Elemental Duels

Objective

An escalating trick-taking bidding game. Each round, secretly guess exactly how many tricks you'll win out of that round's hand — then play your cards to make that number come true. Winning too many tricks costs you, just like winning too few.

How to play

1. Round 1 deals 1 card to everyone, round 2 deals 2, and so on. Before anyone plays, every player secretly bids exactly how many of that round's tricks they think they'll win. Bidding 0 is fine, and nothing stops two players from bidding the same number.
2. Once every bid is locked in, play begins in turn order — one card per player per trick. Whoever wins a trick leads the next one, so winning a trick too early can be a trap if you bid low.
3. Water, Earth, and Air are ordinary suits, ranked 1–14. Whichever of the three is played first in a trick sets that trick's lead suit, and only cards of that suit compete for the win by rank — a huge card in a different ordinary suit still can't win it, since it simply isn't the suit that got led.
4. Power order, from strongest to weakest: Dragon > Spirit > Fire > Water/Earth/Air (ranked 1–14, but only if their suit was led) > Mist. The Unicorn sits outside that ladder — worthless against everything else, but the one card that beats a Dragon: if both land in the same trick, the first Unicorn played wins it outright. The Chameleon has no fixed place either — play it as an Escape (as weak as Mist) or as a Spirit (as strong as one), your choice each time.
5. Once every card has been played, the round ends and each player's bid is scored against the tricks they actually won — see Scoring below. The host can also enable optional rules before the game starts: Volcano, Eclipse, Confluence, Capture Bonuses, and Attuned scoring. All off by default.

Scoring

Hitting your bid exactly scores well — the bigger the bid you make, the bigger the reward. Missing it, over or under, costs you, scaled by how far off you were. Exact point values: