Friday Night Gaming: Flaschenteufel

September 18, 2009
Brian wasn't with us. We spent 3 hours working on character creation for a superhero game I'm running and playtesting for the group. Thankfully, the time was mostly thinking of character concepts rather than game mechanics. I had hoped to start a scenario, but I knew it would have been too much. So instead, we brought a new game to the table.

Flaschenteufel aka, The Bottle Imp
This is an interesting point trick-taking game using a special deck of 36 cards of 3 suits (red, blue, and yellow). The cards are numbered 1 to 37 (with no 19) and this card shows how the suits are distributed. Cards have a point value of 1 to 6, with higher-numbered cards being worth more than lower-numbered cards. After all the cards are dealt (it handles 2 to 4 players), each player takes one card, places it aside in a kitty, then passes one card to the left and one card to the right. The first trick is lead by the person to the left of the dealer.

Each player in turn must play a card that matches the suit of the lead card. If they cannot, they can play any card. Ian was sure that he screwed up by not following suit when he could. And I'm sure others make the same mistake as well. We took to asking "You don't have any (color)?" when they didn't follow suit just to double-check.

There are no trump suits, but who actually wins the trick is a bit complicated to explain and we were making mistakes throughout the game. There is a bottle (containing an imp and represented by a wooden piece in our version) that starts out with a value of 19. If all the cards played to the trick are above the value of the bottle, the highest card wins the trick. If any cards are under the value of the bottle, then the highest card that is lower than the value of the bottle wins the trick. And the trick winner gets the bottle, places it on the card that won the trick, and that card becomes the new value of the bottle.

Thus, the bottle changes hands as its value drops. After all the cards have been played, the player with the bottle scores negative points equal to the point value of the cards in the kitty. All the other players score points equal to the point value of the cards in the tricks they took.

It took me several hands to get the hang of the game. Here is what I learned:

• Playing high cards early is not a good idea. Your 37 is unbeatable unless someone plays a card under the bottle value. It's probably best to save your high cards until the bottle value can't be undercut any more.
• You want to win tricks and often the best or only way to do that is to take the bottle. This is good, but you have to have an exit plan. You have to know what low cards are still out there for someone else to take the bottle from you.
• Once someone has played under the bottle value, you can play your low cards, safely dumping them under the card that will win the trick. You want to minimize these opportunities for your opponents.
• Being stuck with the bottle at the end may not be that bad. Hopefully, people got rid of low cards, so you only lose a few points. Usually, you can make up for the lost points, and more, if you do well the next hand. The value of the kitty is usually 12 to 16 (very approximately), whereas you might pick up 20 to 40 points in a hand.
  
• Card counting is very difficult. Keeping track of suits is practically impossible; it's simply too easy for someone to void a suit. However, it really helps to know what low and high cards are still out there. For example, you can take the bottle with a 4 if you know that the 1, 2, or 3 are still out there. They will eventually have to take it from you. And this segues into...
  
• Sometimes you're just screwed. As in Hearts, the deal and card passing can conspire against you and force you to lose. In one hand, Robert held the 1 through 8 (iirc), which guaranteed that he'd be stuck with the bottle. The best he could do is to deny as many tricks from the rest of us as he could.
  

It is that last point that sours me a bit on this game. I still like it and would definitely play it again (if we can convince Robert to play), but there will simply be those hands when no amount of skill or finesse will save you. I can definitely see where the game can become frustrating in the same way Spades can if you keep missing your bid or taking overtrick penalties.

The rules didn't give a definite ending point. They suggest a pre-determined number of hands or a set number of points (they said 500). We played to 200 (decided after we started playing and when I was away from the table). Ian and I ended with 196, Merwin had exactly 200, and Robert was down at 89.