The Emissary (2021)

Overview

In The Emissary, you are a young noble sent by your father to gather support from eight neighboring kingdoms. In each kingdom, you engage in a series of debates with their ruler. Using the right amount of force and deference, you must win exactly a certain number of debates per kingdom. Succeed and you may call upon the ruler for future support; fail even once and lose the game.

The Emissary is a solo trick-taking game playable with a deck of regular playing cards, with rules created by Wil Su and made available free online as part of his "Isaludo" series. The game begins by arranging the deck's eight kings and queens in a row. The player then "visits" each card, in whatever order they choose, drawing a new hand of eight cards from the remainder of deck at each stop. They then draw cards one at a time from the deck, forming the basis of tricks, which the player answers from their own hand. The catch is that whatever place the king or queen being "visited" by the player is (e.g., 1st place through 8th place), that's how many tricks must be won by the player -- no more, and no less. With only a limited capacity to bend the rules through special abilities, the game becomes an exercise in careful hand manipulation and excruciating trade-offs.

The game is inspired by the decktet game Gongor Whist, which itself was patterned from the standard-deck card game Oneonta Whist. This game also holds the core for the free print-and-play game For Northwood!, which swept top prizes in the 2021 BGG 54-card contest. Familiarity with trick-taking games will make understanding the following rules a breeze. Of course, prior knowledge isn't strictly necessary.