Niner is a bidding trick-taking game for 2 players and the fourth game in the business card game series.
The core of the game is inspired by David Parlett’s excellent Ninety-Nine, but is otherwise designed from the ground up to be a 2 player only experience.
About the Game
One thing was clear when designing the lineup of business card games: I had to have a trick-taker in there.
In the spirit of the other games, being games that can be played with what you have on hand, I wanted to minimise the amount of cards as much as possible.
Ideally, I’d want the game to use as few as 20 cards, but through hours of playtesting we ended up at the current 24.
Why so few? Because I wanted to make sure that you’d be able to play this even if all you had was a Skat, Euchre, or Doppelkopf deck at hand.
Rules in Detail
Setup
Choose a dealer, then shuffle all 24 cards thoroughly.
Deal out 10 cards to each player, leaving 4 cards undealt.
Flip the top card from the 4 undealt over to reveal the trump suit for the round. The trump suit also determines the secondary bid.
Both players now choose a card from their hand to make their primary bid and put it face down on the table in front of them. Both players’ hands should now contain only 9 cards.
Bidding
Each round has two bids. A primary bid, and a secondary bid.
The suit of the bid card determines how many tricks you expect to win.
♦️ = 4, ♣️ = 3, ♥️ = 2, ♠️ = 1
In other words, putting a card face down with a ♦️ on it, you are saying “I think I can take 4 tricks”. Hitting your primary bid awards 2 points.
The trump card’s suit value can be either added or subtracted from the primary bid to form the secondary bid. The secondary bid rewards fewer points than the primary one, but adds more goals for you to aim for.
For example, if you bid ♦️ earlier and the trump suit is a ♣️, then the secondary bids are 4-3=1 and 4+3=7. Meaning you will gain a point if you take only 1 trick or take 7 tricks.
Note that there are 9 tricks to take, but the maximum bid is 8. This is by design.
Trick Play
Skip this section if you already know how to play a “must follow, may trump” trick-taking game.
The non-dealer leads the first trick. To do so they play any card they wish from hand. Their opponent must then follow suit, that is to say play any card of the same suit. There’s no obligation to play a higher card.
If the opponent is unable to follow suit, they may instead play any card they want.
Once both players have played a card, the winner of the trick is the player who played the highest trump card (the one that was turned face up earlier), and if there are no trump cards in the trick, then the highest card of the led suit wins.
If you can’t follow suit and you don’t play a trump, then you automatically lose the trick regardless of how high the number on your card is.
Card strength is determined as follows:
A > K > Q > J > 10 > 9
Suppose ♣️ is trump. You play a ♥️10 into the trick and your opponent follows with a ♥️K, then your opponent wins. If they then play an ♥️A, and you throw in a ♣️9, then you win because trump suits always beat other cards.
You should set your tricks aside face down in such a way that it becomes easy to count how many tricks you have taken. This simplifies scoring at the end.
Scoring
After 9 tricks the round is over and it’s time to score.
Successfully making your primary bid (taking as many tricks as you said you would) gives you 2 points.
Successfully making one of your secondary bids gives only 1 point.
Failing to hit any bid gives no points for the round.
The winner of the last trick of the round becomes the dealer for the next round.
End of the Game
The game ends once someone reaches a score of 9 points or after 9 rounds, whichever comes first.
Variant: Wild Nines
Instead of 9s being the worst card in any given suit, they are now permanent trumps ranked high to low in the bid order:
♦️9 > ♣️9 > ♥️9 > ♠️9 > A-10 of Trump
That is to say the 9 of Diamonds is the highest trump card in the game, and the 10 of Trump is the worst.
Note that the 9s are part of the active trump suit regardless of the suit actually printed on the cards. This means playing a ♥️9 is not allowed if the led suit is ♥️ and you still have other ♥️ left in your hand.
Example
The current trump is ♣️, meaning
Trump: ♦️9, ♣️9, ♥️9, ♠️9, ♣️A, ♣️K, ♣️Q, ♣️J, ♣️10
Diamonds: ♦️A, ♦️K, ♦️Q, ♦️J, ♦️10
Hearts: ♥️A, ♥️K, ♥️Q, ♥️J, ♥️10
Spades: ♠️A, ♠️K, ♠️Q, ♠️J, ♠️10
Playing with Other Decks
The core rules use a French-suited deck, but naturally this can also be played with the other major four-suited packs.
| Pack | 4 bid | 3 bid | 2 bid | 1 bid | Cards |
| French/English |  |  |  |  | 9, 10, J, Q, K, A |
| German |  |  |  |  | 9, 10, U, O, K, A |
| Swiss |  |  |  |  | 9, 10, U, O, K, A |
| Spanish/Italian |  |  |  |  | 6, 7, 10, 11, 12 |
Special Thanks
Special thanks to all the lovely playtesters involved in the development of this trick taker and to the Portland Game Collective Discord server for providing a space with solid feedback.
Links
BoardGameGeek Page: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/422357/niner