The following is a set of rules for a two player climbing card game in the same family as games like Zheng Fen and Tichu. Quite a while back, I made a forum post asking if anyone had any experience with a climbing game, either existing or invented, that was enjoyable with only two players. There was very little response and what little there was did not indicate that such a thing existed. Larry Levy, however, went out of his way and designed a game that he posted over at boardgamenews.com ( http://tinyurl.com/2sdrmy). While I enjoyed Larry's game, I found that I kept wanting to add things to it to make it a bit more "interesting". This is the current result of those changes. I think the game is settling down towards its final form, if it is not already there, however any further play-testing, comments, and/or feedback from the community here would be greatly appreciated. If you read the rules, I thank you for your time and, if you give the game a try, I hope you find it enjoyable. Cheers!

Note: I've listed the playing time at 75 minutes but, if you can play Tichu in under an hour, then you'll probably be able to play this in about the same amount of time.

Update (September 19, 2008): The game's name has been changed from Zhubu Shengji to Haggis (yes, Haggis). The rules have been updated with several changes in the thread "Haggis - Updated Rules". The original rules will remain here to preserve the meaningfulness of the other posts in this thread and in case anyone prefers this version to its replacement, but I'm removing the No Bombs and the Multiples-of-Five variants which served little purpose. I recommend checking out the new rule set.

Update (August 8, 2008): Replaced the old, more complex, scoring for the bidding variant with something simpler.

Update (July 6, 2008): Changed game ending scores from 700 to 800, for the non-bidding game, and from 900 to 1000, for the bidding game..


逐步升级
ZHUBU SHENGJI (Escalation)
NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 2
PLAYING TIME: 75 minutes

COMPONENTS
A 42 card deck. Take an ordinary deck of cards and remove all the 3’s, 4’s, and 5’s. Add two Jokers. You're left with the ranks of 6 through Ace(A) plus four 2’s and two Jokers(X).


RANK OF THE CARDS
Ranks as singles (from lowest to highest): 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K, A, 2*, X*. The asterisk denotes that these cards are wild and can assume the value of lower ranks when played in a combination other than a singleton set.


OBJECTIVE
Zhubu Shengji is played in a series of hands. The object in each hand is to get rid of your cards before your opponent. This earns the player a certain number of points based on the number of cards remaining in the other player’s hand. Each player will also score for point cards collected in tricks over the course of the hand. The first player to get 800 or more points or the player with the higher score after 12 hands wins the game.


SETUP
Select one player to be dealer. He puts two 2’s and a Joker face up in front of each player. He then shuffles the remaining 36 cards and deals 14 face down to each player. The last eight cards are put out of play without looking at them. Each player's hand consists of the 14 dealt cards, plus the three wild cards.


GAME PLAY
Each hand consists of a number of tricks. The non-dealer may lead to the first trick by playing a card combination. Or, if desired, the non-dealer may let the dealer lead to the first trick. A card combination may be a set, a sequence, or a bomb.

A set is a group of cards of the same rank, which may include wild cards. Sets may consist of one to seven cards. Here are some examples of sets:

A 2 can be used to represent any card in a set except a Joker, and Jokers can be used to represent any other card in a set. IMPORTANT: You may NOT play two wild cards as a pair of 2’s on a pair trick or play all three wilds as a trio of 2’s on a trio trick as they are indistinguishable from bombs. You may, however, play them as bombs in either context.

A sequence (or run) is a group of three or more singles, or two or more larger sets (pairs, trios, quartets), of consecutive rank sharing the same suit(s) between sets. Wild cards do not have a suit so they can replace a card in any sequence or they can be used to head a sequence using their natural order (e.g., A-2-X). Here are some examples of sequences:

After a combination of cards is led, the other player has the option of playing a higher ranking combination or passing. In order to be higher ranking, the new combination must be of the exact same type, have the exact same number of cards, and have higher ranking cards. For example, if a single 7 is led, the other player could play any single card of rank 8 or higher (including a 2 or Joker). He could not play a trio, regardless of rank. Trios must be played in response to trios, pairs in response to pairs, and so on. Similarly, if the lead is a 6-7-8-9 single sequence, the next player would have to play a four-card single sequence such as 7-8-9-10 or 8-9-10-J or higher. The second sequence may be of any single suit (i.e., there is no requirement to follow suit). Note that for single sequences, you can beat Q-K-A with K-A-2, which can in turn be beaten by A-2-X. You can use any two wilds to make the highest ranked pair sequence, e.g. A-A-2-2, and all three wilds together to make the highest rank trio sequence, e.g. A-A-A–2–2-X.

