The Badger on the Borderland
Deep in the forest lived a badger well-known for his skiil at tarot reading. Penitents and lunatics would journey over the mountain for a chance of meeting him.
The Badger on the Borderland is based on The Fox in the Forest, a two-player trick taking game which you can also play with traditional playing cards.
This is Version 1.0; this game has not yet been playtested.
Setup
Remove the following cards from the deck:
- The Aces and Crowns of Leaves, Wyrms, and Knots
- One Pawn at random
- All Courts
- The Excuse
The Round
For each round, deal thirteen cards each. The remaining cards form a draw pile. Flip the first card of the draw pile; this is the decree card and it establishes the trump suit. If any decree card has mulitple suits, the trump is the uppermost of those suits.
Play thirteen tricks per round. The winning card of a trick is the highest-ranking card in the trump suit if trump was played, or the highest ranking card in the other, lead suit(s) if trump was not played.
Card Effects
The list of odd-ranked card effects is the same as in The Fox in the Forest:
- Aces: Lead the next trick if you lose this one.
- Threes: Exchange the decree card with a card from your hand.
- Fives: Draw one card, then put one card on the bottom of the deck.
- Sevens: 1 point for the winner of the trick.
- Nines: If it’s the only 9, it becomes the 9 of the trump suit.
- Crowns: Opponent must follow the Crown’s suit with an Ace of that suit or with their highest card with that suit.
Note that the Pawns rank as 10, between 9 and Crown (11).
Round End
Players score for the round according to the number of tricks they took:
Tricks | 3 or fewer | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7–9 | 10 or more |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Points | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 0 |
Game End
The game ends when a player scores 21 points.
Variants
The Fox in the Forest game length variants (to 16 points or 35 points) can be applied to Badger.
Credits
The Decktet is an alternative deck of cards created by P.D. Magnus and released under a CC license.