Haggis – a review
Haggis is a card game, of the climbing game genre, for 2 or 3 players.
First of all, Haggis is not Tichu. It is a climbing game, and while Tichu is almost universally agreed to be for exactly 4 players, Haggis is for 2 or 3. It’s somewhat natural for Tichu fans — of which there are many — to wonder if Haggis is the game they can play when they are a player or two short. As I say, Haggis is not Tichu, but I shall return to this later.
So what is Haggis, then? In the box, along with the rules, you get a deck of cards, consisting 2 through 10 in each of 5 suits. There are also 3 sets of Jack, Queen and King, which are unsuited, and are double sided, rather than having the same back as the rest of the cards.
To begin, if playing a 2 player game, set aside one suit, and one set of court cards. Give each player their own set of court cards, which they leave face up in front of them, then shuffle the deck, and a randomly determined dealer deals out 14 cards to each player. The court cards, while public, are still counted as part of each player’s hand. The remaining cards (3 in 3-player, 8 in 2-player) are set aside. These cards are the Haggis. The player to the left of the dealer will begin. On subsequent hands, the player with the highest cumulative score so far will be dealer, the player with the lowest will be the first player.
As with all climbing games, the main aim is to get rid of all your cards before the other players. How this is done is a player who has the lead plays a card or combination of cards, then next player may then play a combination that somehow beats the previous play, or passes, either by choice or of course if they are unable to beat the previous play. If a player passes that does not preclude them from playing later in that round of play. Play continues until all but one player passes in succession. The player whose turn it now is, who was also the last player to play in that round wins that round of play, takes the cards played and puts them aside, and then has the next lead. A round of play in climbing games usually ends when all players except one have successfully shed all their cards.
All of this applies in Haggis. The player with the lead plays a specific kind of combination, and then until that round of play is won, every play must be the same kind of combination, but of a higher rank. Valid combinations are Sets and Sequences. A Set is 1 or more cards of the same rank. A Sequence is a straight flush of 3 or more cards, or multiple straight flushes of 2 or more ranks that are identical in every way except suit. The court cards can be used as their own rank in a sequence or as a singleton, or used as wild, representing any card of lower rank than itself, as long as at least one natural card ranked 2-10 is included in the combination. Thus TTJJ would be permitted using the Queen or King wild as a Jack. In addition, there are some special kinds of combinations, called bombs. Bombs can be played on top of any kind of regular combination, and to beat a bomb, one must play another bomb of higher rank.
The bombs are (ranked low to high in this order) 3579, in 4 different suits (unofficially known as a rainbow bomb), JQ, JK, QK, JQK, and 3579 in a single suit (unofficially, a flush bomb). If a trick is won with a bomb, the winner of the trick gives the cards to an opponent of their choice (or in tournament play, the player who actually played to the trick immediately prior to the winner of the trick). This is important for scoring. Play continues until all but one player has shed their cards.
Scoring comes from three sources. Firstly, whenever a player goes out, check among the remaining players to see who has the most cards in hand (including any court cards that player may have on the table). The player going out scores 5 points per card. In a 3 player game, the first player to go out gets a bonus of 5 points. Once play for the round has ended, the cards in the hand of the remaining player, and the cards set aside at the start to form the Haggis, are added to the cards won of the player that goes first. The second source of points is from the cards won. The 3, 5, 7 and 9 are worth 1 point each. The Jack, Queen, and King are worth 2, 3, and 5 points respectively. The third source of points is from betting. Before a player has played their first card (even if a number of plays have already been made by other players), they may bet that they will go out first. They can make a small bet (15 points) or a large bet (30 points). If they successful in being the first to shed all their cards, they score those points. However, if they fail, then the player who went out first, plus any player who didn’t make a bet scores those points.
Keep playing this way, until one player has scored at least 350 points, or 250 for s shorter game.
