The allowed groupings are slightly different, which isn’t bad but will lead to a bit of glancing at the player aid.Probably, but overall it’s beneficial to lead. Since the lowest score leads to a hand, and you call Tichu when you play, I’m vaguely curious if there are certain hands where that could be a detriment.So giving away tricks by bombing usually isn’t a big deal, (although we sometimes have ~20-30 point tricks if lots of face cards are used as wilds to pair/complete runs). Odd cards are worth one point, evens are worth 0, and J/Q/K are worth 2/3/5 respectively. Losers got 10-30 points (plus sometimes a paid off bet if a Tichu called failed and they didn’t bid). Most hands scored the winner around 70 points, but some as few as 30-40. Our first game (3 players) took about 45-50 minutes (to 250 points).Haggis could possibly use something like Backgammon’s Crawford Rule (although I’m not exactly sure what it would be).

Also, once one player is close enough to likely go out, you’ll have some weird endgame issues. You bet 15 (or 30) points, but if you fail then the player who goes out first gets it, and the other player also gets it IF they didn’t call Tichu themselves. While going out first is big, calling Tichu isn’t so important.This means that players who aren’t going to go out may want to quickly play as many cards as possible, just to keep the score low. Going out quickly can be worth 70+ points easily without calling Tichu. Going out first is a big deal … you get 5 points for each card the player with the most cards has AND you get the cards the last player holds (when the others have gone out).Perhaps one idea is to deal out an extra card to each player (2 in 2 players) and have them toss the same number into the unused pile (which are worth points to however goes out first). I do think that not having passing detracts a bit.I’m no Tichu-hound, but I’ll play it, but I imagine each hand is going to be a bit slower. This adds lots of flexibility, at the cost that the hand plays slower. Whether to use your face cards as high single cards, wilds, or bombs is a big deal.The game moves inexorably towards completion. Finally - if you make a bet (“Call Tichu”) you gain more points OR give your opponents more points. Another nice aspect - If you bomb a trick you win it, but give the points to an opponent (serious players will use the Tournament rule, to restrict kingmaking). It’s clever - each player gets 3 set cards (J, Q, K) which can be used as higher single cards (the main deck is 2-10), wilds (for pairs, trips, sequences) or bombs (any two or all three make a bomb). I’ve finally gotten around to playing Haggis, a 2-3 player Tichu-esque game.

Hound in tichu