Top 10 Trick-Taking and Ladder-Climbing Card Games

boardgamequest.com:

As mentioned (and perhaps coined?) in my recent review of Thrones of Valeria, we are in the midst of a magnificent Trickaissance. There has been an absolute boom in games that rely on the primary mechanic of “trick-taking,” or the adjacent mechanic of “ladder-climbing.” If you’re interested in why that may be, there’s an excellent article by Chris Wray that digs into that question over at The Opinionated Gamers which will explain the phenomenon better than I could.

Before we continue, let’s define a few terms. Trick-taking is the easier to define of the two, as versions of this game have populated our leisure time since we were kids. If you’ve ever played Bridge, Hearts, Spades, or Euchre, you’ve played a trick-taking game. If you haven’t, the central concept is simple: a player “leads” with a card of a certain suit, with subsequent players needing to “follow,” i.e., play a higher card of the same suit if they hope to win the hand. One suit may be designated as a “trump” suit, meaning it will trump, or beat, a card of any other suit. One card played from each player adds up to a “trick,” and whoever wins it, “takes” it, hence trick-taking.

Ladder-climbing games, sometimes referred to as “shedding” games, while not necessarily quite as familiarly imprinted upon our childhood brains, come in the more recently familiar forms of Tichu and Scout. The central mechanic here is trying to “shed” all your cards before your opponents. This is done by playing increasingly larger or higher value groups of cards, often referred to as “melds.” Melds are usually some version of identical card values (pairs, three-of-a-kind etc.), runs (3-4-5-6, etc.), or flushes (all the same suit). In some games, such as Tichu, a person may play a run