Bombs are the only exception to the rule above. A bomb may be used to beat any other type of combination (except, perhaps, another bomb). Bombs are played in turn order and change the type of combination that can be played. After a bomb has been played only a higher ranked bomb may be played. There are four types of bombs. Ranked from lowest to highest they are:

HAND BOMB - a natural (no wild cards) combination of 7, 9, J, K ,
TWO BOMB - both 2s,
JOKER BOMB - a 2 and a Joker, and
WILD BOMB - all three wild cards

So, if you played a Hand Bomb to top a singleton trick, your opponent would need to play at least a Two Bomb to continue or else pass. Note that a combination containing all four of the above ranks, and/or two or more wild cards does NOT count as a bomb. Bombs, of course, are very powerful but their power comes at a cost - any trick won by using a bomb must be given to the opponent; so, any point cards in the trick (and all bombs are composed of point cards!) will be scored by the opponent at the end of the hand (see SCORING).



Players continue to play alternately, playing successively higher combinations of the same size and type (or bombs) until one of the players ends the trick by passing. Once a player passes, the other player, who played the highest combination, is the winner of the trick. The cards played to the trick are kept by the winner so that, at the end of the hand, they may score for any point cards collected. The winner then leads to the next trick.

When a player plays the last card in her hand, the hand is over. The winner of the hand scores for the number of cards in her opponent’s hand. Any point cards collected in tricks are scored for each player. Point cards in the opponent's hand, as well as any found in the undealt cards, are scored by the player who won the hand. Another hand is then dealt. The dealer is the leader in points (so that the trailing player gets the option of first lead). If both players have the same number of points, the winner of the last hand deals.

Continue until a player scores 800 or more points or until 12 hands have been played. The player with the higher score at this time is the winner of the game.

SCORING

At the end of a hand, the player who went out first will score based on the number of cards remaining in the opponent’s hand as follows:

So 17 points for the first card, an extra 16 for the second, 15 for the third and so on. For example, if the loser of a hand is left holding 4 cards, the winner will score 62 points.

Additional points for collecting certain cards during tricks are also awarded. Each 7, 9, J, K is worth two points; each 2 is worth six points; and each Joker is worth twelve points. There is a total of 80 card points available each hand. Point cards left in an opponent's hand, plus any found in the eight cards left over after the deal, are scored by the player who went out first.

BIDDING VARIANT

Before any cards are played, the dealer may make a bid that he will leave his opponent holding at least a certain number of cards at the end of the hand. If a bid is made, the non-dealer can match it, increase it, or pass. If she doesn't pass, the dealer can either increase the bid or pass. Once a player passes, the bidding ends, and the other player leads to the first trick. If there is no bidding, the trailing player leads as usual. EXCEPTION: If the dealer passes on the first opportunity to bid, his opponent may make a bid, if she desires, and then lead to the first trick.

The scoring is identical to the non-bidding game (you always score for the number of cards in your opponent’s hand plus any card points collected in tricks), however the player who won the bidding can now be rewarded with additional points if her bid was successful (i.e., the opponent is holding at least as many cards as bid); otherwise, the amount risked will be given to her opponent. The amount risked or rewarded can be found in the SCORING TABLE (below):

"Bidding" in this game is more like betting - it's more about how much you're prepared to risk in order to get a reward than it is about how accurately you can predict the outcome of the hand (although accuracy is still beneficial).

If your bid was SUCCESSFUL, the reward for the amount bid will be added to your score. That amount can be found by looking at the points awarded for a certain number of cards in the bid reward row of the table.

Example: If you bid that your opponent would be left holding three or more cards and they are left holding four, then you will gain an additional 77 points. These points are added to the 62 points you gained for leaving your opponent holding 4 cards, bringing your point total for the hand up to 139 (plus any card points collected).

If your bid was UNSUCCESSFUL, then your opponent will score the amount risked for the number of cards you bid that he would be holding. That amount can be found by looking at the points awarded for a certain number of cards in the bid risk/score row of the table.

Example: If you had instead bid that your opponent would be holding five or more cards and they were left holding four, then you would now only score the 62 points for leaving your opponent holding 4 cards (plus any card points collected), but your opponent would now add the amount you risked by bidding '5', or 75 points, to his score for the hand.

When playing with the bidding variant, the first player to get 1000 or more points or the player with the higher score after 12 hands wins the game.



CREDITS
Special thanks for play-testing and design ideas: Chris Beaven, William Bekking, Pascal Blais, Mike Forbes, Allison Gibson, Sheridan Hortness, Jonathan Kandell, Larry Levy, Mark McEvoy, Stephen Mills, Kurt Purcell, Denise Ross, Martin Villemaire III. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License

Looks like fun!

So, to be clear, the highest rank trio sequence:
HA-SA-DA-2-2-X
would be beaten by
2-2-X

and the Hand Bomb can be any combination of suits?

Thanks!


Yes. Actually, it would be beaten by any bomb, so a Two Bomb (2-2) would be a better play. It might seem counter-intuitive, but the person playing the 2-2-X (Wild Bomb) is going to be sacrificing more than the player who just dropped 6 cards from their hand: they only got rid of 3 cards to the other players six; they have reduced their hand's flexibility with regard to using wilds to compose powerful combinations; and they will have to give all of the card points in the trick they've won to their opponent (in this case, at least 48 points). But, for all of that, they've gained control of the lead, which is really what the game is all about.


That's right. There used to be a SUITED hand bomb, which could beat a Wild Bomb, but it is very rare, and it was often overlooked during play-testing, so I decided to leave it out for now.

[EDIT]
Also, you may notice that the rank of the bombs corresponds to the number of points you'll be giving away to your opponent if you win the trick with that bomb. So, a Hand Bomb costs 8 points, a Two Bomb costs 12, a Joker Bomb costs 18, and a Wild Bomb costs 24. They are also increasingly debilitating with regard to retaining options in how you chose to play your hand. So, it somehow didn't seem right to let a Suited Hand Bomb be quite so powerful. I suppose you could just slot it between the Hand Bomb and the Two Bomb if you'd like, but it's so rare that it feels like it deserves to be more powerful. Anyway, for now, it's just a regular Hand Bomb and has no special status.

Update: Turns out I confused the likelihood of the suited hand bomb occurring for the current deck with the calculations I had done for a previous version of the game with a different deck. A suited Hand Bomb is actually about twice as likely as getting a Four-of-a-kind Bomb in Tichu. That said, the Hand Bomb definition, for the regular game will remain as it is (it can be any combination of suits). However, for the variant game where you are only using Hand Bombs, those bombs must now be suited. The reasoning for leaving the unsuited Hand Bombs in the regular game is that their power is somewhat diminished by having higher bombs available, and they also serve a useful purpose in forcing the play of wild cards as part of those higher bombs. In the variant with only Hand Bombs in play, there's nothing to counter-balance their impact, and I feel the frequency of their occurrence is just too high for my tastes (as you might guess, they occur with the same frequency as a suited single sequence of length 4).

I'd submit that Blue Moon is a 2 player climbing game. Essentially, the characters you play have to continually equal or exceed the other player's current power. Yes, there is a bunch of CCG mechanics in there, but it's still a climbing game.

Yep makes sense--it would only be worthwhile if your gain from taking lead control would offset the 24 point loss (for your 2s, plus your opponent's 2s and joker). Very neat mechanic, if a little unintuitive at first glance

As for Blue Moon being a climbing card game like Tichu for two, while I like the game, I find the play experience and mechanic to be completely dissimilar. It is the playing of quasi-poker-sets which must continue to climb which makes climbing card games fun. With a game like Tichu (and this one) there is the added element of point-capture by winning tricks through climbing. And if you play with the bidding scoring, it has an element similar to calling "Tichu."

Blue Moon is fundamentally a bidding game with a card-driven currency--like all bidding games there is a "climbing" element to bids, but playing a character and then adding to its power-level until one player cannot or chooses not to continue, is quite a bit different from a climbing card game. For example, while you can play a "pair" of characters, your opponent does not have to also play a "pair" to continue a "climb" he just needs to exceed the power (bid) to continue.

Very nice, Sean. You’ve certainly put a lot of work into it since we had our last discussions about Teech for Two!

