln is a game that I think takes a lot of plays to get a good feel for it. Eventually it starts to feel somewhat natural, but it's just so different from every other trick based game that we've played that it feels very foriegn when you first get at it. The game is definitely the best with 3 as it's much tighter and there's more pressure to shape your hand correctly for the last few tricks.

The first hand Gavriel and I both had the same colour pain suit and most of those cards went quickly and we did well. Gavriel faired the best as I ended up taking a 5 of my pain suit, and the score after the first hand was 10, 8, -2. I was just happy to have been able to choreograph dumping the 8 I was holding of my own pain suit.

The second hand Mory gained the most as Gavriel wise chose to gain points instead of feeding negatives to Mory when the chance arrived. I managed to feed Gavriel -7 points in the last trick of the hand. The score was then 14,14,5 with Mory trailing.

Mory and I both chose red as our pain suit, and we both scored well in the round. Almost all the red went early, and pretty much none of Gavriel's blue was played. As we got to the last 3-4 tricks in the round and almost all the blue was still in people's hands Gavriel started to panic. He played it out well though and cut his losses only taking the blue 2 and 1 and ducking the rest. Mory and I both scored 11 that round and Gavriel scored 5.

Final scores: Avri 25, Gavriel 19, Mory 16

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cuazzel — 2007-09-20T17:38:38+00:00

Box front (better resolution)

Thread: One hand, with some new players

daw65 — 2007-08-17T21:44:20+00:00

At this point Angel, Jeff and Danielle had arrived, so we had six. Jim immediately went to his game cabinet and came back with a game night favorite, Sticheln.

This was the first time playing for both Jeff and Angel, so we went over the rules first before dealing the cards. We had six players, and so six suits in the deck. Five of them ended up being used as misery colors, with Angel and Alice being the only players sharing a misery color: purple. The first trick started with a bang, as Angel lead with a green 8, and Jeff immediately trumped with another 8. It's often been said at game night that Sticheln lessons are hard learned, and Jeff learned one with this trick, as lots of his misery color was played behind him, and he ended up having to eat 14 negative points.

As the hand progressed, Angel found herself taking a good number of tricks, mostly because Dave was immediately before her, and by the time the tricks got to him they were poisoned for him, but not for Angel. Also, he was dealt void in purple, so couldn't poison anything that Angel would end up taking. Dave himself took a couple tricks, and as the hand drew to a close, he was left with the choice of playing either a 10 or a 0 on the second-to-last trick. Neither would take a trick, but would he want the last one? He played the 10, and it was a good choice. Danielle won that trick, and led the 14 red to the last trick. That was Dave's misery color, and if he still had his 10, he'd have had to trump with that. As it turns out, Angel, who had been doing well to this point, was stuck with a 13 purple as the last card in her hand, and she ended up trumping the trick with it, knocking 13 points off of her score for the hand. Paul had arrived by this point, so we let this be the only hand, and just added up the scores. Even with that -13 from the last trick, Angel did quite well, scoring 6 points. Alice, Jim, and Danielle were all just about even, with -1, 2, and 3, respectively. At one extreme was Jeff, who was hurt by that first trick, and struggled through the rest of the hand because he was so often second to play to the trick, with -17 points. And Dave, who took two tricks but no misery, finished the hand with 11 points, which was enough to win the hand.

It's kind of a shame we had to put the game away after one hand, just because Angel and Jeff didn't have the opportunity to start over with a new hand after perhaps a better understanding of how it plays. (Well, I did have the lead, too. ) But both did quite well for their first hand, once you discount Jeff's mistake in the initial trick of the hand.

Thread: Sticheln - Session Report

gschloesser — 2007-06-12T14:37:57+00:00

Sticheln is one of my favorite “nasty” trick-taking card games. I played it quite often with my former Westbank Gamers group, but had not yet introduced my friends in the East Tennessee Gamers to its wicked pleasures. It was well past time to do so!

