Enemy Anemone

Listen, Enemy Anemone is a trick-taking game with cards and numbers. There is not really much theme here, but it has to be admitted that the name is rather fun to say.

Choose one suit per player; each suit is ranked 1-10. Shuffle the deck, then deal ten cards to each player. Place the nine anemone cards within reach. The starting player plays a card face up in front of themselves. Each other player must, in clockwise order, play a card face up in front of themselves in a suit that has not yet been played to the trick. If a player cannot play a suit that has not been played, they discard a card from their hand into their score pile. The highest card played wins the trick and takes all the played cards into their score pile. The lowest card played takes an anemone card, which can be added to a card in a future trick to raise the card’s value by 1 per anemone card played. If cards are tied for the highest or lowest value, the card played later breaks the tie.

When all cards have been played, the players get 1 point per card taken, with the 3s, 5s and 8s of each colour giving an extra point. The player with the lowest score at the end of the hand gets an anemone card.

The player with the highest score starts the next round. Play four rounds, after which the player with the highest score wins. In the event of a tie, the player with more anemones left wins.