| Designed by | Felbrigg Herriot |
| Players | 2-5 |
| Length | ? |
| Extra Material | 1 token |
a Decktet auction game for 2-5 players
Most people suppose that the game is named for the tenacious, seven-fanged Varg which inhabits the rocky cliffs overlooking the freehold of Netherport. However, there is a man from Gongor with the unlikely name of Sebastian Varg-Bid III who claims that his illustrious grandfather invented the game.
Varg Bid is an auction game in which your hand of cards provides both the commodities being auctioned and the currency for bidding on them. The aim is to win high ranked cards at auction; the cards you spend to win them are discarded.
The rules are written assuming that you will use some kind of token to indicate who started the auction. Any kind of marker will do for this. Alternately, you can keep track of it in your head.
Setup
Shuffle the deck and deal each player ten cards. (With four players and the basic deck, each player will get only nine cards. With five players, each player will get only seven; this will leave one card.)
Give the auction token to the player on the dealer's left.
Crowns are treated as rank 10 for both bidding and auction value. Aces are treating as rank 1 for the purpose of bidding, but have an auction value of 11.
Game play
The player with the auction token selects one card from his hand and puts it face up in the middle of the table. (With five players, the left over card is auctioned first; the dealer is the first to bid on it. After the initial auction in the five-player, the player with the auction token selects a card to auction and play proceeds normally.)
Starting on his left and going clockwise, players choose to bid or pass. You may only bid one card at a time. After every player has had a chance to play a first bid card, players may play second bid cards or (if they passed the first time around) enter the bidding. Bidding ends when everyone around the table has passed.
When you make your first bid in an auction, you may select any card from your hand. Place it face up in front of you and announce your bid. You are allowed to bid less than someone else's bid, if you like, but a lower bid will not win.
You may increase your bid by adding a card, but you may only add a card that shares at least one suit symbol with the first card that you bid in the auction. You may not increase your bid if you currently have the highest bid in the auction.
You may bid even if you passed earlier in the auction.
When bidding is complete, add together the ranks of multiple bid cards. (Aces count 1, number cards count their rank, and Crowns count 10.) The player with the highest total bid takes the auctioned card and puts it face down in their scoring pile.
If no one plays a bid card in an auction, then the auctioned card is discarded. If multiple players have the same total bid, then the player who reached that total first wins the auction.
After an auction, all bid cards are discarded. The auction token moves clockwise one player. The player with the token starts a new auction.
Once you have played all of your cards, you sit out the remainder of the hand. This means that a player with two cards left over after everyone else has played all of theirs can put one up for auction and use the other to place a winning bid for it.
At the end of the hand, Aces in your score pile are worth 11 points each and all other cards are worth their rank. The total score for each player is recorded, and the player on the dealer's left becomes the new dealer. A game consists of a number of hands equal to the number of players, so that each player deals once.
The current value of your score pile and the number of cards left in your hand are public information.
The extended deck
If you want to spice up the game, you can add in the Excuse, the Pawns, or both. Just shuffle them in at the beginning of the game.
The Excuse: If the Excuse is won at auction, it is worth nothing. If it is played as a bid card, then the auction is called off. The card up for auction is discarded, and any cards that have been bid for it go back into players' hands. Note that the Excuse can only be bid as a first bid, because it never shares suits with a different first bid.
Pawns: I confess that I am not entirely sure what Pawns should do in this game. I have some ideas, but they haven't been tested.
Credits
Original design: Felbrigg Herriot
Development: P.D. Magnus and Cristyn Magnus
Playtesting: Bryan Angley, Dean Howard, Michael Pearsall, Jeffrey Warrender
Rules text: P.D. Magnus
FNH's original version is hosted at BookRanger.
