Hasp Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Basics
• How to Play This Trick Taking Game
  • 1) Determine the dealer
  • 2) Announce trump
  • 3) Make prediction and play first card
  • 4) Play the rest of the round
  • 5) Starting a new round and game end
• Rules for 2 and 3-Player Games

Basics

The cards are arranged into five different suits. A suit refers to all cards belonging to the same group (or colour) as follows: forest (yellow), grassland (green), river (blue), canyon (purple), and village (grey).

The village suit is special in several ways:

• Its illustrations show adults rather than children
• Its values go from 7-10 rather than 1-6 like the other suits
• This suit is always trump, i.e., they always beat any card from the other 4 suits

The suits are:

• YELLOW / Forest / Herbs 1-6
• PURPLE / Canyon / Bones 1-6
• BLUE / River / Stones 1-6
• GREEN / Grassland / Roots 1-6
• GREY / Village / Trump 7-10

Like in most trick taking games, one player opens a new trick with a card of their choice and in clockwise order, each player adds one card from their hand to that trick. If a player has one or more cards of the same suit, they have to follow suit, i.e. play a card of the same suit. If they don't have a card of the same suit, they have to trump; should they not be able to follow suit nor trump, then they may play any other card of their choice. Once all players played one card, they check who played the strongest card, that player collects the trick as a reward and places it face down in front of them with other tricks they may already have won.

How to assess who played the strongest card? If no trump card was played, players check the leading suit. The leading suit is determined by the first card played this trick. The card of that suit with the highest strength, wins the trick. If a trump was played, then the player who trumped wins the trick. If several trumps were played, then, the player who played the trump with highest strength wins the trick.

Example (diagram): Card strength runs from 0 points to 4 points on the card values shown in the diagram, and the diagram shows the card colour (background, icon, object, clothes). In this example, player 1 opens the trick with a green 1. Player 2 has to follow suit and plays a green 6. Player 3 doesn't have green cards but also hasn't got any trump cards, so she may play any card of her choice and decides to play purple 2. Finally player 4 can't follow suit. Ideally he would like to hold on to all his trumps because the trick is currently going to his partner, player 2. However, when a player can't follow suit, they have to trump if able, so player 4 decides to trump with blue 6 (chosen to be trump at the start of that round) to add 4 more points to the trick. Player 4 collects the trick which is worth 8 points and will now have to open the next trick.

The player who won the trick, opens the next one by playing one of the remaining cards in their hand. Play continues until all cards have been played (exception under "predictions" below). A round is concluded when the last trick was played.

IMPORTANT: Players (opponents or team mates) are never allowed to discuss their hands or make suggestions during a round of play.

How to Play This Trick Taking Game

These are the rules for the 4 player game. If you play with fewer players, you will find adjustment rules at the very end.

There are 5 steps in a full round of Hasp:

1. Determine the dealer
2. Announce trump
3. Play first card and make prediction
4. Play the rest of the round
5. Starting a new round and game end

1) Determine the dealer

When you play with four players, you will play in teams of 2. We recommend dealing a random card for each player until there are 2 cards of the same suit dealt to two different players. Those play as a team against the other two (you can also freely choose teams, especially if you want to keep score over several games). Players from the same team should sit opposite one another. The player who was dealt the second card that determined the teams will also be the dealer (if teams were chosen freely deal out cards to each player until the first village card was dealt, that player will be the dealer).

2) Announce trump

The dealer shuffles all the cards and deals out 3 cards to each player. The player to the dealer's left, looks at their three cards and either announces a trump, or no trump. Remember: Village cards are always trump, so even if this player says "no trump", the village cards will still be trump, what that means is that the player will decide if any of the other 4 suits (the ones with the kids) will also be trump or not.

3) Make prediction and play first card

Once the player announced what other suit will also be trump or declared "no trump", then the dealer will deal out 4 more cards to each player.

