Solotober - Kin Kādo
Is poker against a god any good?
Hello friends.
Everyone loves a great hang session playing poker with the boys. But what if you don’t have any boys? What if you don’t really like poker? Well, boy, do I have a game for you.
Today’s solo adventure?
Kin Kādo by Hinokodo. (not yet) published by Mimic Publishing.
This is something I’ve been working on for some time now. I’m still developing and tweaking it, but readers voted on it in the last newsletter and I must give the people what they want. (See poll at the bottom)
In today’s solo play session, I’m using the wonderful Monster Club poker cards.
Kin Kādo is a twist on poker. There is no player elimination. The game is played over 9 rounds. Players compete each round to make the highest value hand. In the solo variant, you play against the AI god ALORA. (Like poker, this game includes aspects of gambling. Real money is not required to play.) Whoever has the most money at the end of the game wins.
SETUP:
To play Kin Kādo you will need a standard deck of cards (52 + 2 jokers) and a set of poker chips (or coins/money substitute).
(Solo) Setup is straight forward. Give yourself and Alora $50 in chips. (I like to do 5x $1s, 5x $5s, 2x $10s) Set aside 2x $25s, 2x $10s, 2x $5s, and 3x $1s to create a round tracker, arranging them from highest to lowest value, lowest being on top. (I like to stack them) Place a joker card under the 3rd $1 (between the $5 and $1 chip if you’ve stacked them) and a joker card under the first $10. (between the $10s if you stacked them) Set the rest of the chips aside to act as a bank.
Shuffle the deck of cards and give yourself and Alora a face down hand of 7 cards. Place the remaining cards face down in the middle of the table (this is ‘the deck’). Flip the top card over and place it next to the deck to create this round’s prize pool. Place the top $1 chip from the round tracker on top of the face up card into the prize pool.
The game is now setup.
GAMEPLAY:
Kin Kādo is played over 9 rounds, each round has 5 phases. Your aim is to end each round with the highest tier poker hand you can. (there’s a slight twist I explain below) If you end the game with more money than all other players, you win. While Alora has her own set of rules, the game is the same no matter the player count. (4 players max per deck of cards)
Setup/ Refresh
Sell phase
Buy phase
Betting phase
Reveal
Setup/Refresh
Each round begins with you shuffling the cards that were played last round, into the deck and giving each player cards until they have 7 each. When dealing cards to any player (even Alora) always keep them face down. Rotate the dealer clockwise each round. Alora doesn’t have fingers so you’ll want to deal cards for her in the solo mode.
Cards in the market do not get reshuffled into the deck.
Flip over the top card of the deck and place the next round tracking chip in the prize pool. That chip sets the minimum bet for the round.
(The first round will be $1, the 4th & 5th will be $5, 6th & 7th will be $10, and 8th & 9th will be $25) Include the jokers in the prize pool when they’re revealed (the 3rd and 6th round) Jokers are wilds and are considered any card you choose.Even if a player has run out of money, deal them cards.
Sell Phase
Beginning with the dealer that round, you may sell up to 3 cards from your hand. (alternating in solo between you and Alora, you’ll go first.)
Cards sell for their face value. Ace is $1, Jack is $10, Queen is $15, King and Jokers are $20. Sold cards are placed face up, next to the deck, creating the market. (It helps the flow of the game, especially solo, to keep arranging the market lowest to highest. If your table has room, keep the market cards fanned out so they’re all visible.)
Money earned from the sell phase comes from the bank. Each player has the opportunity to sell up to 3 cards from their hand, one at a time, moving clockwise from the dealer.
In the solo mode, Alora’s hand stays hidden until it is her turn. On the rounds where you go first, you do not know what her hand holds as you sell. Alora always sells her 2 lowest value cards. (in the event of ties, you may pick any suit to sell) For example, if Alora has 3x 7s as her lowest value cards, you may pick any 2 to discard. Any money Alora earns goes into her stash just like any other player.
Buy Phase
Beginning with the dealer that round, you may buy cards from either the market OR the top of the deck until you have up to 7 cards in your hand. (Players will never have more than 7 cards in their hand, they may have less than 7)
Cards in the market are bought at their face value. Ace is $1, Jack is $10, Queen is $15, King and Jokers are $20. Cards from the top of the deck are $5 each. (You can’t look at them before you buy, you must buy them blind.)
The money you spend buying cards goes into the prize pool.
Alora always buys the highest value card in the market, with a value of 6 or more, if she can afford it from her stash. She also gets the top card of the deck for free. If she can’t afford to buy a card from the market, or a valid card is not available, she gets 2 cards from the top of the deck for free. Cards that Alora draws from the deck remain face down and hidden from you. Just like a player, the money she spends from her stash, on cards in the market, go into the prize pool. (Alora never has more than 7 cards)
Betting Phase
Beginning with the dealer that round, you may bet up to $25 from your stash. You must bet the minimum amount. (this is determined by the round tracking chip) If you can’t afford to pay the minimum, you pay what is left in your stash. “All in.” Bet an amount based on your confidence of your hand against your opponents.
