Fliqten

Fliqten is a card game played in Kwitzka. The goal is to lose all your cards before the other players.

## Setup

From a standard, shuffled deck of cards, each player is dealt 9 cards in total: 3 face-down cards in a row (blind cards), 3 face-up cards on top of the blind cards, and 3 hand cards. The blind cards will be the last cards to be played and players are not allowed to see or change these cards until the ending turns of the game. The face-up will be the second to last set of cards to be played in the game (before the blind cards). At the beginning of the game, players are allowed to switch their hand cards with their face-up cards in an attempt to produce a strong set of face-up cards (possibly all perfect wildcards) for later in the game.

## Gameplay

The starting player is the first person to have been dealt a 3 as a face-up card. If no player was dealt such a card, then the first player to announce that they have a 3 in hand starts.[a] (If no player has a 3, then the game is started by the person who was dealt a 4; if no 4, then a 5, and so on.) The second player must then place an equal or higher card (in numerical value) than the card played previously, this card is to be put on top of the starting card to form the discard pile. All subsequent players follow this rule.

Each player should have at least 3 cards in their hand at all times and a after placing a card down draws another card from the deck - until the deck runs out of cards. The game continues sequentially in a clockwise direction.

Aces are the highest card in the deck, trumped only by a wild card. Twos and tens are wildcards, and can be played on any card. Any card can be played to follow a two. When a ten is played, the discard pile is immediately "burned" (removed from play and set aside for the remainder of the game). The same player then takes another turn, playing any card or set to begin a new discard pile.

If a player is able to place four cards with the same numerical value (e.g. 5♦ 5♣ 5♥ 5♠ or 8♥ 8♦ 8♠ 8♣), this burns the discards in the same manner as a ten. Burning can also happen across multiple players' turns: for example, if a player first plays 5♥ 5♦ 5♠ and the next player in turn has the 5♣, they can drop that card to finish the set and burn the discard pile. The player who burns the discard pile must then play another card.

When a player has no wildcards and no single card that is equal or higher in value than the card on top of the play pile, they must pick up all the cards on the play pile and end their turn. Picking up the pile can often put a player at a great disadvantage when many cards have been played, as they will have more cards to shed than other players. Even so, it is still possible to quickly recover from this handicap by burning the pile.

After a player has no more cards in their hand, and the deck is empty, they need to play from their three face-up cards. They cannot play from this set of cards until they have finished with their hand. Following the rule: the value of the face-up card must be higher than the value of the card on the top of the pile, if a player cannot play the face-up card, then they must pick up the pile. Once all of the face-up cards have been played, a player must then play their blind cards. These cards are played one at a time, without the player knowing the card until the moment it is played. As usual, if the chosen card is lower than the previous card played, they need to pick up the pile, and are required to play their entire hand again before progressing to the rest of their face-down cards. When a player has no cards left, they are out. The game progresses until only one player is left, at which point they lose the game.

## Notes

[a] Regional variation: All players with a visible 3 announce this, and the setup where the most low cards are played is chosen for the start.