Board Game Arena

Hi there, I'm interested in playtesting, thanks!

I am also a member of the Tarock meetup run by Nisterius and would be interested in trying this out.

LaszloK wrote: ↑09 July 2020, 21:54

Nisterius wrote: ↑07 July 2020, 14:46 First hand done with no problems! One thing that was a little confusing to me was the use of "R" for knight in the log: Obviously English doesn't have a tradition there, and I figured it might be for "Rider" - but at first I thought it was "Roi" - since I'm mostly used to playing Tarot with French indices.

Correct, R=Rider. Do you think it should be called Knight instead? (Perhaps represented by N, like in chess?)

I don't have strong opinions - we're in a new world when adapting Tarot games to English! My personal usage is to call it a "Knight", but I'd probably lean toward "C=Cavalier." I have no particular objection to "Rider" - the confusing aspect of it is due to the fact that the _only_ indexed tarot playing cards are the French. I didn't even know that N=Knight existed in Chess!

Today we had our first "real time" play through of 12 hands. All of us are at least vaguely acquainted with the rules, none of us are "good". (We were all more experienced with Slovenian Tarok.)

The only thing we found that might be a bug (though I'm not sure), is that you're permitted to make a jump bid from the start, which would be a cue bid, even if you don't have the card in question. (We did this by mistake.) It would _seem_ - based on my reading on pagat.com, that the the first player should _only_ be able to bid a 2, 1, or solo with the XIX, XVIII, or XVII; and then finally if all three first players pass, the last player could be bid anything.

The only suggestion I had as a quality-of-life improvement would be a little more verbosity on the scores. We used the "ultimo pot" option, which isn't described on Pagat, and were a little confused about how and when payments were going in and out of it.

Really enjoyed it. Look forward to it moving forward so that we can find more people playing! We thought the crown/shields appearing for declarer/defenders were a nice UI touch.

LaszloK wrote: ↑09 July 2020, 21:54
Correct, R=Rider. Do you think it should be called Knight instead? (Perhaps represented by N, like in chess?)

Actually, I have contemplating if I were to design my own deck of cards, using the chess piece glyphs for the indices as being not language dependent: ♚♠, ♕♡, ♘♢, ♟♣ for example - I don't know if that would be better or worse!

Nisterius wrote: ↑11 July 2020, 21:58 The only thing we found that might be a bug (though I'm not sure), is that you're permitted to make a jump bid from the start, which would be a cue bid, even if you don't have the card in question. (We did this by mistake.) It would _seem_ - based on my reading on pagat.com, that the the first player should _only_ be able to bid a 2, 1, or solo with the XIX, XVIII, or XVII; and then finally if all three first players pass, the last player could be bid anything.

Yeah the rules on pagat.com describe a slightly different variant. There's a web page in Hungarian that proposes a set of standard rules, providing arguments for each decision - that's what I implemented. (I think it recently appeared among the links on pagat.com too. I hope I'll get around to translating it sometime soon.)

Anyway: You are allowed to bid higher than 3 as the first bidder even if you don't hold the necessary trump for it to be a valid invitation. It's just that in this case, if someone else bids, you can't pass on your next turn.

Nisterius wrote: ↑11 July 2020, 21:58 The only suggestion I had as a quality-of-life improvement would be a little more verbosity on the scores. We used the "ultimo pot" option, which isn't described on Pagat, and were a little confused about how and when payments were going in and out of it.

The way the ultimo pot works is that whenever a hand is annulled because someone has no trumps / a singleton XXI / four kings, or because nobody bids, everybody puts 2 in the pot. If a hand is annulled because someone bids in 4th place but ends up with no honour, they alone pay 8 into the pot. (Same thing if someone reneges, which sometimes happens IRL.) Once there's something in the pot, the next players to make announced ultimo get to share the money in the pot as well. However, if an announced ultimo fails, they then have to double up the amount in the pot (so as to ensure that you always win or lose the same amount).

As long as the money is in the pot, it's still "yours" - if a real-life game ends with money in the pot, everyone gets their share back. So the way this is represented on the UI is that you see the total amount in the pot (8 / 16 / 24 etc.) but rather than deduce this from everyone's score (thereby making the sum less than zero, and requiring an adjustment at the end of the game if money is left in the pot), it is instead used to adjust the score of announced ultimo. E.g. if the pot had 8 and you made ultimo, you get +2 (you share the 8 with your partner, thus you take back your own 2 plus 2 from one of your opponents). This is all probably easier to follow if you've played it IRL.

