I was playing the game Scout this week. I won’t go into all the rules but it’s a “ladder” game where you have to play a better combination of cards than the one the previous player played.
You can play a sequence of consecutively numbered cards or a set of cards with the same numbers. And a set outranks a sequence. It seems to me it should be the other way around because I feel getting a sequence is more difficult than getting a set.
The cards are numbered one to ten, so a one can only be next to a two in a sequence and a ten can only be next to a nine. But there’s no comparable difficulty using ones or tens in a set.
Another factor is that you cannot re-arrange the cards you were dealt and you have to play cards that are adjacent in your hand. And sequences have to be in order to be played. So a sequence like 4-5-6 or 6-5-4 is playable but if the same cards are dealt as 4-6-5 or 5-4-6 they can’t be played together as a sequence. But if you have 5-5-5 in your hand, it doesn’t matter which of them is on the middle.
Am I missing something? I can give a full outline of the rules if it helps.
Discourse is telling me this topic is similar to a thread titled “Question about refinancing mortgage”. Swing and a miss, Discourse.
How many of each number are there in a deck? If there are only three “suits”, and your first card in your hand is a 5, then the second card only has two possibilities to continue a set (because you’ve already used up one of the three), and the third card only has one possibility (because you’ve used up two of the three). But for making a sequence, if the first card is a 5, then there are three possibilities for the second card, because there are three 6s available, and three for the third card, because there are three 7s.
There are full deck has forty-five cards. All of the numbers are equally present and there are no suits.
One complication I didn’t mention is that each card actually has two numbers, in opposite corners. There are no duplicates so each possible pair of numbers appears once. (1-2, 1-3, 1-4, … 8-9, 8-10, 9-10). But only the number on the top side of the card is in play.
The entire deck is dealt out each round. In a five player game, everyone is dealt nine cards. In a four player game, the 9-10 card is removed and everyone is dealt eleven cards. In a three player game, all of the ten cards are removed and everyone is dealt twelve cards.
When players pick up their hand, they are not allowed to re-arrange the order of the cards or flip any individual card to its opposite side. They fan out their cards and look at the numbers they were dealt. Then if they wish, they can flip over their entire hand and play the opposite numbers, although still in the same order.
This shows you what the cards look like.
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One thought has occurred to me. There’s more of an interaction between cards in a set.
There are potentially nine cards with each number in the deck (depending on how they are orientated). If I have a five, that means there are only eight possible remaining fives. A second five reduces the possible number of remaining fives to seven and so on.
That effect doesn’t happen in sequences. If I have a five, there are still nine possible fours and nine possible sixes in the deck. If I have a four-five-six, there are still nine possible threes and nine possible sevens which might expand it.