Here is a description of the game from one of my old Westbank Gamers reports:

***

Sticheln is a nasty trick-taking game from Klaus Palesch, designer of such games as Fossil and Robin Hood. I'm actually rather fond of many of his games, even though gamers tend to give them a mediocre response.

The deck consists of 90 cards in five colors, numbered 0 - 20 in each color. Depending upon the number of players, some of these cards are removed from play. The remaining cards are dealt evenly to all players. From their hand, each player sets down one card face-up. This card will be their 'misery' card and they will attempt to avoid collecting cards of that color. Why? Well, each card collected in tricks that matches your misery card results in negative points equal to the value of those cards. Further, even your misery card itself is negative points!

Well, isn't this offset by all of the other cards you collect? Not necessarily. You see, every other card collected is only worth 1 point! It takes a whole bunch of cards to overcome a few high valued negative cards!

The mechanics are actually quite simple, yet take awhile getting accustomed to. The start player (the one who captured the previous trick) leads with a card. Players are then free to play ANY card from ANY color. Any other card (other than a '0' card) played which does NOT match the start card color is considered a 'trump' color. After all players have played a card, the player who played the highest valued 'trump' card takes the trick. If two players tie for this honor, the player who played the first 'high' trump card takes it.

If all players play cards of the same color as the start card, then the player who played the highest valued card takes the trick.

This sounds tricky, but it really isn't. However, the vast freedom granted by this system does require players to pause a bit before making a play. It is quite easy to get stuck ... or to stick someone else ... with unwanted cards. It can be quite nasty!

Play continues for a set number of hands or until a certain point level is reached.

****

We played our first game while waiting for Alison to arrive. In spite of the nasty potential of the game, it was characterized by excessive pleasantness, with everyone afraid to take chances and instead trying to collect positive cards for themselves. I was the only victim of aggressive action. We only played one hand before breaking into other games.

Finals: Dylan 18, Bo 16, Kevin 15, Rhonda 12, Byron 5, Greg –5

The second game was MUCH more nasty, as everyone seized every opportunity to slam their opponents with “misery” cards. Bo got hit hard in the first hand, suffering –45 points. He was outdone by Byron in the second and final round, who scored a horrendous –72 points. I managed to score 11 positive points in the first round, and never collected a single trick in the second round. The only negative point was my –1 point misery card.

Round 1: Greg 11, Alison 8, Dylan 1, Byron –17, Bo –45
Round 2: Bo 15, Greg –1, Dylan –5, Alison –46, Byron –72

Finals: Greg 10, Dylan –4, Bo –30, Alison –38, Byron –89

Ratings: Greg 8, Dylan 7.5, Alison 7, Bo 7, Byron 7

Thread: Re: First Try, 3 Player Game

CasualSax — 2007-05-03T03:31:46+00:00

[quote]I don't agree. With three players, the key strategy is usually to play a card so that the player on your left will win the trick. And to do this, you have to pay attention and choose your card carefully, every time, almost.[/quote]

So far, the game seems to boil down to:

Lead: What card do I want to get rid of?
Player 2: "Do I try to stick the guy who just played, the guy who's after me, or lay low?"
Player 3: "Do I want this hand or not?"

With minimal other decisions effecting play significantly. I hope I'm wrong! But that's how I see the game right now - as a very simple game, compared to hearts/spades/etc.

[quote]That's funny! That's what I did too so I could play some out-of-print games. I had no intention of playing the game itself regularly, but it turned up that this game was much better than the OOP ones.[/quote]

I plan on trying a few other games, but I'm also planning on using the deck for my own designing purposes. Not that I'll publish anything, but I like making games.

Thread: Re: First Try, 3 Player Game

fortinm — 2007-05-02T22:26:39+00:00

I feel this way about the three player game. When the opportunity presents itself, its a matter of playing the right card.

I don't agree. With three players, the key strategy is usually to play a card so that the player on your left will win the trick. And to do this, you have to pay attention and choose your card carefully, every time, almost.

although not with my purchase - I bought Sticheln for the deck, not for the game).

