Fraser McHarg: Gang of Three

At my work we have a regular one hour lunchtime games session.  Over the last few years it has varied between two and seven regular players, with the occasional blow in guest.

These days it is predominantly card games, but we have had a few board games in the past and they may come back too.

Board games played include Ra, Tigris & Euphrates, Kingdoms, TransAmerica, Ticket to Ride, Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation and Duell.

Card games that I can remember include Guillotine, Gang of Four, Bang!, 500, MagBlast (1st, 2nd and 3rd editions), Naval Battles, CowPoker, Who’s the Ass?, David & Goliath, 6 Nimmt!, Rage, Mü und Mehr, Lost Cities, Havoc!, San Juan and of course Tichu.

Our number of participants varied mostly due to people leaving the building or the organisation, and we change games to suit the number of players.  Currently we have three regular players and a couple of occasional visitors.

On our current roster of games we have a number of different games.
For two players:
CowPoker, San Juan or the Mü variant that has the scoring that makes CowPoker seem quick to score.  San Juan is preferred, but the only copy is currently on rotation back home.

For three players:
Who’s the Ass? or Gang of Three

For four players:
Tichu.  If for some reason Tichu is not available then Gang of Four or Who’s the Ass?

Five or more players:
Who’s the Ass?  There are a few others like Rage and 6 Nimmt! that used to fill this spot, like San Juan they are currently rotated out.

Before we discovered Tichu our number one four-player game was Gang of Four.  We also had three and five player variants for back in the days when we had a much narrower selection of games at hand.  We estimate that we have retired four decks of Gang of Four cards because they were becoming difficult to deal and we have a fifth one rapidly approaching that point.

This does raise an issue, for a board game linen-finish cards are all very nice, but for a fair dinkum 100% card game, why can’t the gaming world catch-up with the Bridge world and move to 100% plastic cards?  They really do last much, much, much longer - I confirmed this with an owner of a Bridge Club just recently.  For cards that get shuffled and dealt multiple times an hour, 100% plastic is really the only way to go.  Sure they cost a bit more, but they are worth it.

Gang of Three is our variant of Gang of Four, probably made up by others as well, which is or three player mainstay.  It is a little more random than Gang of Four, but we still enjoy it.

In Gang of Three you deal the entire deck out equally to the three players, flipping the final card face up.  On the first hand of the game this card goes to the player with the 1+ (or student leader for fans of the Game Dealers edition) who is the start player for the hand.  If the 1+ card is flipped then the universe ends, no wait that’s the Armageddon variant, the last four cards are shuffled and redealt until the 1+ card is not the face up card.  In all future hands the face up card is taken by the winner of the previous hand who, as per normal rules, has the lead.

With 21 or 22 cards in your hand the chances of a Gang of four (or five or six) are somewhat higher than in the normal game, but you also have more cards to get rid of.  We are still waiting for that elusive gang of seven though.

Sometimes games only last a couple of hands, but in general they are in a similar range to normal Gang of Four.  A difference is that when you get caught with cards, you can get caught with a lot of cards.

This variant is certainly not for everyone, but is likely to remain common at our lunchtime sessions, at least until one or two of the three player items on my wish list appear.

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