I've played this system with several strangers here on BGA and they all seemed to pick it up quickly and to enjoy it. And it worked quite well.
It started with the following insight:
Usually when you clue a card, the goal is to play that card. But when you play the card, you "throw away" the information you knew about the card with it. How inefficient! So instead of clueing the card to play, you should clue the card next to it. That way, once the card is played, the information is still in your hand. Based on this we played the following system.
Try to avoid discarding but as usual if you have to discard and there is no obvious choice, discard the oldest card that doesn't have a clue. If you see someone might discard a dangerous card, save it with a number clue on the card itself. This means that if someone uses such a number clue on your chop card, you might have to ignore the rules below as it was probably to save the dangerous card.
Cards are numbered from 1 (newest, left most) to 5 (oldest, right most).
To tell a player to play a specific card, clue the card to the right of it (wrap around, 1 is to the right of 5). When clued multiple cards, play your newest card that was not clued with that clue and is immediately left of a clued card.
Some examples ("clued" means "clued at the same time"):
When 3 is clued, play 2.
When 1 is clued, play 5.
When 3, 5 are clued, play 2.
When 1, 4 are clued, play 3.
When 4, 5 are clued, play 3.
When 1, 2 are clued, play 5.
When 1, 5 are clued, play 4.
When 1, 2, 4, 5 are clued, play 3.
When clueing a player, think about all the cards that will be clued and how the clue will be interpreted. Choose to clue color or number depending on what has the right effect or gives the most extra information. Occasionally you won't be able to clue a card.
In the end game it becomes more useful to go back to clueing the cards that should be played. I suggest doing that when the number of cards left in the deck is equal to the number of players.
That's it! The result is that after clueing and playing a couple of cards, you know a lot about the cards remaining in your hand. Soon you'll be able to play cards because you know what they are. Another nice side effect is that if you made a clue to save a dangerous card and the clue was misinterpreted to play, the dangerous card is still safe.
Enjoy!
It started with the following insight:
Usually when you clue a card, the goal is to play that card. But when you play the card, you "throw away" the information you knew about the card with it. How inefficient! So instead of clueing the card to play, you should clue the card next to it. That way, once the card is played, the information is still in your hand. Based on this we played the following system.
Try to avoid discarding but as usual if you have to discard and there is no obvious choice, discard the oldest card that doesn't have a clue. If you see someone might discard a dangerous card, save it with a number clue on the card itself. This means that if someone uses such a number clue on your chop card, you might have to ignore the rules below as it was probably to save the dangerous card.
Cards are numbered from 1 (newest, left most) to 5 (oldest, right most).
To tell a player to play a specific card, clue the card to the right of it (wrap around, 1 is to the right of 5). When clued multiple cards, play your newest card that was not clued with that clue and is immediately left of a clued card.
Some examples ("clued" means "clued at the same time"):
When 3 is clued, play 2.
When 1 is clued, play 5.
When 3, 5 are clued, play 2.
When 1, 4 are clued, play 3.
When 4, 5 are clued, play 3.
When 1, 2 are clued, play 5.
When 1, 5 are clued, play 4.
When 1, 2, 4, 5 are clued, play 3.
When clueing a player, think about all the cards that will be clued and how the clue will be interpreted. Choose to clue color or number depending on what has the right effect or gives the most extra information. Occasionally you won't be able to clue a card.
In the end game it becomes more useful to go back to clueing the cards that should be played. I suggest doing that when the number of cards left in the deck is equal to the number of players.
That's it! The result is that after clueing and playing a couple of cards, you know a lot about the cards remaining in your hand. Soon you'll be able to play cards because you know what they are. Another nice side effect is that if you made a clue to save a dangerous card and the clue was misinterpreted to play, the dangerous card is still safe.
Enjoy!
