First, I'm going to call the 3 piles to be deciphered Deck 3, Deck 2, Deck 1, to correspond with the number of deciphered cards required for the "phrase."

I like it. I'll change it to read this way, too.

As I understand it, we slide the top card (I'll call it the "slider") down letter-by-letter until the hidden card's title is completely revealed. That revealed ("deciphered) title card is then placed beside that deck until the required number of cards for a "phrase" (3, 2, or 1)

The "slider" card is placed aside. This makes the next card that you just 'revealed' to be the new slider, and so on. This makes the motion of slide/revealing always a discovery/mystery, and very fluid if you're working on a long phrase.

When the phrase is fully deciphered, the player who completed it takes the slider card from that deck into his discard pile (to be shuffled and drawn as needed for our 3-card hand to begin each turn.)

When the phrase is fully deciphered, the play takes all previous slider cards that have been set aside. In the case of the three-card phrase it would be all three slider cards. In the case of "Deck 1" (pawn, court, and The Excuse Deck) you would just collect the slider card each time you successfully decipher a one-card phrase.

If a phrase is partly deciphered, say only 2 of the 3 required cards are beside Deck 3, it is possible that the opponent may be able to claim the cards by finishing the reveal of the 3rd. Is this correct? So player A might have revealed 3 of the four letters of the card's title, for example, but he has no cards left in his hand and his turn is over. Now Player B, on his turn, could reveal the final letter, and thus claim the phrase card(s) next to the deck. Is this correct?

That is all correct.

I don't quite understand that "overshoot the phrase" business. If we play a 3, for example, but there are only 2 unrevealed letters on a card we're working on, what card(s) does the opponent get? Just the card that was overshot, or that card plus any other phrase cards which are next to that deck?

If you 'overshoot the phrase' by any amount, all the cards that were set aside for that phrase go to your opponent's discard. For the case of Deck 1, it would just be the current slider card. For the case of Deck 3 it would be all three slider cards.

Over on the BGG forum you suggested examples of play. I'll add them here.

Thanks again.

First, I'm going to call the 3 piles to be deciphered Deck 3, Deck 2, Deck 1, to correspond with the number of deciphered cards required for the "phrase."

As I understand it, we slide the top card (I'll call it the "slider") down letter-by-letter until the hidden card's title is completely revealed. That revealed ("deciphered) title card is then placed beside that deck until the required number of cards for a "phrase" (3, 2, or 1), When the phrase is fully deciphered, the player who completed it takes the slider card from that deck into his discard pile (to be shuffled and drawn as needed for our 3-card hand to begin each turn.)

If a phrase is partly deciphered, say only 2 of the 3 required cards are beside Deck 3, it is possible that the opponent may be able to claim the cards by finishing the reveal of the 3rd. Is this correct?

So player A might have revealed 3 of the four letters of the card's title, for example, but he has no cards left in his hand and his turn is over. Now Player B, on his turn, could reveal the final letter, and thus claim the phrase card(s) next to the deck. Is this correct?

I don't quite understand that "overshoot the phrase" business. If we play a 3, for example, but there are only 2 unrevealed letters on a card we're working on, what card(s) does the opponent get? Just the card that was overshot, or that card plus any other phrase cards which are next to that deck?

Sorry if I'm a little thick. I blame it on my age.

So it seems like card ranks only matter for the tiebreaker, which (as you note) doesn't really extend the strategic space of the game. Are ties common enough that there even needs to be a tiebreaker? If there does, you could just say that if there is a tie on points then the winner is the player who won the top-most Ace. If there was a tie on that Ace, then the player who won the second-highest Ace. And so on.

You might take a look at Colour Bazaar, which is a similar game.

1. What happens if a player ends with suit chips for suits that only have an Ace, no other cards?

2. We often ended play with players having uneven amounts of suit chips. If you have players A, B, C, and D, and player B ends the round by placing the last card and taking a chip, players A and B have one more chip each than players C and D. Is this by design?

I double checked with the how-to-edit-pages page on decktet.wikidot.com and the image for knots can't be found. It just shows as a "broken image icon", but the other suit images can to found!?

Does anyone know how to fix this?

That's all, apologize for my poor English, and I hope I have made myself clear.

When you sell a card to gain more tokens, instead of discarding it, you play it as a developed property on your opponent's side. You can choose which district to play it on, but it must match suit as in the regular game. You'll want to put most of the cards in one district and write that one off as a loss, but sometimes the suits won't let you.

If you want to sell a card that can't be placed with either suit you may discard it.

You only run through the deck once since there are no (or very few) discards. Scoring is the same as usual.

To make the game harder:
If one of the suits on your discard is one of your automa opponent's crown suits, you must place it using that suit if possible. If not, you can place it using the other suit. This mimics the two-player game where your opponent is more likely to be able play cards with suits from their crown cards. It makes the game more difficult because it limits where you can play the opponent's cards.

These are the core elements of the game. You may be able to work out the rules with these elements in mind. It is hard to start on rules if you have no idea what the game is about.

