by S. Lea » Jul 6th, '07, 20:03
Here's a game I attempted to teach Abraxus in the pub.
BLACK & RED
Object to collect a hand made up of all BLACK cards or RED cards. Players discard first and pick up from the stock pile. Discards must always be of the same colour (if the first discard is RED, all discards in that hand will be red, and vice versa).
The colour you need to win on is decided by the first upturned card. If you go out on your colour you get 3pts. If you go out on the opposite colour you get 1pt. If you are dealt all one colour as your starting hand you get 5pts. Usual play is first to 11 points or £x a point in cash games
Playing the game
Shuffle the deck and deal out 7 cards to both players.
Turn over the top card of the remaining stock pile, whatever colour it is will be the colour the first player wants to go out on.
Suppose the top card is RED, player one will discard a black card from his hand and pick up the red card.
Player two wants BLACK, but he must discard blacks because player one played a black card. He plays a black card and picks up a new card from the face down pile (without letting the other player see it).
The discards are added up as they are laid down. So if Player one discards a 7 (the total is 7) and player two discards a 9, the total will now be 16 (7+9). Play keeps going until one player has 7 cards of the same colour or the total reaches 31.
If neither player can discard without busting (going over 31) the last player to discard, starts again. He gets to go first and so can choose the colour of the discards.
The advantage of going first is that you get to decide which colour cards are played. So far, player one has been collecting RED cards and discarding BLACKS. Player 2, who wants blacks, has been forced to discard blacks from his hand. If player 2 wins the first round of discards, he will choose to discard REDs, forcing his opponent to discard all the red cards he's been collecting.
Play continues until one player has seven cards of the same colour.