corvo.txt

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                        CORVO
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/this is a work in progress/

A strategic 2-player card game combining tactical hand
building and combination-based shedding.

Required Materials:
- Standard 52-card deck
- Paper and pencil for scoring
- Optional: doubling cube

Overview:
- Phase 1: Hand-building phase where players play tricks
  to sculpt their hands to use in the next phase.
- Phase 2: Climbing/shedding phase where players play
  combinations to shed cards. Winner is the first to shed
  all of their cards.

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Phase 0 - The deal
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Players shuffle and cut and then burn two cards from the
deck before dealing out 13 cards to each player. The
remaining 24 cards are put between the players. Use a
random method to determine who will start the game as the
leader.

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Phase 1 – Hand Building
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During the hand-building phase, players will play 12-tricks
where for each trick the following steps are taken:

1. Reveal the top card to set the trump suit. This happens
   before every trick.

2. Starting with the leader, each player plays one card to
   the trick. Players are not required to follow the suit of
   the card led.

3. Highest card of the led suit or trump wins the trick and
   determines the leader for the next trick.

3. Winner of the trick chooses one card to take into their
   hand from the following options:
   a) the revealed trump card
   b) the card that lost the trick
   c) the blind top card of the draw pile

4. Loser then takes one of the remaining options into hand.

5. The card that won the trick and the remaining unchosen card
   are removed from the game. If the face-down card on the draw
   pile was the unchosen card, then it is removed face-down and
   never revealed. After ever trick, exactly two cards will be
   removed from the game.

Repeat the above numbered steps until the draw pile is
exhausted.

The winner of the last trick is the phase 2 start player.

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Phase 2 – Climbing / Shedding Play
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1. Players alternate turns playing increasingly powerful legal
   combinations from their 13-card phase 2 hand, or passing.

2. Legal combinations, in order by power:
   - Single: any one card
   - Pair: two cards of equal rank
   - Triple: three cards of equal rank
   - Quad: four cards of equal rank
   - Five-card poker hands:
     * Straight (any 5 consecutive ranks)
     * Flush (any 5 cards of same suit)
     * Full House (3 + 2 of same rank)
     * Straight Flush (consecutive 5 of same suit)

If a single, pair, triple, or quad is played then players must
only respond with a higher ranked set of the same kind, or with
any of the 5-card Poker hands.

3. Determining a winning combo:
   - Higher ranked combos that match the type of the previous
     play win.
   - When comparing same type:
     * Higher rank beats lower rank
     * If ranks tie, suit rank determines winner:
       Spades > Hearts > Diamonds > Clubs

Turn continues until a player cannot or chooses not
to play a higher combination. The player who played
the last combination leads the next turn.

The player who sheds all of their cards first wins phase 2,
and calculates their score.

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Phase 2 Scoring
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The phase 2 winner scores the number of cards left in the
opponent's hand.

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Variant – Doubling Cube
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- Cube ownership: initially given to the phase 2 start
  player.

- Cube starts at value 1; cube owner may propose a double
  **before playing a combination on their turn**.

- Opponent may accept or decline:
  * Accept: game continues at doubled value; cube ownership
    switches to the opponent.
  * Decline: opponent immediately loses at current cube
    value multiplier.

- Leftover cards × cube value determines points if this
  variant is used.

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Design notes
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Corvo was designed to combine the strategic strengths
of Big Two and German Whist, while solving downsides of
both games for 2-players.

The Downsides of the games for two players are, IMO:

- German Whist: perfect information after phase 1 leads
  to a phase 2 playout that is perfunctory.

- Big Two: There are no compelling 2-players variants
  of the game that preserve any of the interesting
  dynamics of the 4-player game.

The ways that these downsides were addressed:

- German Whist contributed phase 1 hand-building, trick
  play, and partial information tension. German Whist's
  downside is that, by itself, it is a straightforward
  trick-taking game with limited scoring depth. phase 2
  of Corvo solves this by introducing Big Two–style
  combination play, allowing players to make multi-card
  strategic plays and shed cards in meaningful ways,
  creating richer tactical decisions and a more engaging
  scoring dynamic. Burning two cards before hands are
  dealt adds some hidden information to an otherwise
  perfect information GW mode. Playing out only 12 tricks
  still preserves uncertainty, even if the trick-winner
  always takes a revealed card.

- Burning only two cards may not add enough uncertainty,
  but if play testing reveals that to be the case then
  I can scale up to as many as four (with players taking
  11 tricks) to increase uncertainty.

- Big Two contributed phase 2 combination climbing play;
  in 2-player Big Two, strategic tension is lost because
  using 26-card hands would give perfect information,
  while smaller hands reduce gradual revelation. phase 1
  of Corvo solves both problems by letting players
  sculpt their phase 2 hands through trick play with
  partial information, preserving uncertainty and
  enabling gradual hand revelation.

- By focusing scoring on leftover opponent cards, the
  game simplifies scoring. My hope is that
  the game is engaging enough to motivate two great
  friends or family members to play matches up to
  1M points!

- The doubling cube is optional for now, but I hope it
  adds a strategic meta-layer, rewarding skillful
  judgment on when to escalate stakes.

- The game is named Corvo after Baron Corvo (aka
  Frederick Rolfe), whose life inspired the two-phase
  structure. He frequently cultivated intimate
  relationships (i.e. phase 1), only to later burn those
  relationships to the ground through scandal and betrayal
  (i.e. phase 2). See AJA Symons' biography, The
  Quest for Corvo, which explores these aspects of his
  life in exquisite depth. If any "theming" occurs then it
  will revolve around this quirky character.