The only comment I would make about the basic game is the scoring for the cards left in your opponent’s hand. It just seems unnecessarily complex. You could accomplish almost the same results and have simpler numbers to work with if you used something like this: Score 15 points per card for the first five cards; 10 points per card for the next five cards; and 5 points per card for each remaining card. This works out like this:

Cards Score
..1.......15
..2.......30
..3.......45
..4.......60
..5.......75
..6.......85
..7.......95
..8.....105
..9.....115
10.....125
11.....130
12.....135
13.....140
14.....145
15.....150
16.....155
17.....160

With the bidding variant, when a player misses his bid, I’m surprised you use the doubled score of your opponent’s cards as a base prior to subtracting the amount of your bid. So, for example, if I bid 5 and you only have 3 cards left in your hand at the end, I get (48 x 2) – 75 = 21 points. I would have thought my score would be 48 – 75 = -27 points. In other words, the player who goes out always scores the value of the points left in his opponent’s hand. If he made his bid, he also scores for the value of his bid; if he loses his bid, his opponent scores the value of his bid. The way you have it, I can overbid by several cards and still score positive points. Since winning the bid gives me the opening lead (which is quite valuable), this sounds as if it would greatly encourage overbidding. Maybe that’s what you’re looking for, but I think games are more interesting if they encourage precise bidding.

But overall, I think it looks very interesting. The way you’ve introduced the bombs and card scoring you thought were lacking in my game is quite clever. If I get the chance to play this, I’ll let you know how it works out.

Hi Larry,
Thanks!I agree that it appears a bit complex - although, really it's just triangular scoring (1,3,6,10,15,21,...) in reverse - and I do like the idea of having easier numbers for calculating the score. But I really do like my reverse triangular series scoring idea. It has the benefit that each and every card you get rid of is worth progressively more in terms of cost should your opponent be allowed to score for your holding those cards at the end of the hand. So, your incentive to shed cards remains constantly increasing throughout the hand. But, then again, your model does do much the same thing albeit with three plateaus of worth versus a continuous progression. I'll look into it some more.I hadn't noticed that! I designed it thinking that if you bid 5 and I only have 3 cards left in my hand you will score 48 points for those 3 cards less the difference between what you bid and what I have. The difference is 75-48=27 points, so your score would be 48-27=21 points. The more you miss your bid, the larger the difference that will be subtracted until, when I am holding no cards at all, you forfeit the entire amount bid. But, yeah, 48-27=21 => 48-(75-48)=21 => 48-75+48=21 => (48x2)-75=21. That's much easier.
It was that way early on, but play-testing showed that the bidding was seriously curtailed by this punishing scoring model. People were far to afraid to bid, and they often took bad losses. So, I introduced a more forgiving model in order to make bidding a bit less frightening. And, it appears to be working as there is much more bidding happening now than there was before. In the extreme case, both your model and mine deal the same amount of damage - if you miss your bid completely you score -75 points - mine is just a bit more forgiving for bids that are nearer misses. It does encourage bidding, to be sure (the 1 bid by the dealer is almost a no brainer) but it hasn't caused too much over bidding in the games we've played so far. I started out with the intent of having precise bidding (and, really, you do score more if your bidding is accurate under this model as well) but I came to realize that accurately determining how many cards your opponent will be left with - especially given the omni-presence of bombs - was too difficult for pretty much everyone playing (including the designer!) and, technically, impossible given the 8 unknown cards in the kitty. So, I moved to a risk model instead and fostered that risk taking by adding the incentive of stealing the lead by taking increasingly greater risks (hence the game's name, Escalation). This made bidding far more common, and interesting in a different way. Also, to try to help the trailing player a bit more than the leader, I made it so that this player only needed to match their opponent's bid, while the other player always had to increase the risk even more.Thanks Larry. Introducing the scoring cards were necessary in order to shorten the worst-case longest game that scoring for cards in hand produced. The bombs and the ideas around them, grew from that necessity. It adds complexity, and I know you prefer the Bum Game to Tichu, and me vice-versa, but I do hope this game works out okay for you despite these differences.

Wow this looks great. You should finalize the design and publish this game.

I espcially like the bidding part.

Thank you very much. I am hoping to finalize the design with feedback from people here, but I don't really have intentions of publishing it, other than to let people know how they can play it themselves with a standard deck of cards. I just wanted to make a two player standard deck card game that I liked to play and that maybe other people could get some enjoyment out of as well.

I'll give it a try. Good work. It looks solid. I see some cool looking artwork in my head.

Hey, this isn't the kind of climbing game I was looking for!

Indeed, I was expecting something that was the opposite of Falling!

So things are less misleading, I've changed the title for this article to something a little more clear.

Yes, that makes sense. With all the unknowns, I can see where precision would be very difficult.

Very nice to see all the work you've put into this. I'm glad it's given you the two-player climbing game you were looking for!

Played this last night with a coworker before leaving from work, and then again with my wife. Consensus is, this game rocks--it succeeds on every level for bringing the climbing game to two players. We did not find anything about it unnecessarily complex, but then again all opponents are very experienced card players.

