President: suggestions

[BigChico]

I love this game. So glad it's here. A few suggestions;
1. Needs a auto pass feature when you don't have a card that can be played.
2. The scoring system is way off. If you have an unlucky first deal, you have no chance to win the game. Balancing the scoring between the ranks would fix this.
3. The are many variants in this game. Would be nice to see some different game options at setup in the future.

[oceanwaves]

upvote (don't see a button for this here). esp the scoring idea

[57erniepyle]

I think inequality is intrinsic to the game - accept it or play something else. But you could add a small penalty for getting a demotion, say -1 point per level of demotion. That might hurt the early leaders a bit, and would also reduce the number of tied games, which I find to be more of a problem.

[SteveV]

I love this game. So glad it's here. A few suggestions;
1. Needs a auto pass feature when you don't have a card that can be played.
2. The scoring system is way off. If you have an unlucky first deal, you have no chance to win the game. Balancing the scoring between the ranks would fix this.
3. The are many variants in this game. Would be nice to see some different game options at setup in the future.

1. auto pass if you have no playable card gives information to other players... sometimes you may choose not to play even though you could, but an auto-pass would tell the others that you cannot beat the last play and makes it easier on their planning (my game group discussed this when we played)
2. I have been beggar after the first round but become President in the 2nd round and I think I won the game that way, so, it's possible but unlikely to do poorly and recover
3. agree on variants (aka The Great Dalmuti aka Dilbert Corporate Shuffle aka ... aka ...)

[LawyerInThePhog]

I love this game. So glad it's here. A few suggestions;
1. Needs a auto pass feature when you don't have a card that can be played.
2. The scoring system is way off. If you have an unlucky first deal, you have no chance to win the game. Balancing the scoring between the ranks would fix this.
3. The are many variants in this game. Would be nice to see some different game options at setup in the future.

1. auto pass if you have no playable card gives information to other players... sometimes you may choose not to play even though you could, but an auto-pass would tell the others that you cannot beat the last play and makes it easier on their planning (my game group discussed this when we played)
2. I have been beggar after the first round but become President in the 2nd round and I think I won the game that way, so, it's possible but unlikely to do poorly and recover
3. agree on variants (aka The Great Dalmuti aka Dilbert Corporate Shuffle aka ... aka ...)

1. I agree about the auto-pass feature giving away information when you may not want to.

2. I also agree the scoring system is way off. If you lose the first hand it is almost impossible to come back and that is just way too much luck for one hand. I think it falls on having to pass cards to the players that are already winning. I think you should eliminate the passing between prime ministers and peasant and then the president and beggar only pass 1 card between them.

3. I also believe that you should gain points if you get 2nd place in a hand. So it could look something like this 1st (+10pts) 2nd (+5pts) 3rd (-5pts) 4th (-10pts)

4. We play a variant similar to this game where the scoring is completely different. We typically play to 3 or 5 points and the loser is the person who reaches that point total first. Only a single point is awarded after every hand and it goes to the person who still has cards left in their hand, this can create a totally different strategy if your hand sucks but you instead have to play where you don't get last. The first person to get rid of all of the cards in their hand has the award of getting to start the first trick in the next hand, which as you likely know can be very powerful. We have always called the game "13" because that is the amount of cards every player has in their hand, even if we only play with 3 players. We also never play with Jokers.

[MystElf]

The version as it stands here is completely different from the version I used to play at school, but that might be because we would start over each day we played and only play about 3 hands before we had to go to class or leave lunch.

5. nukes- 2s and jokers were considered "nukes" and behave in much the same way as the joker except you get an extra play after nuking the pile and the pile is considered empty like at the start of the game. You can also nuke the pile by playing 4 of a kind (alternate to the existing 4 of a kind reversal) or completing a 4 of kind if a valid play (can't complete a triple with a single). This variant is how we handled playing lower cards but not sure it's necessarily better than reversal.

6. citizen trading - in games of 6 or more the middles were allowed to trade freely among themselves to help break the powerful forced trades that you "earn" by being very good or very bad. In a game of 5 the citizen would be allowed to make one agreeable trade between each player. This probably wouldn't go over well with the typical arena formats but would help break some of the powerhouse dictatorship feel others have been complaining about.

[Ewalker]

Love this game, but so many different variations and options! We have always played with the following rule, which makes the 2s a bit more powerful.

7. 2s will beat sets that are 1-card larger (i.e. One 2 beats a pair, two 2s beats three of a kind, three 2s beats four of a kind). As per the regular rules, a single joker beats anything.

[Anton de Beuker]

Besides what is already mentioned I think the 2 main things are:
- Set the game with skipping as default (it's about the most important mechanic in the game so why play without it.)
- Remove Jokers

As a variant; you could say that by trading you never trade Jokers but only your highests cards.
Another variant: The rule now is that if you skip someone, when the rest of the table already passed, you automatically win the round and the cards are removed. We played a version where you were allowed to continue to put on new cards on top of your own, but with the consequence that the person you skipped before gets a new turn after you. This gives a bit more tactics and possibilities.

[MatthieuC]

Great dalmuti variant could be great :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Dalmuti

[Shobu]

There's so many variant for that game,i don't if a rule can meet a general agreement!
https://www.pagat.com/climbing/president.html

i love the climbing mechanism,i hope more of these kind of games come to BGA