Pushing To The End: The Failure Of Going Set

A few years ago, I was playing a lot of Tichu. It's a great game that pushes a lot of buttons that I like having pushed. It's (for example) a trick-taking game. And I love those. It's a partnership game, and I love those too.

I really like Pinochle and Rook, too. I suspect that, if I'd played more than a hand or two, I'd really enjoy Bridge. I sure enjoy reading about its strategy.

But all of these games have a small niggling problem: players can "go set." Although different games (and groups) use different terminology for it.

When you "go set," you fail to meet a pre-determined condition and lose points instead of gaining them for that hand. In Tichu, for example, you can call "Tichu" or "Grand Tichu."  If you then empty your hand first, you get a ton of points. If you don't, then you lose the points you would have gained. Your opponents still gain the points that they would have gained, too.

In theory - and on paper - it works. And it works in play, too. Mostly.

But losing points actually slows the game down.

Lately, I have been playing a ton of Haggis on BoardGameArena. Haggis is played very similarly to Tichu, only without the special cards (and with a few additional wrinkles). And it has a mechanism that is similar to calling "Tichu" to gain points.  In Haggis, you can place a bet.

If you place a bet and then don't go out first, then you don't lose points, though. Instead, any opponents who didn't place a bet score the points you would have made from that bet. So if I place a little bet (15 points) and fail, then my opponents each score that 15 points. If Steph and I each place little bets and Sean goes out first, then Sean will score 30 points from our best and Steph and I won't score any points.

In terms of spacing between players, it makes no difference.  If I bet 15 in Pinochle and fail, I lose 15 points and my opponents gain zero, for a total score difference of 15. If I bet 15 in Haggis and fail, my opponents all gain 15 points, for a total score differential of ... 15.

But the key difference is this:

My sliding back 15 points means that the game as a whole can potentially take 15 points longer to complete.  Whereas my failure pushing my opponents forward by 15 points means that the game is 15 points closer to a finish.

If everyone fails all the time at Tichu, it's possible to have both teams with negative points. Games like that can drag on for hours. But by flipping that on its ear, Haggis turned itself into a pretty fast-playing little game because every hand moves the game forward towards its end.

I find myself wanting to play Tichu and Pinochle with the failure condition flipped like it is in Haggis, just to see if it changes the feel of the game.