Blaze – Durak Card Game – Review, Criticism and Quiz

When I read the subtitle of the card game Blaze (“A durak-game”), I had the term durak Actually never heard of it. A quick look at Wikipedia revealed that this is a Russian card game that is as popular there as it is in this country skating.

What is Blaze talking about?

Durak roughly translates to “fool” and refers to the last player in the game who still has cards in his hand. Unfortunately, he lost. It’s all about getting rid of your hand cards as quickly as possible.

The way this happens is the tactical trick of the game for up to five people from Heidelbar Games. traditional rules durak It was slightly changed and the element of betting was added. However, it’s still a matter of being the first to discard your hand cards in order to get the valuable Feather cards.

Feather cards because the theme of the game is specially designed for the Russian Firebird legend. This firebird also adorns the back of the cards, which were designed by artist Nadezhda Mikryukova in classic Russian illustration style and given a cool metallic effect here.

Operation Blaze arcade game

The game is played in two rounds, with the coveted feather cards having two higher values ​​in rounds. Each round consists of two stages. At first, I try to improve my hand of cards.

attack

First, a draw pile is formed and a trump suit for the round is selected. Then I challenge my left neighbor by playing one or more cards of a certain rank in front of him. Preferably these are lower value cards because I like to get rid of them first.

Defense

His neighbor on the left is now the target player and can choose to block this challenge by playing cards of the same suit but of a higher rank or the trump suit. If he plays cards to defend himself, I can now decide to expand my challenge by playing more cards, but these can only contain the card values ​​of all the cards played in that challenge so far.

supports

In addition, the next player in the sequence may decide to support me as a striker and also play cards. However, in general, we are only allowed to attack with five cards.

Dodge or pass

The target player has two options. Either he managed to dodge all of his attack cards. Then all the cards played go to the discard pile and the attacker becomes the next. or he passes, in which case he must take all the cards from the duel and be skipped in the order of play.

Everyone who participated in the attack draws at least five cards from their hand and the game continues. If the draw pile is empty, the first stage ends.

The second phase

In the second phase, it is all about getting rid of your hand cards, i.e. there are no more draw piles left. Before that, each player bets on the other player who is likely to lose the round and puts the betting card in front of him. Then you play by the same rules as in the first round, except you don’t draw anymore. If you have no more cards in your hand, you take the highest and most valuable feather card. Then bets are settled.

If the second round is also played, the player with the highest score wins the pot cards and feathers.

Blaze is a surprising card game

Blaze is a card game with an interesting mechanic that was unknown to me, but has caused some confusion on the table here and there. What cards can I use to defend against an attack, what cards can a fan contribute, is it about colors or values ​​and what was the winner again? It takes a few matches before this becomes reasonably easy, and all the subtleties of rules and tactics have been tried. But it’s worth it, because the game is fun, does not take much time and looks very nice.