Two to five players, a standard deck, and a suit you win the right to hoard and lose the right to play
Mogler is a trick-taking game for two to five players with one unusual idea at its centre: nobody has to follow suit, and the first player who does not decides what trump is for that trick. Win a trick that way and you collect it with the led card face up — and from that moment you may never play that suit again. Every card of it left in your hand is worth extra stars if the round ends early, and a caught attempt to play one costs you everything you have collected. The name is the German word for a cheat.
A standard 52-card deck and nine STOP cards: three marked S, two T, two O and two P. Two to five players. A game takes about 25 minutes.
Card values run from 2 up to the ace. The suits are ranked too — diamonds lowest, then hearts, then clubs, with spades highest — but that ranking is used for exactly one thing, and it is the very first decision of each round.
Shuffle the STOP cards into a face-down pile. Shuffle the deck and deal seven cards to each player; the rest is the draw pile.
Every player now puts one card face down in front of them, and all of them are turned over together. Whoever laid the highest card leads the first trick — highest value, and if two players tie on value, the higher suit wins. All of those cards then leave the game face up, where anybody can look through them. Everyone is left holding six.
Before every trick, the player who is about to lead turns over the top STOP card and lays it in a row where all can see.
If it shows an S, that player may take one card from the draw pile — and if they do, they must then put one card from their hand out of the game, face up. It can be the card they just drew. Their hand size does not change; what changes is which cards are in it.
Then everyone checks the row. As soon as the turned-over STOP cards include an S, a T, an O and a P, the round ends immediately — before that trick is played. Otherwise the trick goes ahead. A round is therefore three to six tricks long: after the sixth every hand is empty anyway, and no seventh STOP card is turned.
That uncertainty is the engine of the whole game. Nobody knows how many tricks are left, and holding a card back only pays if the round stops before you run out of them.
The leader plays any card. Everyone else adds one card, in clockwise order. There is no obligation to follow suit — you may play whatever you like.
If everyone does follow the led suit, the trick is a Farbstich (a suit trick) and the highest card of that suit takes it. A Farbstich is worth 3 stars and is collected face down: it shows nothing.
If somebody plays a different suit, the first such card names trump for that trick. The trick is now a Trumpfstich and the highest card of the trump suit takes it. A third suit is simply thrown away and can never win. A Trumpfstich is worth 2 stars — fewer than a plain suit trick — and it is collected with the led card turned face up on top.
Two consequences fall out of this and both matter. The player who leads a trick can never win it once somebody trumps, because their own card is by definition of the led suit. And the card showing on a collected Trumpfstich is the suit that was trumped, not the trump suit itself.
That face-up card is a standing restriction on the player who won it. You may never again play a suit that is showing on one of your own trump tricks. Win a trick where hearts were led and trumped, and hearts are dead in your hand for the rest of the round.
Playing one anyway is mogeln — cheating. A player caught at it is out of the round at once: the card they played, every trick they have collected and their whole remaining hand all leave the game, and they score 0 stars for the round. Everyone else plays on.
And there is no way out of it. If every card left in your hand is a locked suit, you still have to play one, and you are still caught. Nobody made you win that trump trick.
When the round ends, count stars:
Then the payoff for hoarding. If the round ended early, every card still in your hand is worth 2 stars for each of your own trump tricks showing its suit. That is a Mogelstich, and it is not capped: two hearts in hand and two heart-showing trump tricks is 2 × 2 × 2 = 8 extra stars, on top of the 4 the tricks themselves are worth.
So a trump trick is a bet. It pays 2 now, it can pay several times that at the end, and it can cost you the entire round if the cards it locked are the only ones you have left when the STOP does not come.
Play rounds until somebody reaches 20 stars. That round is finished normally, and the player with the most stars wins. If two players are level at the top, they share the win.
Two to five. The table size changes one rule directly: a player who takes no trick in a round scores one star per player at the table, so an empty round is worth more at five players than at two.
No, and that is the whole point. You may play any card at any time. The first card that does not match the led suit makes its own suit trump for that trick, and the highest trump then wins instead of the highest card of the led suit.
Because it is worth more later. A trump trick pays 2 stars against a suit trick's 3, but it is collected face up and locks that suit for you — and every card of the locked suit still in your hand at the end pays 2 more stars per matching trick.
You must still play one, and you are caught cheating: you lose your collected tricks, your remaining hand and the whole round, scoring 0. It is a real risk of taking trump tricks in a suit you hold a lot of, and the game intends it.
Three to six tricks. Before each trick the leader turns over a STOP card, and the round ends the moment the turned-over cards include an S, a T, an O and a P. After six tricks the hands are empty and the round ends anyway.
Yes. It runs in your browser with no download, no signup and no payment. Play against computer opponents, or against friends online with a room code — any empty seat is played by the computer.