Strategy-wise the point of the pot is that as the pot increases, it becomes more and more of a good idea to respond to "XX, 8/9 trumps, pass" with "four kings" if you have a strong hand without a high honour, to let your partner convert a silent ultimo to an announced one in case they have the pagat. Without the pot, this is risking a loss of around 2 to 4 units depending on the hand (because you seldom make the four kings, and mostly get it doubled too) for a potential gain of 5 which you'll only get if your partner does have the pagat - a 1 in 3 chance. But at +7 units, it could be worthwhile, and at +9 or higher, it's almost certainly so.

Could elaborate a little on what you mean by "a little more verbosity on the scores"? (In case there's more to that than just the pot.) A suggestion to the same effect has been posted at https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=20753 - do you mean the same thing?

Nisterius wrote: ↑12 July 2020, 03:35

LaszloK wrote: ↑09 July 2020, 21:54 Correct, R=Rider. Do you think it should be called Knight instead? (Perhaps represented by N, like in chess?)

Actually, I have contemplating if I were to design my own deck of cards, using the chess piece glyphs for the indices as being not language dependent: ♚♠, ♕♡, ♘♢, ♟♣ for example - I don't know if that would be better or worse!

I'm not really sure. Unless there are beginners at the table, you're not supposed to look at cards that have been taken, which is why the default option is not to log each card as it's played - that's meant more as a training aid than something you'd want to use. So I didn't really give it that much thought to be honest.

This is all probably easier to follow if you've played it IRL.

I expect! I've played Danish tarok (with the two fixed pots) and french (with increasing mouches) - but always with physical contributions going in, and just dividing them equally at the end of the game. So I think that makes sense now - I wasn't understanding that the money in the pot wasn't deducted.

A suggestion to the same effect has been posted at https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=20753 - do you mean the same thing?

Yes, if I have more specific thoughts, I'll respond there!

Unless there are beginners at the table, you're not supposed to look at cards that have been taken, which is why the default option is not to log each card as it's played - that's meant more as a training aid than something you'd want to use.

That makes sense. I'm not sure I'd have payed it any attention at all _except_ that we've been doing a turn-based game. Coming in two days later, I have to review the history to remind myself what's happening!

Ok - got to play another realtime game - and with a new person.
Two more quality of life suggestions:

It would be nice to give the cards tooltips saying what they are, and what their point value is. (For new people learning, or for people like my friends who refuse to play in real life with the Industrie und Glück deck because it doesn't have indices. LOL)

It would be nice if you could "prep" your play - click it when it's not your turn yet, and it would auto play when your turn came around.

These are both things I've liked on the French Tarot game on here.

(I'm trying to play a bunch of games to get up to where I can officially do whatever to move this on from alpha. )

Nisterius wrote: ↑19 July 2020, 17:41 Ok - got to play another realtime game - and with a new person.
Two more quality of life suggestions:

It would be nice to give the cards tooltips saying what they are, and what their point value is. (For new people learning, or for people like my friends who refuse to play in real life with the Industrie und Glück deck because it doesn't have indices. LOL)

It would be nice if you could "prep" your play - click it when it's not your turn yet, and it would auto play when your turn came around.

These are both things I've liked on the French Tarot game on here.

(I'm trying to play a bunch of games to get up to where I can officially do whatever to move this on from alpha. )

I implemented both of those suggestions pretty early (full disclosure: I stole a lot of ideas from the frenchtarot implementation:)) The behaviour is controlled by your preferences. If you happen to have turned off tooltips globally then the card tooltips won't appear, but otherwise they should, and you should also see pretty detailed tooltips on bid/announce buttons. Same thing with preselecting a card to play, except that here, the default is off, so you'll have to turn on the corresponding preference explicitly. Keep in mind that this is client only, i.e. you'll need to keep the window open in the browser for the card to actually get played when it's your turn.

Thank you for humouring my noob suggestions!
Yes, I see the option now for pre-selecting the cards.
I see the option for tooltips, and it seems to toggle some (at least "replay from here" in the sidebar) - but I don't see any over the cards themselves. I'm not sure if it should take immediate effect. I'll be sure I set it when I play realtime again.