A cooperative card game · 1–4 players · a standard 52
Delve
Say how high your club is. Never say what you hold.
One monster, and nobody can see your hand
It has hit points and it announces its next move a full round before it makes one, so you always act on information rather than on a guess. Your cards are a pile cut from a standard 52. It never reshuffles — when it runs out, so do you.
Clubs multiply, and rank is everything
Every card committed resolves in pip order, lowest first, into one running total. A club adds nothing and doubles that total — so it multiplies everything ranked below it and nothing above. A king of clubs is enormous; a two is worth almost nothing.
One sentence, and it is the game
You may say anything about what you intend and nothing about what you hold. In practice one sentence does the work: how high your best club is. The lowest club going in is the bar everyone else’s cards have to fit under.
One round, resolved
Three players commit six cards: 5♥ 6♥ 8♠ 9♠ 10♣ K♣. They sort themselves by pip and fold into one total — 5, then 11, then 19, then 28 — and then the two clubs double it twice, to 112.
Swap the 9♠ for a queen and it collapses to 88. The queen now resolves after both clubs, so nothing doubles it. A bigger card, twenty-four less damage — which is why the bar is worth saying out loud.