15th Stamp

Over the past few years, Dragon Dawn Productions (DDP) have published a series of tricksy trick-taking games, mostly driven by their thematic narrative; for example, Tolerance, which focused on the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in post-Reformation England, and Justice, which represented the judicial system in the Soviet-style Dwarven society of Odrixia that is featured in DDP's bigger box board games like Factory 42 and Mine 77. 15th Stamp is also notionally set in Odrixia, loosely themed around Dwarven bureaucracy, but the theme here is really no more than a setting for this essentially abstract trick-taking card game.

15th Stamp takes 3-7 players and is played using a deck of 80 cards: an identical set of 10 cards each in eight suits, with cards numbered 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7. Games are played using one suit more than the number of players - so you only play with the full deck of eight suits if you're playing with seven players.

Unlike most trick-taking games, 15th Stamp does not oblige players to follow suit: you can play any card but the trick ends when the total value of the cards in the trick reaches or exceeds 15. At this point, the trick is declared as won by the suit with the highest total value. The player who played the highest card of the winning suit scores 2 points and all other players who played cards of that suit score 1 point. Ties go in favour of the last cards played (for example, if two suits both have a total value of 6, the win is given to the suit that reached that total last). The game incorporates an optional variant where players only score if the last card they played was in the winning suit.

It's surprisingly liberating to play a trick-taking game where you're free to play any card. It makes 15th Stamp an intriguing hand management game with a push-your-luck element as you try to make the most effective use of the cards in hand. For each trick, it's only the majority suit that will score, so it'll usually be in players' interest to pile in on what looks like being the majority. And, unlike most other trick-taking card games, it isn't necessarily a disadvantage to find yourself with a hand of mainly low-ranking cards.

Designer Ren Multamaki suggests playing 15th Stamp till one or more players reach 20 victory points. With a starting hand size of 12 cards, there will usually be 7-10 tricks each hand, and in our plays at Board's Eye View with four or five players, a player usually hit 20 points within three rounds/hands. With six or seven players you can expect the game to run a little longer, so we experimented with setting a lower winning threshold.

DDP are bringing 15th Stamp to Kickstarter along with their trick-taking game Quantum Tricks. We'll post a link to the campaign when it goes live.

#15thStamp #cardgame #tricktaking #majorityrules #DDP #DragonDawnProductions #Odrixia #handmanagement