Designed by: Haig Tahta,Sacha Tahta Alexander
Salvage is a pretty straightforward trick-taking card game where winning tricks is potentially, and appropriately, given the theme: hazardous. Players are thematically cleaning up an oil spill, and winning a trick with fire cards in it counts against you. There’s one fire suit, and two suits that have a single (but nasty) fire card nestled amongst them. At the end of each round, players lose points for how many fire they collected, with the first player reaching zero (starting from 20) triggering the game end.
However before the round starts two things happen. Firstly, players can offset fire by taking oil tokens from a central supply, with each one negating a fire symbol. The catch here is that if the oil is all claimed, then everyone loses a point for each oil they took, making it risky to take too many. Then the starting player can choose whether or not all players pass a single card clockwise, and play begins.
As soon as an unfortunate player hits zero, the player with the most points left is the winner.
Standard trick-taking rules apply, but with a little additional chicanery
Low - the game is pretty simple and usually moves fast, unless you have a real ponderer at the table
Often-times decisions are made for you - you must follow suit and may have only one or two cards to 'choose from'. Where it gets interesting is the moments where you have freedom to break ranks and dump cards.
It's an accessible game of survival, playing quickly and with the reasonable depth and random factor of card draws. Duff hands can - can! - be offset by taking oil. Just don't take too much!
3-4
Players
10+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
I generally like trick-taking games and the hard-to-find Salvage is no exception. A pretty bonkers theme for a card game, but it kind of works, and the drafting of oil tokens at the start of each round is a neat little addition to the tension of cardplay. You can be sure everyone will be complaining about their cards and how they need the most oil. Who's being truthful? The cards reveal all... unless the tokens are all taken, in which case they don't!