Forty One (41)
Forty one (Empat Satu / 41) is an Indonesian turn-based draw and discard game. The objective of this game is to make your cards have the highest value as possible, in the shortest time (ie, before everybody else), by drawing and discarding cards. Players take turns to draw and discard their cards, and when they think they have reached the best card, they can force to end the game. The winner is those with the highest value cards. For more details, you can read it here.
As usual, the game rules are not strictly defined - it depends on the party who plays the game. The following rules are the house rules for JB Games.
Minimum 2 players are needed to play the game, and maximum is 6 players. Game is turn-based: the turn is clockwise (from your right, to you, to your left). The first turn is determined randomly.
Everyone can start the game. When starting, you will be asked to set two parameters:
There are two game modes: Easy and Difficult. In Easy mode, you draw a card first before you discard it.
In Difficult mode, you discard a card first before you can draw.
The threshold value determines the minimum value a player must have, before he/she can call to end the game.
You can set this value to a number between 0 - 41.
When it's your turn to play, you can do several things:
You can draw a card from two sources: the deck, or from other players' discard pile. You can always draw from the deck (provided that it's not empty), but you can only draw from the discard pile of the player whose turn is just before you (ie, the player to your right). You can discard any card you want - including the card you have just taken. When you are done, the turn is automatically advanced to the next player (the player in your left).
To end the game, simply click the "End Game" button. Any player can end the game, however, he/she can only end the game if he/she hasn't done anything (hasn't drawn / discarded a card), AND his/her card value is at least equal to the threshold value set at the start of the game - unless when the deck has round out, then the threshold doesn't matter anymore.
Note that game ending is not automatic - even with the deck empty, the game will still continue until one of the player ends it. The reason is that after the player takes the last card on the deck, he/she must give a chance (another round) to other playes to play their turn, including giving them the chance to call the game end themselves.
The winner is the one with the highest card value (which is supposedly the one who call to end the game). If there are ties, the winner is the one with the farthest turn distance from the one who call to end the game.
The game already computes it for you, but this if want to do it manually, this is how it is done:
The total value is first computed by summing the cards' values, grouping those with the same suit. E.g. if you have 3 different suits, you have 3 different subtotals. Now take the highest of these subtotals, and subtract from it all the other subtotals. Negative values are possible. Obviously, for you to have a decent value, you should strive to have cards of the same suit (therefore no substraction). The maximum value that you can achieve is 41 (forty one) - hence the name of the game.