Guàn Dàn or throwing eggs (or bombs)

We played Guàn Dàn yesterday. John McLeod (of Pagat.com) was visiting Tampere recently and recommended this Chinese climbing card game to me. According to him, it’s very popular in China right now. It has a couple of outstanding features among climbing games. It’s a fixed partnership game like Tichu, and instead of counting points, it’s about going out first and uses a Sheng Ji scoring system based on promotions. Each team starts on level 2 and as they win rounds, they get promoted. Eventually they reach the levels 10, J, Q, K and A, and if they win on level A, they win the game. You don’t need to count points, the main thing that matters is that one of the team members goes out first. When the second team member goes out then affects how many promotion steps the team gets, so that’s important too. The game is played with a double deck, which is dealt out completely. That means you start the game with a 27-card hand. Yes, that is bonkers. It takes a while to sort your cards, and it’s…