I played one 700 point game with each, both times using bidding. Game time was actually right about 60 minutes in both cases. All 3 of us are very excited about the game in general.

After this limited play, I tentatively rate it a 9!

If anyone has the time before I do, a PDF with sharp, clear score table and bidding table to sticker on a standard size playing card would be fantastic--that way it could stay right with the deck.

Great work, Sean!

You might want to publish it at Pagat...

http://www.pagat.com/invented/

Played again today with a different opponent who liked it as well.

One question.

In a singles sequence, the correct play is that
K-A-2-X
beats
Q-K-A-2
right?

Is there any need for the 2 to remain in-suit with the K and A? I know that the 2 is wild in this game, but there is precedent in some Chinese climbing game that when the 2 (which can be wild) is used in a sequence, that it is no longer "wild" but reverts to its position in the singles card rankings--effectively becoming a regular card ranked above the ace and with a suit.

Thanks for trying the game. I'm glad you, and they, enjoyed it. Did you find any aspects in the game that you were less fond of? For instance, did you find the pace (how fast cards emptied from your hand, the number of tricks that were played) too fast or too slow? Did you find that the amount of card points from the undealt cards that were given to the winner of the hand seemed fair? Did the final scores end up fairly close or did one player dominate over the other? Anything else that might help to improve the game? I like that you were able to finish the game quickly, but the game ending score when playing with bidding is actually 900 points. The reason being that otherwise the worst-case shortest game would only be two hands long. For example, if you bid and make 17 and collect all card points you score 306+80=386 points. Do that twice in a row and you'll have 772 points). That's very unlikely, but I wanted to deal with it anyway, just in case it ever did happen.

Great!That's right.No, it doesn't need to remain in-suit with the K and A. Since each player only has two of the 2's they would only be able to play the higher single runs in two of the suits. I think that would be too limiting. I'm glad to see someone using wilds in this way. In my plays so far wilds are often held like nuclear deterrents until the last moment - so their use to top a sequence has been a bit rare.

You wouldn't happen to have a .pdf or alternative file so that I could print out your charts and player aids a little easier? Just curious, but not necessary. I just recently started playing Tichu, and would love to try your game.

I do have a .pdf (the original file is in a Mac specific format), but I don't have a server to host it. You can send me a geekmail with your email address, if you'd like, and I can send it to you. Also, all of the charts and images in the rules above are available as .jpgs in my User Gallery here at the geek.

Update August 11, 2008
At my request, Rick (puckhead) has removed the PDF file of the rules that he has been hosting on his server for the past 8 months. The rules have changed since they were uploaded there, and an up to date version of the rules in PDF format has been uploaded to the Files section of the game page. Rick, thank you again for hosting the file for so long.

Update September 25, 2008
The current version of the rules PDF can be found here.

Thanks Mark! I think I'll do that eventually but I thought I'd see if I could get some fresh perspectives on the game from the folks here beforehand.

How about calling it 2chu or TwoChu?

There's a two player Tichu variant with that name now. Also, while Zhubu started out as a Tichu variant, I think it's more than that now. Let me see if I can explain why. It's a climbing game that shares a parent, Zheng Fen, with Tichu. So, like them, it has point card collection and bombs. But, then, it has a different set of combinations than either of those games. The bigger difference, though, is that this game has another parent, Big Two, from whom it inherits scoring for the number of cards left in your opponent's hand. And even that scoring has been changed quite a bit from its parent. They place their punishment at opposite ends of the scale and I'm sure I've never seen reverse triangular scoring in another game. Finally, the bidding's different as well. It ties a turn-order auction to Tichu's contract to go out first and raises the stakes from just leaving your opponent with cards, to leaving them with a specific number or more of cards. So, while I love Tichu (see the microbadges!), and I think this game is Tichu-like, if you took this game and increased the number of supported players from two up to four, I think you'd quickly find that they are half-brothers, and not twins.

The cards empty from your hand almost startlingly quickly--however this did not seem a problem, it was just something "to get used to."

Cards in the undealt hand are fine--they are fair enough, and this isn't an unusual mechanic, so no issues there.

Final scores in all the games were fairly close, with maybe 1 or 2 games which were somewhat runaway--again nothing unusual for a card game, that happens.

700 seems a good length, I read you wanted 900 to prevent the 2 hand game-over, but really, with 2 hands played good enough to get 772, why drag it out? It's like a 500 point Tichu game which can end in a couple hands--it's highly unusual but always kind of cool when it happens. You can always just play a running total if you want, so I don't really see the arbitrary point ending as really that important in any card game (except cribbage!).