Strawman

The Cards

Strawman uses the full deck of 54 cards: 22 Taroks and eight cards in each color suit. Together the 54 cards are worth 70 Card Points, and “Scoring the Hand” shows how to count them (Scoring the Hand).

The Preparation

Cut the deck or draw lots to decide who deals first. After that, the two players take turns to deal. In these rules, the player who does not deal is called the Forehand.

The Dealer shuffles, the opponent cuts, and each player receives 15 cards, dealt in packets of five. The Dealer now deals the remaining 24 cards face-down in packets of four, alternating between the players and starting with the Forehand; each packet becomes one pile, until three piles of four sit in front of each player. These piles are the Strawmen. Each player now has 27 cards: 15 in the hand and 12 in the piles. The piles stay face-down during the bidding, and nobody may look at any card in them. After the bidding, each player turns only the top card of each of their piles face-up.

The Bidding

The Forehand looks at the 15 cards in their hand, not at the piles, and says either “I’ll play” or “pass”. If they pass, the Dealer gets the same choice. Each of the two players bids only once. Whoever plays becomes the Declarer, and the hand is played as the Declarer Challenge.

If both players pass, the hand is played as Dodge Round: each player plays for themselves, and the player who captures the fewer Card Points wins. Two rules of play change in the Dodge Round: the Rising Rule is on, and the Pagat may be played only as your last Tarok.

The Contracts

The contracts and bonuses in these rules are a basic set. No two groups play Strawman exactly alike, and you are meant to build on this set. The Expansions list more bonuses. They have the longer list of bonuses, and the beginner score sheet has a Bonus row in each round for the bonuses you add.

Should you claim it?

At bidding time you hold fifteen cards. Twelve more will come from your Strawman piles during play. This section helps you decide whether to play.

Say “I’ll play” (the Declarer Challenge) if you hold. six or more Taroks including the Skus or the Moon, plus two Kings.

(That means about six sure winners, Kings and big Taroks (XV and up) counted together.)

Pass with everything else, and the hand is still played: two passes together become Dodge Round.

A lone King. in Strawman a lone King is worth a whole trick, because at the first lead your opponent can trump it only about 2 percent of the time.

The Strawmen

When the bidding is over, each player has three face-down piles of four cards in front of them, dealt before the bidding.

After the bidding and before the first trick, each player turns the top card of each of their piles face-up, left to right.

• A Tarok or a King goes straight into its owner’s hand, and the next card of that pile is revealed in its place, unless that card is the bottom card. This can cascade through the pile. Whenever the card above the bottom card leaves the pile, now or later in the hand, the bottom card goes into its owner’s hand unseen, whatever it is.
• Any other card stays face-up on its pile.

3 below 3 below 3 below

Dealer

3 below 3 below 3 below

Forehand

Whenever a visible card is played, its owner turns the next card of that pile face-up at once, before the trick continues, unless that card is the bottom card. The newly turned card follows the same rules as a card turned face-up before the first trick.

Your face-up pile cards count as part of your holding, as “Playing the Hand” explains.

Bonuses and Announcements

There are three bonuses, open to either player, and a player who wants to announce a bonus must do it after both players have finished revealing their pile cards and before the first trick. Each bonus is worth 1 Victory Point achieved silently or 2 Victory Points announced. Bonuses are scored regardless of who won the contract. An announced bonus that fails scores its 2 Victory Points for your opponent instead. In the Dodge Round there are no bonuses at all.

Bonus	The feat	Victory Points
		Silent	Announced
Pagat Ultimo	The Pagat wins the last trick.	+1	+2
Four Kings	You capture all four Kings.	+1	+2
Trull	You capture the Skus, the Moon and the Pagat.	+1	+2

Playing the Hand

The Forehand starts the first trick unless the contract says something else.

Your face-up pile cards count as part of your holding, and you may play them into any trick as if they were in your hand. If you cannot follow the led suit from your hand but a card of that suit lies face-up on one of your piles, you must play it from there; you may play a Tarok only when your hand and your face-up pile cards together have no card of that suit.

When you choose between a hand card and a pile card, the two cards cost you the same if the same player wins the trick with either card and both cards are worth the same number of Card Points. If one card wins the trick and the other loses it, they do not cost you the same.

You keep playing tricks and revealing pile cards until every card from the hands and the piles has been played.

Scoring the Hand

If the contract scores from the value of the tricks rather than the number of tricks, this is how you count Card Points (see Scoring in Core Concepts).

1. Step one: count your captured cards.
2. Step two: divide by three and round to the nearest whole number. That is your base count. (If two cards are left over, you round up; if one card is left over, you round down.)
3. Step three: add the pips. That is your pip count, and together the two counts are your Card Points. You find the pips printed along the side of the Alpine Tarok cards.

How to count

The cards that leave the count

The pip carriers

4 4 4 4 3 3 2 2

Count the cards, then divide by three and round to the nearest whole number.

The count

• the base 30 cards, 3 10
• pips among them + 26
• of 70 in the deck 36

Together, the base count of 10 and the pip count of 26 make 36 of the 70 Card Points. The Declarer wins with exactly the 36 Card Points needed. The Declarer Challenge is won, so the Declarer adds 2 Victory Points.

Victory Points with Simplified Scoring. The player who wins the hand adds the contract’s Victory Points, as the contract table in “The Bidding” shows; when the Declarer falls short, the opponent adds 3 Victory Points instead.

Each player also adds the Victory Points of the bonuses they earned. Both players only add to their totals, and the first player to reach 11 Victory Points wins the match.

More for this game. Strawman