Rules of Quäsenbö

by Jens Alfke & Ricci Adams

Quäsenbö is a Decktet game for two or more players, a more complex ancestor of Crazy Eights.

History

Quäsenbö was a popular game at the court of the badger Charlemagne. Its name means “too many”. The theme is thought to reflect political issues of royal succession in the many small kingdoms of the Empire; although some feminist historians believe it instead derives from the quäsenbö pan, a cast-iron skillet capable of turning out vast numbers of spätzle at a time.

Object of the game

To end your turn with no cards in your hand.

Setup

Shuffle the Decktet, including the Excuse card. Deal each player seven cards, and turn up the top card of the deck to start the play pile.

Game play

On your turn, you must play a card that has either a suit or a rank in common with the top card of the play pile. Put the card on top of the play pile, but slightly offset, so the previous two cards can still be seen.

Sevens are wild: you can always play a seven, whether or not it matches the top card. The next player then has to match its suits (or play another seven, of course.)

The Excuse is even wilder: you can always play it, and you get to decree what (single) suit it has, which the next player must follow.

If you cannot play any card, you must draw cards from the deck, one by one, until you draw one you can play. (If the deck runs out, take all but the top two cards of the play pile, shuffle them, and use them as the new deck.)

If the card you played has a suit in common with the previous two cards of the play pile (that is, if it causes the same suit to appear three times in a row), you have committed a quäsenbö, and must draw a card as a penalty. In the spirit of the game, you and/or the other player(s) should call out “Quäsenbö!” when this happens. Repeated ranks do not cause a quäsenbö, however.

It may happen that in playing your final card, you commit a quäsenbö and have to draw another one. This means you have not won the game, since you did not end your turn with zero cards!

Notes on Tactics

Aces and Crowns, having a single suit, are valuable because they form a bottleneck that limits what cards can be played next. Moreover, if the Ace/Crown you play followed suit, then the next player will incur a quäsenbö unless she can play a different Ace/Crown.

The quäsenbö rule makes it harder to get rid of multiple cards of the same suit, compared to Crazy Eights. This balances out the way the multi-suited cards make it easier to play a matching card.

Variations

We have not yet tried the game with more than three players. You would probably need to reduce the number of cards per player. Let me know how it goes.

You can make the game somewhat less wild by removing the Excuse.

Double Quäsenbö: Increase the penalty to two cards if a suit repeats four times in a row (and three cards for five times, etc.)

For increased historical verisimilitude, you can throw spätzle at a player who commits a quäsenbö. A player committing a double quäsenbö (if you play with that variant) should be dragged from the room and thrown headfirst into the moat.