Medieval Card Games
Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2014 2:30 pm
I've been compiling a reference (and my god but I now despise Primero) and was looking at my early references. The earliest game for which we have rules and reference is Karnoffel. Except for the ranking of the the cards in the trump suit, Karnoffel is pretty straightforward. A good summary can be found on Wikipedia here. And it's interesting to note the names given to the trumps and compare that to the trumps in tarok/trionfi.
Primero (my goodness how I hate that game) and Trionfi both date from the 16th Century. But we've got illustrations of people playing cards in the 14th Century. Well, one. An illustration from the Romance of King Meliadus dating to around 1352 in Italy. You can see it here. The image is interesting because the game bears a lot of similarity to Karnoffel. Note that there are four players (those holding cards) but only two piles of tricks. That might indicate partner play rather than individual play. Four tricks have already been played. The number of countable cards in the hands of the players varies from 5 to 3 which probably indicates the initial deal was between 7 and 9 cards. That's more than the rules of Karnoffel but fairly similar. The direction of play appears to be counter-clockwise.
So I'm thinking it would be reasonable to postulate, for the purposes of historical recreation (but not for living history), that people playing a simplified version of Karnoffel would not be terribly out of place. Play the game like Karnoffel with a deal of between 5-9 cards per player, trump suit determined by the lowest of the first cards dealt to each player, dealing and playing counter-clockwise, sitting across from your partner and determining the winner of each hand by who has taken the most tricks. A number of variations can be applied: first team to take the majority of trick wins, determine trump by turning over the top card of the remaining deck, and so on. A number of different wagering and point rules could be applied.
Does this sound reasonable?
Primero (my goodness how I hate that game) and Trionfi both date from the 16th Century. But we've got illustrations of people playing cards in the 14th Century. Well, one. An illustration from the Romance of King Meliadus dating to around 1352 in Italy. You can see it here. The image is interesting because the game bears a lot of similarity to Karnoffel. Note that there are four players (those holding cards) but only two piles of tricks. That might indicate partner play rather than individual play. Four tricks have already been played. The number of countable cards in the hands of the players varies from 5 to 3 which probably indicates the initial deal was between 7 and 9 cards. That's more than the rules of Karnoffel but fairly similar. The direction of play appears to be counter-clockwise.
So I'm thinking it would be reasonable to postulate, for the purposes of historical recreation (but not for living history), that people playing a simplified version of Karnoffel would not be terribly out of place. Play the game like Karnoffel with a deal of between 5-9 cards per player, trump suit determined by the lowest of the first cards dealt to each player, dealing and playing counter-clockwise, sitting across from your partner and determining the winner of each hand by who has taken the most tricks. A number of variations can be applied: first team to take the majority of trick wins, determine trump by turning over the top card of the remaining deck, and so on. A number of different wagering and point rules could be applied.
Does this sound reasonable?