The Seagull

Dossier

The Seagull is a trick-taker for 2-4 players inspired by Yusuke Matsumoto’s Nokosu Dice and Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, playable with a standard deck of cards. As in Nokosu Dice, players draft cards at the start of each round to determine trump, then play out all cards but one to determine their final bid. The twist is that players also start with two “Guns” – a card in their hand and a card on the table – which are hidden from them at the beginning of the round. These can be flipped face-up to a trick at any time to bypass following suit: potentially allowing a player to escape a tricky situation. If not played to a trick, they can instead be converted to a zero bid, or used to make a blind bid for more points – or a more catastrophic failure – at the end. The game lasts for 3-4 rounds (depending on player count), with the highest-scoring player at the end declared the winner. The theme is inspired both by Chekhov’s play The Seagull – and his principle that “if you introduce a gun in the opening of a play, it must go off before the finale” – and by the audacious and mean-spirited nature of gulls more generally, which players are encouraged to adopt as a guide to play. —description from the designer

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