| Designed by | Johannes Hüsing |
| Players | 2-4 |
| Length | 20 mins |
| Extra Material | None |
An attempt to adapt Red7 by Carl Chudyk and Chris Cieslik to the Decktet.
The nobles of Jacynth are in a permanent race to impress each other. Be it the number of knots holding together their waistcoat, be it the number of waves in their hairdo. In order to maintain a permanent competition, the unwritten laws of fashion change by the week. Therefore it is not only important to stay on top of aristocratic style but to help redefining it. Can you make others to fail to impress before you fall behind?
Setup
Take the standard Decktet. Put the Ace of Moons in the middle of the table, starting the pile. Deal a hand of seven (four players: six) cards to each player. Place one card face up before each player. This is the start of their display.
Game play
Objective
Players display must meet one or all winning conditions defined by the pile at the end of their turn. They are eliminated from the current round if they fail to do so. The last player remaining wins the round.
The pile
During the game, cards are added to the pile so that only the top card is visible. Only the visible suits are important. They define the current winning conditions:
- Moons
- highest card
- Suns
- most cards of a suit
- Waves
- most even cards (2, 4, 6, 8)
- Leaves
- most different suits
- Wyrms
- most cards of one type (places / personalities / events / aces)
- Knots
- most cards below 5 (Ace, 2, 3, 4)
Turn sequence
Player with lowest card in her display starts the game, other players follow in clockwise order.
Actions
During her turn, a player can perform one of the following actions:
- Add a card from her hand to her display. At the end of her turn, her display must meet at least one winning condition with her display.
- Place a card from her hand on the pile. At the end of her turn, her display must meet all winning conditions.
- Place a card from her hand on the pile and add a card from her hand to her display. At the end of her turn, her display must meet all winning conditions.
- Fold: Put display and hand face down before herself. Player is eliminated for the rest of the round and from now on skipped in the clockwise turn sequence.
A player with no card in hand may only fold. A player may fold even if she could choose another action. This may be the best move to cut opponent's gains (see Scoring).
Any card from the display may meet several winning conditions.
If there's a tie on a winning condition, the highest card in the respective subset (first rank, then suit) breaks the tie.
Scoring
If at the start of her turn, a player is the only one left in play, she wins the round. She may choose a card from her display and put it aside, face up. This card must be part of any subset of the display meeting a current winning condition. Numbers score points according to their value, Aces count as 1, Crowns as 10.
A subset meeting the Leaves winning conditions must be minimal in the sense that the winning condition is not met if any card is removed from it. It needn't be the smallest subset fulfilling the condition. For example, both (Author (2
), Cave (7
), Chance Meeting (7
)) and (Author (2), Calamity (
), Sea (), Chance Meeting (7)) are viable subsets, but if you add Market (6) to any of the sets you must remove Author or Chance Meeting from it.
End of game
The game ends after seven rounds. Highest score wins.
The extended deck
Not explored yet. At the moment I am not sure how Pawns or Courts should be ranked to break ties, and how they should score. Also, I expect these cards to be real stinkers both to add to the display and to place on the pile, so there should be some consolation or reward for using these.
Variants
Initially, all unused cards go into a face-down draw pile. If you add a card to the pile, draw one card less from the draw pile than there are suits on the card. It is really recommended to play this variant to have some incentive in not adding to your display.
Credits
Almost all credit goes to the authors of Red7. I ripped off this (currently new) title as the original is not available in my region. If Moonscrown falls flat for you, it most certainly is the result of a poor adaptation and the original probably is still a great game.
