Cripple Mr Onion

Cripple Mr Onion

BGG: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/23567/cripple-mr-onion

Rules: http://www.lspace.org/ftp/words/misc/cripple-mr-onion

An imaginary game from Terry Pratchett's Discworld comic fantasy series, made real.

Components

The rules linked to above state,

Cripple Mr Onion requires two standard decks of playing cards, preferably
one having the English or French suits clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds,
and the second having the Spanish or Italian suits staves, swords, cups and
coins - for the purpose of forming flushes, these are taken to be paired in
their respective order given above:

     clubs     are paired with   staves,
     spades    are paired with   swords,
     hearts    are paired with     cups,
     diamonds  are paired with    coins.

RainbowDeck card mapping

The mapping is based in the FiveCrowns mapping, doubled.

Traditional suit pairRainbow Deck
clubs/stavesdark/light green
spades/swordsblack/gray
hearts/cupsred/pink
diamonds/coinsdark/light blue

When the FatPack? became available, the suits were paired as clubs/tridents, spades/axes, hearts/roses, and diamonds/doves. However, these suit pairs (an important concept in Cripple Mr Onion) are fairly arbitrary, whereas the Rainbow Deck makes the pairs much more visible and intuitive. The Rainbow Deck might be a much better way to play Cripple Mr Onion.

--Ron Hale-Evans