That's funny! That's what I did too so I could play some out-of-print games. I had no intention of playing the game itself regularly, but it turned up that this game was much better than the OOP ones.

Thread: Re: First Try, 3 Player Game

CasualSax — 2007-05-02T00:31:50+00:00

[q=fortinm]With that many player, it only boils down to taking advantage of the opportunities when they come to you... if they ever.

I feel this way about the three player game. When the opportunity presents itself, its a matter of playing the right card. I'd imagine that with more people, the opportunity presents itself less and less; but I still think that you are merely limited to what your current spot in the turn order dictates.

Again, I have only played one game, and will try more, but at the moment I'm somewhat disappointed with it (although not with my purchase - I bought Sticheln for the deck, not for the game).

Thread: Re: First Try, 3 Player Game

fortinm — 2007-05-01T22:39:16+00:00

Most of my games have been in a 3-player session and I also think that it is one of the best card game for three. This is where you have the most control on the play. I've tried a few times at 4 player and the dynamic is very different. Even at four, you start loosing control over the game, in my opinion. I've tried it with 6 and didn't like it at much. With that many player, it only boils down to taking advantage of the opportunities when they come to you... if they ever.

But, as I said, most of my games were 3-player (by necessity) so I may be biased.

Thread: Re: First Try, 3 Player Game

CasualSax — 2007-05-01T17:58:46+00:00

John Weber wrote:
Sticheln is probably my favorite trick-taking game, but it's probably alot more interesting and fun with more than 3. Anywhere from 4-6 is a good number, making sure you play enough hands so everyone starts in each seating position.

I'm definately getting that vibe as well. It just seems odd - like I must be missing something - as Sticheln is so often quoted as the trick taking game for three.

Thread: Re: First Try, 3 Player Game

John Weber — 2007-05-01T16:52:39+00:00

Sticheln is probably my favorite trick-taking game, but it's probably alot more interesting and fun with more than 3. Anywhere from 4-6 is a good number, making sure you play enough hands so everyone starts in each seating position.

Thread: Re: First Try, 3 Player Game

CasualSax — 2007-05-01T12:37:44+00:00

OldestManOnMySpace wrote:
CasualSax wrote:
1) The person who lead could never take the trick, as everything else is trump

Unless everyone else plays 0s, or all cards are played in the same suit and the person who lead had the highest.

*nods* Doesn't happen often, though - usually one of the two players following wants the points. In addition, this would only happen if the pain suit for players two and three is the same, and player one is opening with a high card in that color; or if player one is silly enough to open with a high card in his own pain color.

Thread: Re: First Try, 3 Player Game

OldestManOnMySpace — 2007-05-01T07:08:18+00:00

CasualSax wrote:
1) The person who lead could never take the trick, as everything else is trump

Unless everyone else plays 0s, or all cards are played in the same suit and the person who lead had the highest.

Thread: First Try, 3 Player Game

CasualSax — 2007-05-01T05:27:06+00:00

The Event
Last night I played this for the first time with my girlfriend (Amanda) and my mom (Linda). Both love card games, Amanda especially so. We were having mudslides at the same time, and they were both tired from a long day, so I thought I had the upper hand...

Amanda was happy to be playing a card game (instead of "some random German game" - nevermind that the rules don't even come in English!)

Seating order: Amanda was sitting to my left, Linda on my right.

Learning Hand
We played a sample hand first; everyone struggled with what to pick for their 'pain' suit. Having been the teacher of the rules, I both dealt and played the first card.

I lead with a red seven - red being my pain suit - to rid myself of the card. Amanda looked at me puzzled, then instantly said, "Ohh, I get it now." Thus was the start of my downfall. Linda meanwhile struggled through the opening hand, but had a decent feel for it for when we started playing 'for real.'

For this hand we picked our misery colors in turn order, but in future hands we all picked secretly, then flipped the misery cards over before the trick-taking started.

Real Game
The game progressed smoothly through the first three hands, with Amanda and I around 30 points, and Linda around 24. I screwed up in the four hand, trumping a card Linda led, only to have Amanda stick me with a five in my pain suit.