I do have a couple of quibbles with the rules as written. Firstly, the 5-point bonus for the first player to shed all their cards in the 3-player game. I understand its need; if the second player goes out without the third player having shed any additional cards, the first two players would otherwise score the same points from this source, which seems unfair to the first player. My quibble with this is that it means you have to remember different scoring rules in a 2- or 3-player game. If the rule had been that “The first player to shed all their cards gets a 5-point bonus” and made no reference to the number of players, it would have provided the benefit to the 3-player game with minimal impact on the 2-player, and it would make for a more elegant ruleset. The other rule I have an issue with is the difference between casual play and tournament play in how you give away the bombed tricks. I can understand in some games, you may want some subtle differences, where, for example, the designer thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to have a tie in casual play, but respects the need to differentiate in a tournament, but this rule difference changes the dynamic of the game quite significantly. In the casual play rules, I make the decision about who I give the trick to after playing the bomb, most likely based on my perception of their current score and how well they are doing in this trick. In tournament play, knowing who would get the points (unless overbombed) may affect my decision on whether or not to bomb at all. Additionally, I may bomb specifically in the hope that an opponent will over bomb it in order to be the recipient of those points. I suppose I don’t see the need for the difference, and more than likely I’ll play by tournament rules so that should I ever be in a tournament, I’ll already be familiar with the dynamic.
Anyway, let’s look at some of how the game is played in more detail. I’ve played Tichu a lot. Tichu is essentially for 4 players, and Haggis is a climbing game for 2 or 3, so I think it’s natural that Tichu players would want to look at this as a potential game for when they are short a player or two.
It’s not partnership. That may seem obvious, but having a partner in Tichu means that they can help you out when things look rough sometimes.
Everyone has a bomb. Because everyone gets a JQK, everyone is guaranteed a bomb. This means going for an early big play, with a low singleton card left is generally unwise, as you know someone can bomb it, and you don’t have a partner to help you play your last card.
It’s not just about going out first, but going out early. You score a bonus for going out early – based on the number of cards your opponents have left.
Bombs are expensive. All the cards used in bombs are points that you’re giving away, unless your opponent overbombs, and then you (may) get them back. That means overbombing is really expensive, as not only are you giving away the points in your bomb, but the points in the bomb you are overbombing.
Furthermore, not playing bombs can be very expensive, particularly in the 2-player game. It’s best, score wise, to play cards as regular combinations. But if I’ve decided that cards are going to be played as a bomb anyway, then I really should play them as a bomb, even though that means I give away the trick value of the cards. If I get caught with them in my hand, then the trick value goes to my opponent anyway, as they add my hand to their won tricks, and they get an additional 5 points per card!
More ways to play a given hand. In Tichu, often, cards have an obvious way to play them, and a bomb is seldom broken up (with the typical exception of Aces and maybe Kings). In Haggis, the cards that can be used to make bombs are deliberately interfering with the combinations available, by splitting up the sequences, or by not having wilds to use to make combinations.
Not every card is in play. If you’re a strong card counter in Tichu, you’ll know what cards are still out there. In Haggis, there are 3 (3-player) or 8 (2-player) cards out of play, in the Haggis, which leaves why a card didn’t get played to beat your trick open to question.
Bets seem less significant. In Tichu, it’s mostly about the bets, and going out 1-2. In Haggis, the bets (and remember, either type can be made up until you play your first card, so the decision of which to make is based purely on your level of confidence and sense of risk), but the points that can be made from the scoring cards and going out early seem to be more significant. The caveat here is that I may not have played enough games of Haggis to really appreciate how good a given hand is, so my perspective on this may still be skewed.
In conclusion: it’s not Tichu. The dynamic of the ways to play cards, and the tensions are somewhat different from those in Tichu. I think it’s also simpler to teach than Tichu is. But it certainly seems to scratch the same itch that Tichu scratches for me, which means I am going to play it a lot.
This review also appears on Board Game Geek
