TonTon (2018)

Overview

Take tricks, organize, never bust.

TonTon is a trick-taking game with a forty-card deck, with five colors numbered 1-8. You use only three colors of cards for a three-player game, four colors for 4p, and five colors for 5p. The game lasts three rounds, and at the start of each round, you reveal a mission card. The game includes three basic missions and two advanced missions. These missions give you targets that you try to achieve during the round, such as having top cards (explained below) that sum to at most 12.

Gameplay follows standard trick-taking rules. In a trick, players must follow suit when possible, but they can play any card otherwise. Whoever played the last 4 in a round leads to the next trick; if no one played a 4, then whoever wins the trick leads. When you win a trick, you must take the cards in this trick, arrange them by color with the lowest card on top of each color stack, then place these cards on top of other cards that you've won. Thus, over the course of the game, you'll build up to five color stacks (depending on the number of players) as you take cards.

When the round ends, you compare the top cards on your stack to that round's mission. If the sum of these cards is higher (or lower, depending on the mission) than the depicted number, then you bust for the round and score only 1 point for each 6 you collected. For all those who didn't bust, players score points based on how their sum compares to others. For the advanced missions, as long as a player doesn't bust, they score points based on the sum of their top cards.