It’s a quiet night at home, so I took some time to cook up a few things. Without further ado:

Solo leads to the first trick

Today we release a new rule that allows you to configure that solo players always play the first card in a game. In official tournaments this rule applies to compulsory solos, but a few of you told me that you always apply this rule whenever anyone plays a solo in your local group. And hey, since there are no compulsory solos here at Doppelkopf Club anyway this rule is long overdue.

Simply activate the “Solo goes first” rule and you’re good to go.

Mandatory announcements

By popular demand: You can now activate the “Mandatory Announcements” rule. With this rule enabled, computer players will always make an announcement (“Re” or “Kontra”) after winning the first trick. You as a human player have to actively make an announcement yourself — there’s no automation for you. This way you could break the rules by simply not announcing if you want to, but that’s on you. I believe by not having an automation for human players in place, you can practice remembering and sticking to the rules a little better.

Mandatory announcements only apply in normal games.

Remember the rules

Don’t know if you noticed, but this was driving me up the walls: Up until this point you had to meticulously re-configure your favorite rules with every new game you started. The game simply did not remember which kind of rules you prefer. That was alright when we only had a few rules, but in the last few weeks we accumulated quite a big ruleset.

We now remember the rules you configured for your last game and will automatically load them once you start a new game. This only works within the same browser. So if you secretly play a few sessions during a boring day at the office and then switch to your phone later that day, the rules won’t magically be transferred between these two devices.

Thanks for all your feedback, and as always: Have fun!

— Ham

Title image: Wilhelm Busch - Shepherd with Cows (1885)