Bird Dog – a three-player surprise

It’s a Friday afternoon – one where three Meeple Guilders were off – so it was beverage time.

But what to play for three during a time we are focusing some attention on card games for this series?

Well, the portfolio of rules is a tad thin on three-player games, but there was Bird Dog, a game that frankly we knew nothing about other than it was designed to play three.

One might have expected some sort of hunting theme to be incorporated here, but that is not the case.

Instead, game designer Nathaniel Meadow has created a simple yet extremely enjoyable trick-taker.

The twist here is that taking has no value in itself in the game.

Instead with Bird Dog, the object is to collect pairs of Kings, Queen, or Jacks. So you want to take tricks with face cards in them, but a single face card is again not in itself worth any thing. You must pair that face card to ultimately score points.

The game is played with what many will recognize as a ‘Euchre deck’: nine through Ace, — 24 cards in total.

Players are dealt seven cards, and the top card of the remaining three is revealed as Trump – provided someone accepts it as Trump.

If no one accepts, you move to the second card, and so on. The card of the same colour as the revealed trump becomes the ‘bird dog’ the key trump for the hand.

It’s straightforward from there, a card is led and you follow suit if possible.

The winner of the hand is the player who acquired the most number of pairs of face cards (Jack, Queen, King) throughout the hand. If that player did not declare (determine trump, they earned a bonus point.

If they did declare the Trump or there is a tie, no bonus point is awarded.

A neat twist from the rules, “each player after the trump is established and before the first card being played has the opportunity to go Nil. The player left of the dealer has the first option, the option then continues clockwise around the table. If a player goes Nil, they are placing a three-point bet that they will win no tricks throughout the hand. If the Nil is successful, the player going nil earns three points. If the Nil is broken, that player loses three points.

There are some wonderfully quirky rules but all are simple enough to grasp easily.

Bird Dog is only played to 11 points, and with only seven tricks a hand, is quick, but you will end up saying ‘one more game’ a lot with this little gem.

Ultimately, this is a game in one the Meeple Guild trio suggested is ‘cribbage-good’ for three, and that means it rates very highly indeed.