The player to the left of the dealer now places a score marker in the middle of the play area (the pot) and also opens the first trick (the score marker is a reminder that the current round is worth one point for now). Before playing their first card, this player will now make a prediction or pass. Once they made a prediction (or passed), they play their first card and the next player in clockwise direction does the same: makes a prediction or passes and plays a card. And so on, until all players have made their predictions (or passed) and played their first card. The first trick is over and will be collected by the player who played the strongest card, who, in turn, starts the next trick. Starting with the second trick, no more predictions can be made, so each player has got only one opportunity to make a prediction per round, and this is during the first trick. Here are the predictions players can make:

• Minor Find: The player has the 7 and the 8 which they show to everybody else and in doing so adds 1 point to the pot.
• Great Find: The player has the 9 which they show to everybody and in doing so adds 1 point to the pot.
• Find All*: The player announces "Find all" when they think that their team is able to win all tricks this round. In so doing, they add 2 points to the pot.
• No Find*: The player announces "No Find" when they think that their team is able to lose all tricks this round. In so doing, they add 2 points to the pot.
• Pass: The player does not want to risk adding points to the pot if they feel that their hand isn't strong enough to win, so they "pass" and add no points to the pot.

*Important note: "Find all" and "No Find" cannot both be declared in the same round. So as soon as one player predicts any of these two, they immediately shut out any other player from predicting any of the two.

So for every prediction that players make, they add the appropriate number of score markers to the pot to remind everybody how many points the current round is worth. At most, a round can be worth 5 points. 1 point as the base value, plus 1 point for each the "Great Find" and the "Minor Find", plus 2 for either "Find all" or "No Find".

4) Play the rest of the round

Now that the predictions were made and the value of the current round has been assessed, players play the remaining tricks as per the rules explained above. At the end of the 7th trick, both teams assess how many points their tricks are worth and whoever won the round scores the victory points equal to the number of score markers in the pot. Keep track of the score in the score pad.

Scoring example (diagram): For the end-game scoring, both players of the same team put all of the tricks together they have won over the course of the round and then add up the points of each card in that stack of cards. In this example, the combination of cards from player 1 and 3 add up to 21 and players 2 and 4 add up to 26 points. Team 2/4 wins the round. The pot has three score markers so the winning team adds 3 points to their current score on the note pad.

EXCEPTION: If any of the players predicted "Find all" or "No Find", you don't need to check the tricks of course, they won if they made all the tricks or none of the tricks respectively, and also, the round ends prematurely if the opposing team manages to ruin the prediction, so if team A predicted "Find all" but team B wins a single trick, the round immediately ends and team B scores points equal to the score markers in the pot. Same goes for "No Find": if team A predicts "No Find" but team B manages to have Team A win a single trick, the round ends immediately to team B's favour.

5) Starting a new round and game end

When a round is completed, the game continues with the player who announced trump the previous round being now the dealer, and the player to their left announcing trump and opening the round with the first trick. The game continues in this way until one of the teams has reached 12 points and is thus the winning team of the game.

Rules for 2 and 3-Player Games

All rules remain unchanged except that players don't play in teams anymore but instead, each player plays for themselves.

These are the additional rules:

2 players:

• Before shuffling the cards, sort out all the 1s and 2s and place them in the box, you won't need these cards.
• Deal out 3 then 5 (instead of 4) cards.
• After dealing out the 8 cards to each player you will have 4 cards left, put them aside without looking at them. You won't use them this round.
• Should players tie in points per tricks at the end of the round, then the player who announced trump loses the round.
• When you start a new round, shuffle the 4 set aside cards into the deck again, and start anew: deal 3 then 5 cards to each player and set aside the remaining 4.
• Play continues this way until one player reaches 12 points.

3 players:

• Before shuffling the cards, sort out all the 1s and place them in the box, you won't need these cards.
• Deal out 7 cards to each player, trump is not announced in a 3 player game.
• After dealing out the 7 cards to each player you will have 3 cards left, put them aside without looking at them and reveal the top card, this determines the trump for the round. If you reveal a village card then that means you play without trump that round (except village cards as per original rules, they are always trump). Other than that, you won't use these 3 cards this round.
• Should two players tie in points per tricks at the end of the round, then both these players score the full amount of victory points.
• If all 3 players are tied in points at the end of the round and no prediction were made, then nobody scores any victory points.
• If all 3 players are tied in points at the end of the round and predictions were made, then the player who made no prediction scores the victory points.
• When you start a new round, shuffle the 3 set aside cards into the deck again, and start anew: deal 7 cards to each player, set aside the remaining 3 and reveal the top card to determine the trump for that round.
• Play continues this way until one player reaches 12 points. If there is a tie between 2 players, play continues until one player has more points than their opponents.