Entering the fifth hand, Linda and I were at 31, and Amanda was at 39. I managed to 'stick' Linda with a negative seven (followed by an "Ouch!" by Amanda, and some not-so-nice looks).

The last trick I lead an eight in Amanda's pain suit. Amanda trumped with an eight in my pain suit, and Linda played an eight in her own pain suit! Amanda took the trick, but it didn't matter - she won by a four point margin, with me in second and Linda in third.

Thoughts on the Game
I enjoyed the backwards card play. I felt very helpless, however, in that it felt like the result was dictated regardless of what card I played. Perhaps it was just this experience, but it felt like:

1) The person who lead could never take the trick, as everything else is trump
2) The second person wants to lie low, less be stuck with points
3) The third person would either stick the second person with points, or (more often then not) take the trick for themselves.

Occasionally a situation would crop up late in a hand where someone had held onto someone else's pain suit, or players 2 and 3 would team up on player 1, but these instances were few and far between.

In the future I will try the different suggested variants - I believe playing with two pain suits would lead to more interesting card play.

Thread: Re: I Feel Your Pain…

clearclaw — 2007-04-22T16:30:45+00:00

otha62 wrote:
Interesting...our games thus far have been with 5 or more. Since most of the standard trick taking games are usually aimed at 4 players, we tend to play those when we have fewer folks, and save Sticheln and Wizard when we have more than 4. I'll definitely give it a shot with 3/4 players...

Other games I can recommend then:

-- Mu from Mü & More clearly has the sweet spot at exactly 5 players.

-- David & Goliath is a remarkably subtle game once you catch hang of it, with a sweet spot probably at 5 players (I'm not sure, haven't played enough), but it also plays up to 6 fairly well.

-- Zing! also goes up to 5 well enough. I think it is slightly better with 4 and a little degenerate with 3, but again I'm only about a ~dozen games in and am not yet sure.

-- Zheng Shangyou (see Pagat: http://www.pagat.com/climbing/shangyou.html) is a climbing game in the Tichu mold rather than a trick taking game. The 6 player partnership game seems particularly interesting. There's also a Tichu/Zheng Shangyou cross described here that seems interesting: http://boardgamegeek.com/article/1448457#1448457

-- Frank's Zoo is another climbing game with interesting partnership rules. It seems to have a sweet spot at 5 players.

Thread: Re: I Feel Your Pain…

Barkam — 2007-04-22T04:45:36+00:00

otha62 wrote:
Since most of the standard trick taking games are usually aimed at 4 players, we tend to play those when we have fewer folks, and save Sticheln and Wizard when we have more than 4. I'll definitely give it a shot with 3/4 players...

That is great to hear. I am looking for more 6 player games and this one seems to hit the spot. LIke you we play Tichu for 4 players but can't find the same caliber for 5+ players.

Thread: Lessons are painful in this one.

daw65 — 2007-04-16T05:46:39+00:00

Jeff and Angel left at this point, but Jon arrived in the meantime, leaving us with five players. There was a great discussion over what to play, and we ended up voting on seven different titles. We ended up deciding to play an old favorite here at game night, Sticheln.

Neither Paul nor Danielle had played this before, and Jon had played only once before, early last year, so we went over the rules again, then Jim dealt and we got started. As is customary our games of Sticheln, everyone was complaining about their hands as they played onto the tricks. Everyone ended up taking a few small cards in their misery color. But as we neared the end of the round, Jim found himself unable to safely dump the 13 card in his misery color. In the last trick of the hand he was forced to trump the trick with that card, earning a net -9 for the trick, and -12 for the hand. The newcomers, Paul and Danielle, did the best that hand, netting 7 points apiece. Dave and Jon fell in between, with 4 and -4, respectively.

