Quantum Tricks

Quantum Tricks is a new trick-taking card game from DDP. Designed by Ren Multamaki, it takes 3-5 players and it's played with a deck of 60 cards numbered 0-11 in five suits, with some numbers filleted out when playing with fewer than five players. There's a notional space theme, in that the suits are characterised as Sun, Earth, Moon, Asteroids and Nebulae, but the theme doesn't materially impact on this essentially abstract trick-taking game.

The USP for Quantum Tricks is that there are three tricks on the go at any one time. On your turn, you can play a card to any of the three trick markers. When playing to a trick that's already been started you must follow suit, but if there's a trick marker with no cards on it you can play any card to start off a new trick. However, you cannot initiate a new trick in a suit that is already in play on another marker. If you cannot follow suit or play to any of the three tricks in play, you must play any card to a trick face down as 'space debris'. It scores its player -1 point.

There's more. The low-ranking cards are all potentially 'Spacial Anomalies'. When you play a 0-rank card to a trick, the highest card previously played to that trick is simultaneously discarded. A 1-rank card in a trick beats any 11-rank card; and a 2-rank card beats any 10-rank card.

A trick is resolved when a fourth card is played to it, and 'space debris' count towards that total. The trick is claimed by the player who played the highest ranking card, and they take the cards and so 'clear the spaceways' for another trick to be started. Players score 1 point for each trick but the player who has the most tricks is deemed to have exceeded their space budget and so they score zero points! Any players who win exactly five tricks score 5 points and all other players score zero for their tricks. This scoring may seem initially counterintuitive in an otherwise relatively simple and straightforward game but you'll find it triggers some interesting 'take that' interactions where players deliberately seek to lose tricks in order to 'bust' an otherwise high-scoring player who is going for a five-trick win.

The game is played for as many rounds/hands as there are players. Our three-player games mostly came in at around 20 minutes, rising to 35 minutes with a full complement of five players. Being able to play to any of three tricks rather than one creates a dynamic that we don't recall having seen in any previous trick-taking game. Tho' Quantum Tricks is easy to teach and learn, the clever hand management element, coupled with the 'sneaky' scoring makes for a game that should appeal just as much to seasoned gamers as to new players.

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

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