Tarock
BGG rank
BGG #7,433
BGG rating
7.4

Tarock

1806

Rules assistance for Tarock

Plain-language explanations of turns, card effects and disputed situations, with official source references and saved question history.

  • 2–5 players
  • 30 min
  • Complexity 3.5/5

For 2 players

Rules assistant for Tarock

What would you like to know?

Answers come from the official rulebook, with the page to check.

Tarock is a board game released in 1806 for 2–5 players and 30 minutes per game. Its main mechanics are Hand Management and Trick-taking.

Similar games

About the game

Tarock is a general term for the many 2 to 5 player, point trick taking games of central Europe that use a 54-card Tarock deck. Common to these games is a round of bidding followed by a round of announcements indicating bonuses that will be attempted during the round of play, and doublings of the game, or any of the announced bonuses. The deck consists of 4 suits (usually clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds), and a permanent trump suit (Tarock) of 22 cards. There are variants of tarock for 2 to 5 players. Straw man tarock is a variant for 2 players where each players hand is augmented by cards dealt out into piles in front of him/her at the beginning of the game. Tapp tarock is a variant for 3 players that does away with the bid to 'call a king'. Königrufen is a variant for 4 active players (with 5 one player deals and sits out that round) who are dealt 12 cards and 6 for the talon, bidding indicates how many cards will be used from the talon with the remaining cards being split by the other players. The declarer calls a trump (XIX) or one of the kings to indicate a partner (the partner does not indicate this fact though), after which players can make bonus announcements and doublings. During the play, suit must be followed and trump must be played if you are out of the suit. Points are counted after each round and the declarer, generally, needs to take more than half in order to fulfill the contract.

Categories

Publishers

  • ASS Altenburger Spielkarten
  • Piatnik
  • Editions ATLAS
  • (Public Domain)
  • Modiano
  • Elsteiner Games

Questions and answers

Tarock supports 2–5 players according to the catalogue. This range comes from the publisher’s listed player count, so the game can be set up for any group size within it. Some setups, rules and scoring details may still vary by player count, so check your edition’s rulebook for the exact configuration.