The Great Dalmuti

5th March 2019

The final game of the night at 'The Sovereigns). Game 3 was 'The Great Dalmuti'.

The Great Dalmuti is a card game designed by Richard Garfield - he who invented 'Magic: The Gathering'. In fact, The Great Dalmuti was the first game Richard Garfield designed after Magic - and it was another card game!

There was a lot of speculation about what this game could be?
It turned out that it was a 'normal' card game.
It also turned out that it is a good card game.

The Great Dalmuti is a trick-laying card game with a little twist: It's all about social inequality.

At the start of every game a social hierarchy is established (either by cutting the deck or the finishing order in the previous game).

The social order goes like:
Greater Dalmuti: Sitting at the top of the heap is The Greater Dalmuti.
Lesser Dalmuti: Next is the Lesser Dalmuti, lower than Greater Dalmuti, but higher than the Merchant classes. He know his place - much like the Two Ronnies sketch.
Merchants: There can be up to 4 Merchants in a game, they are also arranged according to the social hierarchy.
Lesser Peon: The Lesser Peon is not quite bottom of the heap, that is reserved for...
Greater Peon: The Greater Peon, who truly is at the bottom. Even worse; the Greater Peon must shuffle and deal cards out at the start of the game.

Once the social order has been established, players must change seats according to their position in the hierarchy.

The Greater Dalmuti doesn't have to move (and why should he, he's the most important player in the game). So The Lesser Dalmuti sits to the left of The Greater Dalmuti. To the left of The Lesser Dalmuti sit the Merchants, starting with the most important merchant and going downwards in order to the left. To the left of the lowest merchant sits The Lesser Peon and finally to the left of The Lesser Peon sits The Greater Peon.

Interestingly, this means that The Greater Dalmuti is to the left of the Greater Peon and that they sit next to each other.

Next, the rules need to be explained before talking about how the game's twist affects the gameplay.

The deck of cards consists of 80 cards.

• There are 78 cards numbered from 1 to 12: The lower the value, the more important the card. The number of the card also shows how many of that card appear in the deck. Thus there is only one 1 card, 6 6's and 12 12s and so on. This all adds up to 78. All the cards are illustrated with pictures indicating their value. The 12 card show peasants, lower numbered cards then show knights, bishops, etc until the 1 card - which depicts The Great Dalmuti.
• The deck also contains 2 jokers, these are wild cards. On their own they have a value of 13. But when a Joker is played with other cards, it assumes the value of those cards (see below for further explanation).

The goal is to empty your hand of cards. This is done by playing 'tricks'.
Whoever is The Greater Dalmuti begins the first round of the game. In subsequent rounds, whoever last played a trick begins the round.

• So the starting player can play as many cards from their hand as they want, provided all the cards played have the same value.​ Thus they could play 3 5s or 4 10s etc.
• Play proceeds to the left and the next player along must play a trick that 'beats' the previous trick or pass. In order to beat the trick, the player must meet the following criteria: They must play the same number of cards, the value on the cards must all be identical and finally the value of the cards must be lower than the previous trick. So if the previous player played 3 5s, you must play 3 4s or 3 3s. If the previous player played 4 10s, you must play 4 9s or 4 8s etc.
• Jokers; a joker played on its own is worth 13, worse than a peasant! But when played with other cards it assumes the value of those cards. Thus if you have 2 6s and play a joker with those cards, it becomes a trick of 3 6s. This means you can use jokers to play unbeatable tricks if you have the right cards. If you play a joker with 2 2s, it becomes 3 2s. A trick that cannot be trumped.
• If you cannot play a trick, you must pass. Additionally, you can voluntarily pass. If you do choose to pass and then if play comes back round to you, you can choose to play a trick or pass again. That is; passing does not omit you from subsequent trick laying in the same round if the opportunity arises.
• Once everybody has passed in a round and cannot (or chooses not to) play another trick, the round ends. All the played cards are discarded.
• The last player to have played a trick, starts the round.
• The finishing order determines the social order for the following round. The first player to empty their hand becomes The Greater Dalmuti in the next round, the second player to empty their hand becomes The Lesser Dalmuti and so on, through the merchant classes and finally on to the peons.
• The game has no scoring mechanic, it's all about the bragging rights!

So that's the rules, what about the twist? What about the social inequality?

That's where taxation comes in. What's taxation?
​

• Once the social hierarchy for a game has been determined, the cards dealt and Before play begins is when we have taxation.
• In taxation, The Greater Peon must give their best 2 cards to The Greater Dalmuti, that is the 2 cards with the lowest value, (luckily Jokers count as 13 because they are single cards). In return The Greater Dalmuti will give The Greater Peon any 2 card they choose to, (these will probably be 11s & 12s).
• The Lesser Peon must give their best card to The Lesser Dalmuti, who in return will give a single card of their choice to The Lesser Peon.
• This means that if either of The Peons had the Great Dalmuti card, it will now be in the hands of The Dalmutis. This generally means that The Dalmutis have a 50% chance of starting with The Great Dalmuti card (which is a 1).

However, during taxation, there is a small chance of something called revolution. This is how revolution works.

• There are 2 types of revolution.
• If a player (other than The Greater Peon) has both jokers: During the taxation phase, they can show the jokers to everyone and trigger revolution.
• If there is revolution, the no tax is collected (The Peons do not have to give away their best cards).
• If The Greater Peon has both Jokers, then they can show everyone The Jokers and trigger greater revolution.
• If there is a greater revolution, then all the players switch places! This means the Greater and Lesser Dalmutis become the Greater and Lesser Peons and the Peons become the Dalmutis. The Merchants also switch around.

​And that's the rules, with a small twist of inequality thrown in for good measure.

This inequality makes for some interesting asymmetrical game play. When playing, what tends to happen is that the players at the higher end of the hierarchy tend to dominate the first few rounds, (quite often, by the time play reaches the lower positioned players, they have to pass) this allows the higher ranked players to dominate.

But usually, at some point the Peons will get to start a round; then they tend to steamroller everyone else for a while. When a Peon player decides to lay (as their first trick) something like 7 12s, it's likely that The Greater Dalmuti player won't even have 7 cards in their hand, nevermind 7 cards that match!

Whilst the lower value cards are better, sometimes they cannot match the number of higher numbered cards that are played.

Like all good games, your decisions here are very important. Sometimes you have to resist the urge to always just get rid of your worst cards (very often a sound strategy) to retain a set or keep a good card for later.
EG; do you break a set of 3 cards to play a trick now or retain them, so that later they can be used make a trick harder to trump.
Being able to 'control' when a trick ends, so that you get to determine the cards that start the next trick is very useful.

The Great Dalmuti is a quick and easy game that is fun to play and I only have 2 minor gripes about the game.

• The game requires at least 4 players, on the flip side, it does support up to 8 players.
• The seating needs to be rearranged after every game.

Other than that, it's nice little game.