In the second hand Jim and Paul both declared orange as their misery color. This ended up working out really well for both Paul and Dave, who traded tricks between them by leading high orange cards, effectively poisoning the tricks for Jim and Paul. And it ended up having another side effect, when Jon lead just one more orange card and Paul found himself unable to duck the trick, and wound up trumping it. Of course, eventually orange was played out, and that gave Paul and Jim both the opportunity to play all out to take tricks without fear of further misery. As a result, Paul's damage for the hand was just -3, and Jim scored a hand-high 11 points, to offset the previous hand's -12. Danielle, Dave and Jon all had similar hands, scoring 5, 4, and 3, respectively. After two hands, Danielle held a 4 point lead over Dave, with 12 points total.

In the third hand the wheels fell off the wagon for Danielle. It started when she and Jon both declared yellow for her misery color. It continued when she found herself with few opportunities to safely play her higher valued cards, and she was doing her best just to avoid the pain. But as the hand drew to a close, it got really weird. Jon, sitting to Danielle's left, found him self with four yellow cards with four tricks to go. He really didn't like his situation. But Danielle had no yellow cards with four tricks to go. And unfortunately for Danielle, yellow was led twice more. Jon thought he was doomed as he followed suit with higher and higher yellow cards, only to see Danielle reluctantly rescue him with a high trump card. It torpedoed Danielle's score, as she earned -39 points for the hand. Dave, meanwhile, was able to grab a few good tricks early on, and netted 11 points for the hand, which gave him the lead at this point. Paul, Jon, and Jim rounded out the scoring with 6, 5, and 4, respectively.

With it getting late, we decided that the fourth hand would be the last. Once again Jon and Danielle declared the same misery color, for the third time in the four hands. Once again Jim found himself in a great spot halfway through the hand, when his misery color was played out. He was ready to score a bunch of points. Unfortunately for him, Dave found himself in the very same position. So the two of them fought for tricks as the hand wound down. Jim got the better of it for the hand as a whole, but not by much, scoring 16 to Dave's 15. No one was negative this hand (woo hoo!), but Dave's 15 added to his lead going into the hand meant a pretty big win for him, with 33 points to Jim's 19, Paul's 10, Jon's 6, and Danielle's -19.

This is a game that can be tough to pick up because it is so different from other trick taking games. With that in mind, Paul and Danielle, first time players both, played really well (with the exception of Danielle's one bad hand). Next time it comes out, I think both will be ready for it.

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Pableras — 2006-11-18T17:55:12+00:00

Playing

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Verkisto — 2006-10-17T23:41:31+00:00

How I modified the components to make them better for colorblind players.

Thread: Re: I Feel Your Pain…

GoPanthers — 2006-08-13T13:49:51+00:00

der Stich = trick

Thread: Re: I Feel Your Pain…

otha62 — 2006-08-12T13:53:23+00:00

clearclaw wrote:
I particularly like Sticheln with three or four players. I rate it an 8 with those player counts. Every card played can suggest considerable information about player's hands, making the game a delightful dance of revelation and deception. Larger numbers of players are less interesting as there's less control and the screwage is far more random.

Interesting...our games thus far have been with 5 or more. Since most of the standard trick taking games are usually aimed at 4 players, we tend to play those when we have fewer folks, and save Sticheln and Wizard when we have more than 4. I'll definitely give it a shot with 3/4 players...

Thread: Re: I Feel Your Pain…

clearclaw — 2006-08-12T07:24:54+00:00

I particularly like Sticheln with three or four players. I rate it an 8 with those player counts. Every card played can suggest considerable information about player's hands, making the game a delightful dance of revelation and deception. Larger numbers of players are less interesting as there's less control and the screwage is far more random.

Thread: I Feel Your Pain…

otha62 — 2006-08-11T23:04:16+00:00

Overview
Sticheln is a trick taking card game for 3 to 8 players that has somewhat similar elements found in both Hearts and Spades. It’s similar to Hearts in that you want to avoid taking cards of one suit and like Spades in that there are trumps as well; aside from that, Sticheln is a pretty unique card game. It was designed by Klaus Palesch and published by Amigo Spiele. It first burst upon the scene back in 1993 when it won the ala carte award for best card game, as well as placing 8th among the Deutscher Spiele Preis contenders. The object of this game is to avoid taking cards in your “pain” suit while taking as many cards in other suits as you can. The player with the highest score (which could be negative) after five rounds wins the game. Our games have typically finished in the 30 to 45 minute range.

