Experimenting with the blind auction mechanic from Libertalia

Playing Cards
I pitched a loose game idea on Twitter yesterday and someone said it already exists. Care to help identify the game in question?

It's kind of inspired by the Libertalia discussion yesterday, but uses a standard deck of playing cards. At the beginning of the game, deal five cards to each player.

Each player chooses and reveals one card from his hand. These cards are arranged in a row in numerical order. In case of a tie, hearts are higher than diamonds, which are higher than spades, which are higher than clubs.

In descending order of rank, each player takes turns taking one of these cards into his hand. A player cannot take his own card.

At the end of the game, players total the values of all cards in their hands and score that many points. You'd also score some bonus points for building strong poker hands, too.

So, you want to keep the high-value cards in your hand, but you may not get the best choice if you bid low-value cards. Bidding a low-value card almost guarantees that you'll get at least *something* better. Meanwhile, you're also trying to build a strong poker hand for those bonus points, which might require a specific card regardless of its value.

So, does this game exist?

Comments

  1. Jack GulickJuly 26, 2012 at 8:36 AM

    The essential bidding content is very much like Knizia's Money. But Money has a much more complex suiting and scoring system and has multi-card bids.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brett MyersJuly 26, 2012 at 9:55 AM

    It is similar in essence to Knizia's Money.

    http://files.boardgamegeek.com/file/download/4822cd3u08/Money_-_Quick_Start.pdf?

    ReplyDelete
  3. DanielSolisJuly 26, 2012 at 9:57 AM

    I just looked up the rules. Ha! I was considering a similar scoring system: If your totalled cards are in double digits, only the ones digit is your score. So 9 is the best base score.

    Well, if I accidentally copy someone, there are worse designers to copy.

    ReplyDelete
  4. DanielSolisJuly 26, 2012 at 10:03 AM

    Yup, looks like it. I wonder if that's the game Ken was thinking about.

    Coincidentally, I was considering a similar scoring system, too! :P

    ReplyDelete
  5. Brett MyersJuly 26, 2012 at 3:35 PM

    Great minds?

    ReplyDelete

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