Mast Year: Squirrels vs. Oaks
What is a Mast Year?
Mysteriously, every few years all the oak trees in a region will join together to produce a huge abundance of acorns. Exactly why or how still isn’t known, but some believe it helps them distribute their acorns while controlling the squirrel population. There aren’t nearly enough squirrels to eat all the acorns in a mast year, and many acorns will be buried but go uneaten, becoming oak saplings the next year.
Summary
Mast Year is a trick-taking game based on the real world phenomenon of the same name. Two teams of two players each will compete to score points over several hands. Each hand has many “tricks” where all players play a single card. The winner of one trick will take the cards and begin the next trick.
The two teams are Squirrels and Oaks and they have different goals. The Squirrels want to take and eat acorns. The Oaks want to distribute acorns to the squirrels, but prevent them from being eaten.
At the end of each hand, you might cause a mast year or squirrel boom, adding powerful “bounty” cards in a new suit with extra icons and shaping the next hand.
Free Download
Didn’t get a copy at PAX? You can play Mast Year with a standard deck of playing cards! One of my goals when designing Mast Year was to allow people to play with a standard deck. There are certain cards that have acorn or squirrel icons on them, so it’s easier if you mark icons on the cards, but there are few enough that you can definitely just memorize them, or refer to a table.
Just print the free tri-fold rules and fold into 3 pages.