by emaise
ironregime wrote:
Interesting! I play a simplified version where all cards are dealt out evenly, with remainders placed face down under the bottle. Players must follow suit, if possible; if they throw off, they cannot play a card of a rank already played. If they can't play at all, they reveal/discard their hand and lose all previously won tricks. The card used to win the first trick goes under the bottle to set the bottle imp's value. I keep the scoring super-simple: 1 point per trick taken, except the holder of the bottle imp discards all tricks and loses 1 point per card under the bottle.
That's really neat! A stripped-down version capturing the essence of the original, if not necessarily all the subtleties.
At the start of the hand, do you pass any cards between players or discard any cards to the imp's trick under the bottle?
Do you play with all 52 cards, or do you use a smaller deck?