Alora always bets the highest value of her face up card or the round minimum, whichever is higher. (If Alora has a King, she bets $20 from her stash, even if the minimum bet is $5. If the minimum bet was $25, she would bet $25 despite having a King.) If Alora can’t afford to place her bet, the bank places the bet for her. (If the round minimum is $25 and Alora only has $20 in her stash, she keeps her $20 and the bank pays $25 on her behalf.)
Keep bets in front of each player and separate from the prize pool.
As players make their bets, they must play 2-5 cards face down to be revealed in the next phase. This is their poker hand. (I’ll figure out a better name soon)
Reveal Phase
Simultaneously, players reveal the cards they played during the betting phase. Players determine who has played a hand in the highest tier of poker hands. In the event of ties, the player with the highest sum of cards wins. (If there’s still a tie, whoever bet the most wins. If there’s still a tie then, they split the pot evenly by chip/coin, not by pot value. Cards can’t be split. Winning players still earn what they bet from the bank. What can’t be divided stays in the prize pool.)
The winner receives everything in the prize pool (including any cards), they also win all the money everyone bet, and they win what they bet from the bank.
The cards that were played get reshuffled into the deck during the refresh phase. Players keep the cards they didn’t play this round.
Alora plays with all of her cards. Even face down ones. (But do not reveal face down cards until it is her turn to reveal) She always plays the highest possible hand she can. If she has a Joker, it is always whatever gives her the best hand. You can’t tie with Alora, she always wins ties. (same process if equal sum and equal bet, she wins and doesn’t split the pot with you. ) If Alora wins a card from the prize pool, just like players, she keeps it for the next turn.
What are Poker Hands?
If you’ve never played poker before, at the end of each round, players will reveal their hand and depending on what they have will result in a different poker hand. Each poker hand has a rank. In the typical poker game, each poker hand has a rank of 1 through 10, the higher tier always out ranks and wins against anything lower than it.
In Kin Kādo we use the same poker hands, but not every high ranked hand automatically wins against the lower ranks. We separate hands by tier. The player with the poker hand in the highest tier wins. If multiple players have hands in the same tier, whichever hand has the highest sum (based on the face value of the cards played) wins the round.
Tier 1 (lowest)
Highest Card - One Pair - Two Pair
Tier 2 (mid)
Three of a kind - Straight - Flush
Tier 3 (highest)
Full House - Four of a kind - Straight Flush
If you’re not familiar with these terms, I’ll summarize them here:
Highest Card - You don’t have any other combinations.
One Pair - You have at least 1 pair of cards (ex. 2x Queens)
Two Pair - You have at least 2 pairs of cards (ex. 2x Queens and 2x 7s)
Three of a kind - You have at least 3 of the same value card (ex. 3x 7s)
Straight - You have 5 cards in sequential order, suit doesn’t matter (ex. 1x 2,3,4,5,6)
Flush - You have 5 cards of the same suit, order doesn’t matter (ex. 5x Hearts)
Full House - You have 5 cards, 2x of the same value, 3x of the same value (ex. 2x 5s, 3x Kings)
Four of a kind - You have at least 4 cards of the same value (ex. 4x 2s)
Straight Flush - You have 5 cards in sequential order all with the same suit (ex. 1x 2,3,4,5,6 of Hearts)
That’s the game.
I am still tinkering with it and have plans to put it up on itch for folks to download and play if they wish. The plan is to include the final version of it (and maybe a deck of cards!) with the MIRU 3 kickstarter during zinequest 2024.
During this solo play session, Alora scored $135 and I scored $320 making me the winner!
This game took me about 30 minutes to play.
These are the rules, so feel free to give this a go if you’d like. I’d love to hear what you think!
PONDUS news!
If you’ve been following me for some time now, you may have noticed I’ve been talking about kickstarting a game in October called PONDUS. After some considerations, I’ve decided to put that project on pause for now.
The game is in a pretty good state I think. But I would really prefer to get more playtesting done on it, improve my art skills a bit more, and have the entire project completed before we launch a kickstarter with a goal high enough to pass the hurdle that is the minimum number of units we need to order to even make the project. (It would have been somewhere around $20,000 for a game that would cost around $10-12 to manufacture)
My last Kickstarter project, MIRU 2, surprised me by raising around $25,000. It took us 16 out of the 19 days to hit $20,000. And most campaigns fail if they don’t hit their goal in the first day or 2. (The Miru 2 goal was only $1000, zines aren’t as expensive to print as board games!) So I’d like to spend some time this year building up a fan base around the project, and see if I can get everyone else excited about this game as I am.
The Kickstarter follow page should remain up in the mean time, so if you are interested in the PONDUS project, please follow the page so I can continue to gauge interest as the next year passes. Maybe we can aim for next October. And after a year of play testing, maybe it’ll become an even better game for it.
Anyways, thanks for reading this far! Here’s a poll for my next solotober game. What should I play next?