Canadian Salad
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Canadian Salad (also called Wisconsin Scramble) is a flexible player-count trick-taking game. The differing objectives for each hand changes the strategy of play making for a fun, chaotic, avoidance game.
Object
Have the lowest score after six hands.
Setup
Cards rank from high to low A-K-Q-J-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2.
- For three players remove the 2 of clubs and deal 17 cards each.
- For four players, deal out all cards for 13 cards each.
- For five players remove the 2 of clubs and the 2 of diamonds and deal 10 cards each.
- For six players remove the 2 and 3 of clubs and 2 and 3 of diamonds and deal 8 cards each.
Hands
The basic game consists of six hands, played in order, resulting in penalty points as follows.
- No tricks. Each trick won counts 10 points. Total 130 points.
- No hearts. Each hearts taken counts 10 points. Total 130 points.
- No queens. Each queen taken counts 25 points. Total 100 points.
- No king of spades. The player who takes the king of spades in a trick scores 100 points.
- No last trick. The winner of the last trick scores 100 points.
- Combination of all the above. All scores from hands 1-5 count. Total 560 points.
Play
The player to the left of the dealer leads any card to the first trick.
Players must follow suit if possible. A player who has no card of the suit ("short-suited") led may play any card.
The player of the highest card of the suit that was led wins the trick and leads any card to the next trick.
There is no trump suit.
Scoring
At the end of the hand all points are recorded. The player with the lowest score (out of a combined total of 1120) after all 6 hands wins.
Nathan's Notes: I learned this at Viget25 from Cindy Caldwell. It feels reminiscent of Hearts in trying to avoid tricks. The early hand scores don't matter as much as the last ones, especially round 6 as you can earn half of the total score in that round alone!
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