Description
The trick-taking card game Wizard uses sixty cards, made up of a traditional 52-card deck (1-13 in four suits) plus four wizards (high) and four jesters (low).Players compete over several rounds depending on the number of players, and whoever ends with the highest score wins. Each round, players are dealt a hand – one card in the first round, two in the second, three in the third and so on – and then trump is determined by turning over the top card of the deck: if a suit is revealed, that suit is trump; if the revealed card is a jester, it is turned face down and there is no trump for that round. If the revealed card is a wizard, the dealer chooses one of the four suits as trump. The dealer cannot choose "no trump". In the last round of each game all cards are dealt, so there is no trump. Players then state how many tricks they expect to win in the round.Playing and winning tricks follows mostly standard trick-taking rules. If a player plays a suited card, all other players must follow that suit if possible. If a player plays a jester, the next player determines the suit led. If a player plays a wizard, those following may play whatever they like. However, in all cases a player may always play a wizard or jester, even if they hold cards of the suit on the table.Once each player has played a card, determine the winner of the trick as follows: if one or more wizards were played, the player of the first wizard wins the trick, collects the cards and leads the next trick. If not, whoever played the highest trump wins the trick. If not, whoever played the highest card of the suit led wins the trick. If all players played jesters, whoever played the first jester wins.When all tricks have been played, players total their scores for the round. If a player matched their bid and won exactly as many tricks as stated at the start of the round, they score 20 points, plus 10 points for each trick taken. If a player misses their bid, they lose 10 points for each trick they missed by, regardless of whether they took more or fewer than predicted.A common variant of Wizard is that the total number of tricks bid in a round may not equal the round number, so that (at least) one player misses each round.
