Scout - First Play!

30th August 2022

It's a Tuesday evening and we're with the Woking Board Gaming Club at The Sovereigns to play trick-taking card Scout.

Step right up, step right up friends. Prepared to be entertained and thrilled by the most death-defying, deck-dealing, trick-taking card game you ever set eyes on.

---

What's in a game?

• ​Cards: Scout uses a deck of 45 cards. The cards seem a little longer than typical playing cards.
  Unusually, each card is numbered twice, once at the 'top', then another number upside-down at the 'bottom'. These numbers are for the most part of different value and range from 1-10.
  Cards have small line-art illustrations of various circus trappings and also names of circus players who I suppose performs the acts. 
• Tokens: There are several types of card token in Scout.
  Dollar: These cute little tokens are proportioned like like bank notes, each one represents a dollar which translates to a victory point (VP.).
  Scoring tokens: These are all double-sided, one side has a positive score and the other a negative one, i.e., a +1 point token is also a -1 point token on other side since scores can go into the negative. Different valued tokens are differently shaped.
  Scout & show token: These tokens are shaped like a old style car.
  First player marker: Usually I don't both mentioning first player markers but this one is shaped like a top hat!

The quality of the cards in scout are average which is to say that they are what you'd expect of a modern game.
The tokens feel sturdy and well made.

While each card contain smudges of a pair attractive bright colours there's little artwork in Scout, what there is, is either monochrome illustration or stylised and slightly cartoony. It fits the loose circus theme well enough though.

Only numbers are utilised in Scout, no iconography related to game play appears which means the game is easily understood.

---

---

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: The cards used will be determined by player count. Take those cards and shuffle them into a face-down deck.
• Tokens: Give each player a scout & show token.
• First player: Determine a start player and give them the first player token.

On to play
Scout is played over a number of rounds equal to the player count, i.e., if there are 4 players, there will be 4 rounds.
Each round will consist of numerous hands of card being played, players will take turns trying to empty their own hands while also accumulating cards and dollars into their own playing area.
The game uses a traditional turn structure with the active player acting and play progressing to the player on their left.
Broadly speaking, the active player can choose 1 of 2 actions and a round consists of the following:

• Deal: All the cards in the deck are dealt face-down to the players.
  Keep order: Upon picking up their cards, each player should splay them out from left-to-right and view the numbers.
  Players cannot change the order of their cards. 
  Rotate: Players can however, rotate their cards 180' and use the upside-down numbers.
  This can only be done once at the start of a round.
• Actions: The active player has a choice of 1 of the following 2actions.
  • Show: This action allows the active player to put a trick into play.
    Opening play: If it is the first turn of a round or no trick is in play for whatever reason, the active player must play a trick. This becomes the active trick.
    Trick: To play a trick, the active player must play 1 or more cards from their hand face-up into a central playing area.
    When playing more than 1 card, they must be adjacent to each other in the active player's hand.
    There are 2 types of trick.
    Run: The active player may play any number of cards that increase or decrease in sequence. E.g., a 2, 3 ,4, 5 or a 9, 8, 7.
    Set: The active player may play a set of any size, that is 2-of-a-kind, 3-of-a-kind and so on.
    Trump: If an active trick has already been put into play by another player, the active player can possibly trump it in a couple of ways.
    Basically, playing new trick which has more cards than the current trick will always trump it.
    Additionally, playing a new trick with an equal number of cards as the current trick can trump it if the new trick is the same kind of trick but has higher numbers OR is a set vs a run. I.e., a any 3-of-a-kind will beat any run of 3 numbers.
    Finally, when the active player trumps a previous player's trick, they take all of those player's cards and puts them face-down in their personal playing area, these will score VPs at the game end.
    So, what happens when the active play cannot trump the active trip? This brings me to...
  • Scout: If the active player cannot trump the active trick, they must scout instead. This involves taking a card from the active trick and adding it to their own hand. There are a couple of provisos though.
    Take card: A card can only be taken from either end of the active trick, not from the middle, obviously if there's only 1 card in a active trick, then it is taken.
    Add to hand: Upon taking a card from the active trick, it can be flipped to either orientation and placed anywhere in the active player's hand.
    This can be very helpful as it can be used to fill gaps in blocks of cards.
    Compensation: Whenever a card is scouted from the active trick, whoever played that trick will receive a dollar from the supply as compensation for their performer being poached.
  • Scout & Show: Each player has a scout & show token. Once per round, the active player may flip their token to perform a scout & show action.
    The active player can first perform the scout action as explained above and then also perform the show action also as explained above.
    This is a powerful move, not only does it allow the active player to potentially fill a gap in their cards while decreasing the size of the active trick it also allows them to immediately play a trick. Used effectively, the scout & show action can be a game changer.
• End of turn: Once the active player has completed their action, play progresses to the player on their left.
• End of round:  Play throughout a round continues until 1 of 2 conditions are met.
  Empty hand: If the active player manages to empty their hand, that is, no longer have any cards to play, then the round immediately ends.
  Unbeaten trick: If a player has put a trick into play and it is still the active trick when they become the active player again, i.e., all other players scouted: Then round immediately ends.
  • Round scoring: When a round ends, it is immediately scored as per the following criteria.
    Dollar: Each dollar token a player has acquired (As a result of having their tricks scouted.) earn that player 1VP.
    Trumped tricks: Each card a player has in their personal area from trumping other player's tricks also earns them 1VP.
    Hand: Each card that a player has in their hand will cost them 1VP! 
    Note: If someone ended a round due to playing a unbeaten trick, their hand does not count against their VPs.
    Also; the active trick does not score (or lose.) any VPs.
    Once points for the current round has have been calculated and added to the scores from previous rounds, play progresses to the next round.
• Next round: Gather up all the cards and shuffle them back into a face-down deck and deal them all out to the players again.
  First player: Pass the first player token to the player on the left who will now open the next round by performing the show action.

Endgame
When a number of rounds equal to the player count had been finished, the game ends, the final round is scored and we go to final scoring.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

---

---

Overall
Scout packs quite a lot of gameplay into quite a small package.
At the heart of it, players are broadly speaking faced with 2 approaches towards a central conundrum: Should a player try and empty their hand or try and build up the size of the tricks in their hand instead?
Both have advantages and drawbacks.

A player emptying their hand is good because it minimises their losses if the round ends but playing small or single card tricks is a giving other players easy opportunities to score points by trumping them.
There's also the fact that a player ending up with for example a single card in their hand can have trouble playing it. If someone else plays any 2 card trick, there's no way a single card can trump it.

A player building up the cards and consequently the trick(s) in their hand can be hugely beneficial; playing a trick containing a large number of cards can end a round in that player's favour as not only do they not lose points for cards in card, they earn dollars for having their trick scouted.
The big risk is that a round may end before playing the big trick, which could lose them a lot of points.

There's also the possibility of working towards both, removing single cards or small tricks from a player's hand may create new tricks.

All of this is of course contextual. The cards a player chooses to have in their hand will influence their decisions as well as the actions of their opponents.
There's a higher level of play that comes from watching what others do and seeing if they are building up a trick or not - especially of they're scouting from small active tricks. Also quite often, when players also playing single card tricks, they're looking to combine cards into a bigger trick or looking to save a trick for later.

The show & scout action is also very important, if an opponent has played a big, using it well can genuinely bring about a reversal of fortune.

It means that players are always faced with meaningful decisions, playing and acquiring cards always has an impact.

I've seen some criticism that there's a notable amount of luck in Scout - and there's some truth to that but truth be told; so do many games of this type, especially card games. Which is why playing multiple hands of cards over multiple rounds acts as a 'balancer'.

There's also a quirk where the game is different according to player count.
For starters; game length can dramatically change according to player count: Not only do more players mean there's more turns per round, there's also more rounds to go as well! That being said, Scout doesn't have a particularly long play time. A 5-player game takes in the region of an hour to play out.
Hand size also varies quite with player count. In a 5-player game everyone starts with 9 cards, while in a 3-player game each player starts with 12 cards. It means that bigger tricks are more likely occur in games with a lower player count, something that players will want to take into account.

Another minor quibble is that it's a little tricky to pick up some of the rules about trumping an active trick with a new trick of the same size.

Minor grumbling aside though, I think Scout is an excellent trick taking card game that has a good amount of player interaction, gives players something to think about but can also provide some surprises.
If trick taking card games are something you like, then Scout is a game that you should definitely try.