The Decktet Wiki

I played it tonight (playing solo, right-hand vs. left-hand) and enjoyed it very much. It incorporates so much of the Decktet: the suits, values, and type. If you pay attention to the names of the cards, you can bring in some fun storytelling.

The set-up is the same as the two-player game, except that the automa opponent doesn't use any tokens. You take all the turns. When you roll a 10 you collect tokens on your three crowns as usual but the automa opponent doesn't.

When you sell a card to gain more tokens, instead of discarding it, you play it as a developed property on your opponent's side. You can choose which district to play it on, but it must match suit as in the regular game. You'll want to put most of the cards in one district and write that one off as a loss, but sometimes the suits won't let you.

If you want to sell a card that can't be placed with either suit you may discard it.

You only run through the deck once since there are no (or very few) discards. Scoring is the same as usual.

To make the game harder:
If one of the suits on your discard is one of your automa opponent's crown suits, you must place it using that suit if possible. If not, you can place it using the other suit. This mimics the two-player game where your opponent is more likely to be able play cards with suits from their crown cards. It makes the game more difficult because it limits where you can play the opponent's cards.

It is easier to pick up new games when you have experience with other games, as game mechanics tend to show patterns between different games. This game has similarities to Settlers of Catan, but also Machi Koro, in that dice decide which cards create wealth in this round. The goal of the game is something which can be described as "majority rule", as not the total value of your cards is counted but the majority at each plot. Think best-of-five match. A game classic using this condition is El Grande.

These are the core elements of the game. You may be able to work out the rules with these elements in mind. It is hard to start on rules if you have no idea what the game is about.

Taxation is used to deter players from hoarding goods (otherwise playing deeds were inefficient).

There are two listed at BoardGameGeek; unfortunately the wiki won’t let me link them.

Sorry, I am new card gaming and board game scene. I just found out this game, but it's hard to understand the rule. Is there any video out there showing how to play Magnate? Really appreciate any help.

It's a wiki, but this page in particular says it's protected against plebes like us.

You do realize it's a wiki, right? ;-)

It's OK. I've fixed it.

Given that I changed it from LaTeX to wiki mark-up with a couple of quick and dirty regular expressions, I'm surprised there weren't more stray brackets.

The Grove explanation has a couple of stray brackets at the end.

Excellent, thank you!

I've posted them now.

Is there a reference for the interpretation of the Capital Decktet? I'm guessing some of the cards have different themes there.

Although having red correspond to both Suns and Leaves was originally an adaptation to the rainbow pyramid set, it works better in the game than having six different colours. Of course, you can use orange if you prefer. But, to me, red is more naturally between orange and brown.

For moons, white might look better.

You can also use another colour to keep score. Beyond that, I’m open to suggestions!

Now that Pyramid Arcade makes xeno colors readily available, would you recommend any variation to players with equal access to these ten colors of pyramid?

If we're just swapping colors to more closely match the Decktet suits, we could use orange for 1-pip/Suns/Leaves, and white for defense/Moons, leaving yellow, green, and blue alone. It might give the game a distinctive appearance by not using the same default colors as other pyramid games.

But maybe there's a way to use extra colors for a more fun game, too?

Thanks. I don’t think there’s a situation where you couldn’t get around the requirement, if it were one.

Yes, you can! But since you're not dealing onto the tableau it's not very important, yeah.

Never mind; I realized the restriction makes no difference in this game.

Am I allowed to deal while there are empty tableau piles?

I have already posted this on BGG some months ago, but now I have added entry to this wiki too.
I can't link it but search for "Hexaract" on the wiki.

Any feedback, suggestions, discussion etc. is welcome.

Correct: When you play a Crown to an increasing stack or an Ace to a decreasing stack, then you can't play any more cards on that stack.

Welcome to the world of the Decktet. I'm glad that you are enjoying Emu Ranchers.

Well, I guess I'm REALLY late to this dance! But I just recently dived into the Decktet world, and even more recently tried my hand at Emu ranching. My wife and I played it for the first time last night and had a blast. I just wanted to kinda double check something…

Am I correct in understanding that playing an Ace or a Crown on a previously established bird effectively closes off any further play on that bird?

As I indicated, we only have a few hands of playing experience, so I haven't yet worked out the best strategies (i.e. starting most birds with either an Ace or a Crown hoping to get the 5 point bonus) but it seems like a game with a lot of replayability.

Thanks for your hard work.