Out of the Box
The game comes in a small and sturdy cardboard box, similar to those used with other Amigo card games such as 6 Nimmt! and Geschenkt. Sticheln comes with 114 multi-colored cards (numbered 0 – 18 in 6 different colors) and a set of German rules (I got an English version here on BGG). The cards are of pretty good stock with little artwork to speak of; basically just a colored number on a white background. The only semblance of a theme is a picture of a pin-cushion on the box cover (from my limited understanding, sticheln is German for “needling” or “teasing,” while stich can mean a number of things including “pain”).

Set Up
Set up time is minimal. You’ll have to remove certain cards if you have less than 8 players. Each player is dealt 15 cards (14 if you’re playing with 8). The youngest player will lead the first card.

Game Play
At the start of a round, each player must declare their pain suit by playing one card of that color from their hand face down. Once every one has done so, they flip up their pain card for all to see. This card becomes part of your pain pile and counts against your score at the end of the round. You want to avoid taking any other cards of that color during the round.

The lead player starts playing a card of his choice from his hand face-up in the middle of the playing area. Other players, in clockwise order, will likewise play a card. You do not have to follow suit, even if you have that color; however, if you play a different color than the lead, it is considered a trump. The only exception to this rule is if you play a 0 (zero); 0’s can never be trump. If no trump is played, the highest card in the lead color takes the trick. If a trump is played, the highest trump takes the trick; if two trumps are tied for highest value, the one played earliest takes the trick. For example, if a blue 9 is led, followed by a yellow 5, a blue 10, and a green 5, then the yellow 5 would win. The player who wins the trick takes any cards matching his pain suit and places them in his pain pile, while keeping all other non-pain cards in a separate pile. After the last trick of the round is assessed, that round ends and scoring takes place

Scoring and Endgame
At the end of each round, you add up the number of cards captured that were not part of your pain suit. From that number, you subtract the cumulative value of each card from your pain stack. For instance, say your pain suit was red you captured 9 cards that were not red, giving you 9 positive points. Say you capture three red cards whose values respectively were the 4, the 6, and the 10. Adding those up you’d have 20 negative points (4+6+10); you subtract that from 9 and you get -11 points for the round. Each player’s score is recorded and the next round continues. The player with the highest cumulative score after five rounds wins the game.

Strategy
Even though most card games have random elements, and this one is no exception, I feel the majority of the luck in Sticheln can be minimized with thoughtful play. The most important decision you’ll make in this game is choosing your pain suit. While optimally, you’d like to choose a low valued card to declare your pain suit, it may some times be a better play to select a slightly higher declaration card if that color will be easier to avoid taking. It does you no good to declare with a low card if you end up getting hammered in that suit during trick taking. Also, make sure you are fairly well balanced in a suit before you declare. If you have too many, you could end up playing a lot of ‘em as trump, unintentionally of course. If you have too few, you might run out and could end up inadvertently trumping whenever your pain suit is led.

As for the card play, as with most trick taking games, you have to keep on your toes. As in Hearts, you want to avoid taking cards in your pain suit if at all possible. Unlike Hearts however, you don’t necessarily want to avoid every trick, since cards in other suits will bring you points. When trumping, you must be careful for it can be very easy for your opponents to drop your pain suit on you if they can play underneath you. Always remember that while you’re trying to avoid your pain suit, your opponents are just waiting to dump one on you. Likewise, you need to balance your plays by getting rid of cards that might hurt you, while looking for opportunities to stick it to your opponents. And when you have ‘em, use your 0 (zero) cards wisely. Since they never count as trump and will never take a trick, they can be a great help in keeping you from getting burned.

