Leapfrog!Beta

Goal

Win tricks to move your frog around the lily pads. At the end of each round you score the number on your frog’s pad. After 4 rounds the higher total wins.

Cards

Use the Ace to the 10 of Spades, Hearts, and Clubs: 30 cards. The Ace is the 1, the lowest card.

Starting hand

The dealer shuffles all 30 cards and deals 14 to each player. The last 2 cards go face down to the discard pile, and nobody looks at them.

Setup

1. Lay out the 8 lily pads in two rows. The top row is 6, 1, 3, 5 and the bottom row is 2, 4, 9, 0. The frogs move clockwise: left to right along the top and right to left along the bottom.
2. Put both frogs on the 6 and the King Frog on the 0.
3. Shuffle the 3 suits into the suit hierarchy. The suit on top is the strongest. The hierarchy carries over from round to round.
4. Pick a dealer at random. On Play again, the first deal passes to the other player.

Play

1. The dealer leads the first trick. The winner of a trick leads the next one.
2. A trick is 4 cards. The leader plays a card, then the other player. Then each plays a second card in the same order.
3. Follow the lead suit if you can. The first card played face up sets the lead suit. If you have none of it, play any card.
4. The strongest suit wins. The highest card of the strongest suit in the trick takes it. The lead suit has no other effect.
5. A run leapfrogs. If the cards just below that card in the same suit are in the trick too, the lowest card of that unbroken run takes the trick instead. With the 10, 1, 2, and 9 of one suit, the 9 wins. With the 5, 6, 7, and 8, the 5 wins. A run never goes from the 10 to the Ace.
6. The winner’s frog hops. It moves 1 pad clockwise. If another token is on that pad, it leapfrogs over it to the next free pad.
7. Powers. Instead of playing a card face up, you can play any card from your hand face down to use a power, whatever the lead suit. The power works at once. Leap: the weakest suit moves to the top of the hierarchy. King Frog: the King Frog moves 1 pad clockwise, leapfrogging over any token in its way.
8. Limits on powers. Each player can use a power 2 times each round: the same power twice, or each power once. Only 1 power can be used in each trick. A face-down card can’t win the trick. If one is led, the next card played face up sets the lead suit.
9. After 7 tricks the round ends. The other player deals the next round. The frogs, the King Frog, and the hierarchy stay where they are.

Scoring

At the end of each round, each player scores the number on their frog’s pad. After 4 rounds the higher total wins. On equal totals, the player whose frog is on the more valuable pad wins.

Variants

Freshwater. The pads are the other side of the 4 track cards, laid out in a random order for the whole game: two water pads worth 0, and pads of 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8. Both frogs start on the 3 and the King Frog on the 4.

A token on a water pad can dive instead of hopping: it moves to the other water pad and then hops 1 pad clockwise from there. It can’t dive while another token is on the other water pad. The trick’s winner chooses for their frog, and the player who used King Frog chooses for the King Frog.

Playing with your own deck

Use the Ace to the 7 and the 9 of Diamonds as the lily pads, laid out as in Setup, with the 7 face down as the 0. Put the Jacks of Spades, Hearts, and Clubs in a column to show the suit hierarchy. You also need 3 tokens: a frog for each player and one for the King Frog. Keep the cards you play face down in front of you to count your powers.

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