Taxation is used to deter players from hoarding goods (otherwise playing deeds were inefficient).

It's OK. I've fixed it.

Given that I changed it from LaTeX to wiki mark-up with a couple of quick and dirty regular expressions, I'm surprised there weren't more stray brackets.

For moons, white might look better.

You can also use another colour to keep score. Beyond that, I’m open to suggestions!

If we're just swapping colors to more closely match the Decktet suits, we could use orange for 1-pip/Suns/Leaves, and white for defense/Moons, leaving yellow, green, and blue alone. It might give the game a distinctive appearance by not using the same default colors as other pyramid games.

But maybe there's a way to use extra colors for a more fun game, too?

Any feedback, suggestions, discussion etc. is welcome.

Welcome to the world of the Decktet. I'm glad that you are enjoying Emu Ranchers.

Am I correct in understanding that playing an Ace or a Crown on a previously established bird effectively closes off any further play on that bird?

As I indicated, we only have a few hands of playing experience, so I haven't yet worked out the best strategies (i.e. starting most birds with either an Ace or a Crown hoping to get the 5 point bonus) but it seems like a game with a lot of replayability.

Thanks for your hard work.

Upturned cards are first played to contribute to a court with a corresponding suit if space is available. If the card corresponds to multiple Magi, it is placed at the court corresponding to the highest available suit in the depicted arrangement. A court is completed when all four sides of a Magi card have been occupied.

If a card containing one of the suits of a Magi with a completed court is turned up, and it cannot be previously be played as part of a court, it activates the power of the corresponding Magi. If the card corresponds to multiple completed courts, priority is given to the highest listed suit first.

Once the power of a Magi card is activated, the upturned card may be used to capture a card of the same value from another court. Both cards are then placed on top of the stack above the corresponding Magi card. If no capture is available, the card is similarly placed on top of the corresponding stack. Additionally, the three movable cards of the court of the activated Magi card may also capture cards of their value from other courts - one stack each. These cards are placed beneath their captors and may be recaptured as a set. If no cards of a similar value are available for capture by the three movable court cards, then nothing happens and another card is upturned from the deck.

Gameplay proceeds in this manner until the deck is depleted. The Magi card surrounded by the highest total value of cards represents the power that is dominant in the player during the gameplay session. Aces=1, Pawns=10, Courts=11, and Crowns=12. Numbered cards are valued accordingly. The Excuse is not used in this game.

(This game is still being tested)

Maybe I'll take a crack at rewording it.

A player may develop a Court as a property by spending 10 resource tokens matching any of the three suits, with at least one matching each of the three suits.

Not being a native speaker but doesn't that mean that one token would have to have three colours?

EDIT: wrong reference to message, should have beesn starting a new thread on the rule wordings.

Regarding the Courts: There was a time in the distant past before there were Court cards. Head Solitaire is from from those dark, early days.

(And since I'm here, let me tell ya, saying that something is under a CC license means nothing, you have to specify the license. Unless it's under the same license as the whole wiki, in which case, there's no need to bother at all.)

Real life situation: say it's phase two, and I got four Crowns in my hand, and one of them is the Crown of Waves. But I know the 9 and 8 of Waves are coming next draw. Can I keep the Crown of Waves out of the meld? I can also imagine a situation where one would prefer not to make a meld in phase 1, in order to perhaps put the cards in a more effective order and discard them.

Also, the rules for the extended deck don't mention Courts, but they're there, right? Just like Pawns? I saw a 41 card deck somewhere… were the Courts previously not in the extended deck?

Do you feel it might be worthwhile to give the Crown a boost?

Adding [[module PageTree]] would make the link, but without any explanation. Often the non-English pages have the same title.

Any article can be delared as a parent of another without breaking naming conventions. See http://community.wikidot.com/forum/t-287069/ It is "heavy work" when done as an afterthought but still doable with the low number of translated pages here.

The French link is to a welcome page that lists all the games with French rules at the bottom.

The German one links to a welcome page that doesn't have such a list. Following the pattern for the French welcome page, something like:

[[module ListPages category="de-game" order="titleAsc" ]] * %%linked_title%% [[/module]]

I'm not opposed to something more thorough, but I don't really know much about it. Would changing it so that translated games were child pages require moving all of the game pages?

One possibility would be to use the site structure features of Wikidot. Translations could be played as children of the original articles. A game page skeleton would include the names of its children.

German pages are de-WHATEVER
French pages are fr-WHATEVER
Spanish pages are es-WHATEVER

For example, Bharg is at game:bharg, and the Spanish translation is at es-game:bharg

Could anyone move it to game-de:tinker-sailor-soldier-spy? Thanks.

Also, it might be worth to clarify what happens if the Excuse or an Ace come up, at least in a modified example section.

I haven't played Friday. In fact, I only heard of it because Mike Hostetler posted a Decktet adaptation over at BGG. He calls his "Thursday". His is a themeless card-pushing solitaire. The mechanisms are also surprisingly different, given the similar starting place.