Fire and Rain
2+ Players - Trick-taking Spades-like
This Spades-like game includes dynamic trump suits and chance tiebreakers for added fun and challenge!
At the beginning of each round, deal 13 cards to each player. Flip the top card of the deck to reveal the starting trump suit. Each player bids on the number of tricks they expect to win in the round, starting with the player left of the dealer. They are the first leading player of the round. The dealer rotates clockwise every round.
At the start of each trick, the leading player plays a card and the suit of that card is leading suit. That card cannot be the current trump suit unless it is the only suit in their hand. All following players must follow suit if possible. If you cannot follow suit, you may choose, instead, to break suit by playing the active trump suit (which becomes the leading suit for the trick) or discarding a card. The highest value of the leading suit wins the trick, and is set aside until the round ends. The winner of the trick becomes the next leading player. The round ends when all 13 tricks have been played.
Since there are multiple numbers of the same suit, there can be ties, which will force a tiebreaker card to be drawn. Replace the tiebreaker card with the top card of the deck until one of the competing cards matches the border of the new card. The player with the matching border wins the trick, and the suit of the tiebreaker card becomes the new trump suit.
Scoring follows traditional spades rules; if you make the contract by winning at least the number of tricks indicated in your bid, you get 10 points per trick up to your bid, plus 1 point for each additional trick (called bags). If you get 10 bags at any point in the game, you lose 100 points. Continue playing rounds until a player has met a designated point goal; 200 points and 500 points are good targets for short and long games respectively.
For advanced players, you can track players who renege on their contract for instance, a player led with a trump suit while having other suits in their hand OR a player failing to follow suit while being able to. If a player is caught reneging (this can be discovered after a few tricks), you may choose to penalize the player by adding to their contract requirement or forfeiting their bid entirely for the round. This penalty should be decided at the beginning of the game.
Other variant rules used in Spades (such as partnerships) can be applied here without alteration.