Conclusions
I like most trick taking games and I think Sticheln is a good one. While it’s a little different from most that I’ve played before, especially in that you don’t have to follow suit, it’s still a challenging and fun card game, and inexpensive to boot. The decisions you have to make can be painful (pun intended), either when declaring a pain suit or selecting a card to play during a trick. It’s also particularly pleasing not only if you happen to win the game, but if you can finish with a score above zero as well. If you happen to like trick taking games, you should give Sticheln a try; I think you’ll probably like it. I currently rate it a very “painful” 7.

Thread: Re: Game length

Werbaer — 2006-07-05T16:51:15+00:00

If everyone plays fast, playing a hand in 10 minutes may be possible. But in my experience, a 6 player hand takes 15 to 20 minutes, sometimes more (depending on the players).

Thread: Re: Game length

daw65 — 2006-07-05T16:37:50+00:00

I suppose you can play this game under an hour with six players, if you limit yourself to one, or maybe two, hands. When we play (admittedly, with a bunch of notoriously thinky, and therefore slow, players), we usually play "everyone deals once", and a six-player game can last 2.5 hours. It's not a big deal to us, because we all thoroughly enjoy it, but there you go.

Thread: Game length

Ophidian — 2006-07-05T14:19:07+00:00

Can you really play this thing in under an hour with six players?
We played two seven player hands and it took over an hour, I think.
Of course some of us were noobs...

Thread: Lunch game

mooka — 2006-05-24T13:10:50+00:00

Eight player game, all experienced players.

First hand featured immediate carnage ... three players ended up around -20, one guy jumped out with 15, and everyone else had from 1-7 points. After that, one of the -20 guys decided to go nuts ... on the second or third card of every trick, he trumped HIGH, 12-15 assuming that noone would bother to get him. Unfortuantely, that didn't work so well and I think he finished the game around -50.

One of the first-hand -20 guys managed to get back into contention by the final hand, but couldn't finish it off. The guy who had 7 on the first played conservatively the rest of the way and ended up winning with a score in the high 20's. The 15 point guy after the first hand was mercilessly slammed every time he trumped anything and finished well out of contention.

Thread: Lunch game

mooka — 2006-05-24T13:07:24+00:00

Five player game, usual crowd. We've now played enough smaller games (most had been 6+) to all get the strategy. First hand was reasonably tame ... minor carnage, nothing too dramatic. Then I had three consecutive hands where I had 7-8 cards of one color. I of course picked this as my pain each time and it worked out well for the most part, except when I got too aggressive: in the middle of a hand, I led out the 13 of my pain suit, assuming that since I had 8 of them and someone else had the same color as pain, they'd definitely trump it ooops. -29 points later, I still finished the round somewhat in the game.

Final hand: leader had 32, a couple of us had around 15-17, the others in single digits or negative. Someone was kind enough to lead out my pain suit several times early, so virtually all of my pain cards were gone/accounted for. I was able to take four tricks with only a little pain AND poison each trick that went around so the leader couldn't take any. He ended with -2, his pain selection card and I got 15, ended up winning by 2.

Thread: Re: Lunch game

mooka — 2006-05-16T16:47:42+00:00

You still have plenty of ways to get rid of those pain cards:

- others may try and lead your pain suit often .. if you run out, you are going to risk having to trump those tricks

- you can often get rid of some of your pain cards later by leading them out ... if you've been counting, you know when it's safe; take a trick, then lead back middling pain

- you can slough some of your pain under other people's trump

- you can trump early in a trick with very low cards of your pain suit ... either you take it and dont mind, or you force others to trump higher and risk getting nailed

The core idea here is: if you have the pain, you control where it goes. If everyone else has it, they are going to play it on you. I think it's important to count your pain cards (hard, but extremely helpful).

I'm also not saying this is a silver bullet ... you have to play the hand you're dealt. But given the choice, I'd rather have a lot of high and low in my pain suit than not. In fact, I'd say my ideal hand is:

- a few low non-pain
- several high non-pain takers
- 5-6 pain cards, spread evenly
- a few middling cards that i can use to drive up the taking trump number and open up others for pain

Thread: Re: Lunch game

ValJor — 2006-05-16T14:32:37+00:00

Hi Raman!

