I like cribbage and I have a deck of Rook cards. Of course I could strip the extra cards from the Rook deck and play cribbage with standard rules. I find that unimaginative. Apparently, I’m also unimaginative–or at least lacking certain math skills. What I’m trying to do is come up with a workable rule set for cribbage with a full Rook deck minus just the Bird card.
Sticking points for me:
[ol][li]How to treat the 10 through 14 cards. Leave them as counting 10, make the 10 through 13 count 10 and the 14 a higher count (and how many points?), make the 10 count 10 while the 11 through 14 count higher (and what value?), or some other scheme?[/li][li]“15 for 2”/“31 for 2”. Should both of these be left as is, or change one or both, and change to what counts and values?[/li][li]Now that the top card is the 14, that means the top run for a five-card hand, including the turn card, would be 10-11-12-13-14. Should that get a bonus point or even two?[/li][li]For the two-player game, should the deal be six cards with the players discarding two cards each to the crib, or should the number of cards increase?[/li][li]How many points constitute a win, how many constitute a skunk?[/li]Any other ideas?[/ol]
Treating the higher numbers as 10 seems to me to make it very similar to regular cribbage, enough that I’m not sure I see the point. Treating the higher numbers as face value drastically changes the game. Mainly because a normal cribbage deck has nearly a third (16) of the cards with the same numerical value (10), making it much easier to predict how to get to–or avoid getting your opponent to–15 and 31. Without that cluster of values, the strategy smooths out to a degree that I’d worry strategy would become much less important.
If you treat everything above 10 as 10, now you’ve got 20 of the 57 cards with the same value. The strategy changes very slightly, valuing 5 and 10 even more.
How about this as a weird change: for any card, you may count or ignore the tens place? So you may treat a 10 as ten or zero, an 11 as an eleven or a one, etc. This gives a different cluster of values: 1 through 4 are doubled. I’m not sure what it’d do to play, but it might be interesting.
How about this as a different weird change: cards above 10 in value may be treated in play as positive or negative. If the count is 26, and I have an 11 in my hand, I can play “Minus eleven for fifteen, two.”
Take away One For His Nobs. Replace it with the joker, a true wild card.
I wouldn’t change the victory total or skunk total unless, in play, these changes make things too drastic. They add more choice and flexibility, which I suspect would lead to faster point gains, but I’m not sure.