The Tricky Squirrel

The trickiest squirrel wins! Based on an idea of Thorsten Gimmler.

Aim of the game

Every player tries to have as few negative score (or as much positive score) as possible at the end of a round. Nuts count positive and the card values count negative.

Game preparation

All players get 11 nuts at the beginning of a round. The cards that have continuous values from 3 to 35 are shuffled and 9 cards are taken away (they are removed from the game for the current round). The other 24 cards are in the middle where the card on the top is uncovered.

The playing sequence

The active player can decide whether to take the uncovered card or to use one of his nut that is left that the next player's turn starts. If a player does not have nuts any more he has to take the card. Whenever a player takes a card he gets all the nuts that where used by the other players to prevent taking it.

Interesting are all these card values that make it possible to form a row, because then only the card with the lowest value counts at the end. As cards are removed at the beginning of the rounds it is not possible to form a complete row.

Additionally the opponents' cards are all uncovered but their nuts are hidden.

End of the game

A round is finished as soon as the 24 cards are taken by the players. A game exists of one or more rounds, where it is usual to play so many rounds that every player starts a round as often as the other ones.

This game was developed by using the tjger framework (http://www.tjger.com).