You wrote:
We all found out reasonably quickly that choosing a pain that you have lots of cards in is very effective.
Can you talk more about this part? I haven't played this game that much, but it seems to me that choosing a "pain" (I call it "misery") colour in which you have a lot of cards will force you to "want" to lose a lot of rounds.

Let's say that half of your cards are in your misery colour; that's half of the tricks that you don't want to win. I always choose as my misery colour one in which I have a low number (like 1 or 2) and in which I have just a few cards (not more than four).

I would like to know how having many cards in your misery colour can be beneficial...

Thread: The highest score in the game was 1!

ValJor — 2006-05-15T13:26:47+00:00

Date: May 13th, 2006

Game: Sticheln

Players: Joelle, Karnon, Louis-Phillip, Patrick, Valdir (myself) and Yves

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Next I was supposed to GM a game of Louis XIV, but Alhambra had taken much longer than expected and there was a game of Amun-Re coming up, so we decided to scrap Louis XIV and play a short game while we waited for the scheduled time to start Amun-Re.

Many card games were proposed (Coloretto, Geschenkt, etc) and we finally decided on Sticheln. When we opened the box, the first surprise was to see that the cards were still in their shrinkwrap. The Club's copy of the game had never been played since it was bought, back in January!

The second surprise was the rules in French that came with the box. Someone had printed the rules for a game called Le Taquin. I didn't even look at the rules, I gave it to Yves and started explained the rules (that by now I know by heart). I haven't gone further than asking Karnon to take out all cards above 14 when Yves interrupted me to say that that was wrong, according to the rules in his hand we should use all cards. I took a quick look at those rules and saw that they were totally wrong. I just told everybody that we would use the German rules that come with the box and not that weird "translation".

I explained about "misery" colour and how to select it and off we went. Yves and I selected yellow (him with a 1, me with a 2), all the others chose different colours. Patrick seemed either not to have understood or not have cared about what I said about choosing a low number for your misery colour, he went with a 7 purple. All others were 3 or below.

We decided randomly (by rolling five dice each) who would start. It came down to Patrick, who was sitting just before me. I hate to be second in this game!

To indicate who was the player leading the trick we used the Louis XIV figure from the Louis XIV game. I joked that if someone asked, I could always say that we were playing the game I was supposed to GM...

Seeing how many negative points people were taking when "winning" the tricks, Yves quickly came up with a winning strategy for the game: not to take any trick at all! He made sure he never took any of the tricks and ended up with his one negative point from the beginning. Considering that he came second, this seems to be a valid strategy...

We had the usual groaning and complaining when the last player put a high value card in the misery colour of the person winning the trick. Joelle was the one hit the worst by this. Louis and Patrick added a red 12 and a red 13 to the trick that she won, giving her -25 points. Ouch!

Final Score
[c] Player: Total
Valdir: 1
Yves: -1
Karnon: -1
Louis-Phillip: -2
Joelle: -26
Patrick: -32 [/c]

We played only one round because it was then already time for the scheduled game of Amun-Re, so we couldn't continue with this one.

Thread: Lunch game

mooka — 2006-05-14T01:01:44+00:00

Four player game for the first time. We were all surprised at how much the game strategy changed ... it's quite a different game. We all found out reasonably quickly that choosing a pain that you have lots of cards in is very effective. It's also incredibly beneficial to share pain with one of the players, though obviously you can't plan for that.

Two of us didn't adjust so well (me included) and ended up below 0 in final score. The other two were both over 40 points. Other side benefit: very, very fast game ... our normal games with 6+ take at least an hour. This took more like 35 minutes.

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Verkisto — 2006-03-31T22:28:19+00:00

The Lead/Trump board, in action.

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Verkisto — 2006-03-31T22:25:33+00:00

A sample board to help keep track of what color was led, and who's leading in trump.

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Ruprecht — 2005-03-30T18:04:20+00:00

Cards from latest edition