Rules and More Rules

Ship: Regina Maris
Date: 19th of February 2025
Position: Marina Hemingway
Geographical Position: 23°05.276’N 082°29.946’W
Etmal: 0 nm
Total: 7782 nm

Now, because we play a lot of card games here, I thought that I maybe could write the rules down so everyone could play the card games at home without having to explain the rules.
The first and, I think, most known game I will explain is Skat.

So in Skat, you have the following cards from low to high: seven, eight, nine, queen (“Ober”), king, ten and ace. The jacks (“Unter”) are the trump cards, with the order diamond, heart, spade and club (“Schell, Herz, Blatt und Eichel”), with diamond as the lowest and club as the highest.

You can only play Skat with three players, except you could play it with four, but in this scenario, one always has to watch the others playing, so we just say three.

Before even starting to play, you have to know how to deal the cards. But before dealing cards, you give the pile of cards to the player on the right so he can cut the pile. Next, the dealer gives the person to the left three cards and goes on clockwise. Before giving the left player more cards, you put two cards in the middle – these two cards are called Skat.

Next, you give four cards to everyone in the same order as before and finally, three cards again.

After dealing the cards, you determine who is going to “play,” which basically means who’s going to play against the other two players. You determine this with a complex system that I don’t want to and can’t explain, but in the end, the player who thinks he has the best cards is going to play and can pick up the two Skat cards, which he can swap with his own cards.

Good cards are mostly just a lot of one color plus a few jacks. Also, you want as few cards as possible from every other color. The best hand would be where you just have one color.

The left person from the dealer’s perspective has to start with a card and it is a bit like the game “Wizard,” where you have to follow the first played color. Next, the person who won the trick is going to start by playing a card and so on, until nobody has cards left.

Lastly, you count the points. The person who “played” needs 61 points to win.

The next game I want to explain is Durac.

In Durac, there is no winner, just one loser and the person who lost has to get drinks for everyone he played with.

You can play Durac with or without the joker. The joker just adds one special element but is not necessary. The other cards you play with are: two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king and ace, from lowest to highest.

You can play it with two card decks, but it only makes sense if you have a lot of players. Now for preparations: everyone gets five to seven cards, again depending on how many players are playing. The leftover cards go into a pile in the middle.

The top card is flipped and the color of the card is the trump suit for this game. The person who has the lowest card begins and can “attack” the person to the left with as many cards of one number as he wants. The person to the left of the “attacker” can now throw cards of the same number to the “attacked” person.

The “attacked” person now has to “defend” by playing a higher card of the same color or a trump card.

For example, if the “attacker” attacks with a two of hearts while spades are trump and the “defender” defends with a five of hearts, he has successfully defended the card. However, the players to the right and left can throw in any five or any two as additional attacks. If the “defender” then defends with, let’s say, a seven, the attackers could, if they have it, throw in another seven.

This can go on and on until either the attackers don’t have more fitting numbers, the defender doesn’t have any more cards or the defender gives up.

If the defender gives up, he has to take every card he was attacked with and his turn is skipped. If the defender successfully defends all the cards, they are removed from the game and the defender becomes the new attacker.

Another option for the defender is to lay down a card of the same number he was attacked with and pass the attack to the next player. However, this is only allowed if he hasn’t defended any other card during this attack.

As long as there is still a draw pile in the middle, every player must draw cards at the end of each attack until they have as many cards as they had at the start of the game (five to seven). If the pile of cards is empty, the next person who runs out of cards is out of the game.

The last person to have cards loses.

With the joker, you can give every card you were attacked with to any player.

Completely beside the point – today, we played Capture the Flag after we had another food delivery.

Anmerkungen:

Anna: Yannick! Ich gratuliere Dir… 🦜 Wir reden da nochmal drüber… Schöne Wahl des Tages übrigens 😉

Marie: Hey ihr zuhause, ein paar Briefe hab ich schon gelesen, danke dafür! Weil du gefragt hast, Mila: Ich war noch nicht im McDonald’s hier, aber ich denke, ich werde wahrscheinlich noch einen finden, bevor ich wieder da bin 😉 Grüße <3