[michaelochurch]

I created a card game (Ambition) to unify the German aesthetic and the trick-taking genre, which turned out to be hard to do. The problem is that it still has too much luck (dealt hands) to appeal to the German-style crowd, but it's too complex for the people who enjoy card games for simplicity [0] (e.g. Hearts, Poker). So it's kinda "between worlds". I feel like Catan might suffer that if it came out today, even though it's a great game in its own right.

I like German games a lot but I'm not a fan of the "if it has dice or cards, it's not worth playing" mentality that I sometimes see. Games have a variety of social purposes. Sometimes I want to play something like Cards Against Humanity and sometimes I want to play Tigris and Euphrates. Ain't nothing wrong with that. (I do get annoyed with the people who only want to play Texas Hold 'em, though.)

[0]: I don't mean to imply that these games are without depth. It's just that the rules are simple, and the complexity comes more from the players.

[205guy]

That no-randomness mentality is a bit odd, but I admit that some games don't integrate it well. In Catan, I think the random element is well-done because it is the board and its distribution of resources that is random, not so much each player's turn.

I'm not sure what a "German aesthetic" would be in a card game, but one Austrian trick-taking card game that is a lot of fun is Schnapsen. The cards are random, the trump is random, and you draw cards each turn adding temporal randomness, but outwitting the randomness (and your opponent) is part of the appeal. It's slightly complex (a bit more than Hearts), but still way simpler than Bridge. Each round is fairly fast (5-10 minutes), and you can play a match (to 7 points) under an hour.

Apparently, it's called Sixty-Six (Sechsundsechzig) in Germany, though Schnapsen is a variant.

http://www.pagat.com/marriage/schnaps.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixty-six_%28card_game%29

[epsylon]

> The problem is that it still has too much luck (dealt hands) to appeal to the German-style crowd

Well it depends, when there are dealt hands, we usually do some kind of drafting with my group (even when it's specifically written in the rules) because it helps dealing with the randomness factor a lot, while still providing the added re-playability that cards add in a game (and other random factors, like dices - for example in Myrmes, where they determine events that are common to all the players).

Agrikola for example features a LOT of cards which add an incredible depth to the game, and drafting allows you to carefully prepare your combos and make sure that you don't get too many or too few good cards. There's randomness in the way the Agrikola board is setup as well, so overall there's a lot of replay value with that game. For me it's one of the greatest example of modern German-style games.

(I mentioned Race for the Galaxy earlier, and it's a card game only, but there's a ton of strategy within it, and drafting + using the provided starting worlds helps mitigating the randomness out of it. (A few patch to the rules can be used as well for experienced players). Sometimes you'll be a bit lucky or unlucky, but the upside is that with experienced players, games are short and luck averages out quickly.)

> I like German games a lot but I'm not a fan of the "if it has dice or cards, it's not worth playing" mentality that I sometimes see. Games have a variety of social purposes. Sometimes I want to play something like Cards Against Humanity and sometimes I want to play Tigris and Euphrates. Ain't nothing wrong with that. (I do get annoyed with the people who only want to play Texas Hold 'em, though.)

I completely agree.