6Nimmt! Baron Oxx

A front-runner in the most-inaccessibly-named games of all time, 6 Nimmt! Baron Oxx is so-named partly because of its inspiration – the game 6 Nimmt means ‘six takes’ in German – and partly because the most helpful card in the deck is the Baron himself, for reasons that will become clear. For now, the main thing to know is that you don’t want cards: cards are bad. Points are bad. Ending the game with zero would ideal!

Before the game begins, everyone is dealt a stack of cards and five are placed face-up as the start of five rows on the table. From your stack you draw four cards only – don’t look at the rest – and then choose secretly which one you’ll play this round. Everyone reveals at the same time, and then the cards are placed in ascending order: for instance, if you revealed the 34, you’ll go before my 81.

Each card must be added to one of the rows, and the card you add must have a matching-coloured bullhead to the previously-placed card in that row. Many cards only have one head, so your choices are limited. Some cards have two or three, and the aforementioned Baron has all the colours, giving you lots of flexibility. The strategy here is to avoid picking cards up: the sixth card in a row or the sixth bullhead of any particular colour will mean your played card becomes the new starting card in that row, and all the cards there currently go into your score pile: note that some cards are worse than others!

After all revealed cards have been added to rows, everyone chooses the next card from their and hand this process repeats for your four cards, before you draw another four to begin the next round (in a new round, all the cards in the rows remain where they are). After the fourth round, players total up their unwanted points, and the player with the fewest is the winner.