Sigilian Poker

SIGILIAN POKER

Sooner or later I get around to all my projects. This is a major streamlining of the original rules, by some fellow at the WotC board. Hands were scored in a rather confusing point system and the deck was 211 cards big. I've tried to simplify it a bit, as much as a card game of the planes can be simple.

The Deck
Sigilian Poker uses a unique deck of 75 cards, divided into the four suits of Evil, Good, Chaos and Law. Cards can have one suit, two, or none; however, no card can have two opposing suits (eg Good and Evil). The cards mainly represent prominent races, places and faces on the Outer Planes.

Rank Cards are denoted by a number from 1 to 5. They represent planeborn (exemplar) races in line with a particular alignment. Since there is a set for each possible combination of suits, there are a total of 45 of these cards.

King Cards represent important representatives of an alignment and are denoted with a K. Only one King card exists for each suit combination, so there are only 9 Kings.

Plane Cards represent the 17 planes of the Great Wheel, plus Sigil. Unlike Rank and King cards, however, they are not evenly divided among the possible suits. There are 12 with one suit, 4 with two suits, and 2 with no suit, for a total of 18.

Special Cards are unusual in that they don't fall into the other categories. There are two Clueless cards and one Lady card here, all suitless.

Here are some examples, badly photochopped up by yours truly:

Lawful Good 1 (a Lantern Archon), the plane of Mechanus, and the Lady.

Rules of Play
Sigilian Poker plays much like its Prime counterpart. Players are dealt hands of nine cards, have a round of betting, trade in as many as they like for new cards from the deck, bet again, and then reveal their cards to see who won. However, the modified deck means that scoring rules are also new.

There are four kinds of combination one might have: Matches, Straights, Hierarchies, Cages, and Great Rings.

Matches are equivalent to Of-A-Kinds in prime Poker (Three 2s, four Kings, two Planes...) However, you can concievably go up to nine-of-a-kind!

Straights work like they do in poker as well. For non-suited straights the order is 1-2-3-4-5-King.

Hierarchies (also known as Straight Flushes) occur when one has a Straight in which either all cards share at least one suit, or none of the cards have a suit. A player may form these using the order 1-2-3-4-5-King or 1-2-3-4-5-Plane-King.

Cages are a special set that are formed from Sigil and specificly suited cards. Possible combinations are:
Law + Chaos + Good + Evil
Law + Chaos + Good + Evil + No suit
Law + Chaos + Good + Evil + No suit + Sigil
Lawful Good + Chaotic Evil + Chaotic Good + Lawful Evil
Lawful Good + Chaotic Evil + Chaotic Good + Lawful Evil + No suit
Lawful Good + Chaotic Evil + Chaotic Good + Lawful Evil + No suit + Sigil

Great Rings are the best hand in the game. They require one Plane of every possible suit combination, and so there are very few ways to get it.

Note that none of these combinations use Lady or Clueless. While the treatment of these cards varies from place to place, the usual consensus is that Lady is wild and Clueless is a dead card (can't even be a 2-card match if you have both of them).

To determine who has the best set of cards, follow these guidelines:
1.) Bigger sets are always better. In the case that a person has multiple sets, treat them as a single set of the lowest type among them, and a size 1 lower than the total of the cards involved. For instance, a 5-card straight and a 3-card match would be counted together as a 7-card match.
2.) If there is a tie for set size, then Cages beat Hierarchies beat Straights beat Matches. Great Ring wins against anything.
3.) If there is still a tie, determine winner by the highest card in the hands. (Clueless < 1 < 2 < 3 < 4 < 5 < P < K < Lady )
4.) If there is still a tie, the top players split the pot.

Variant: Limbo Hold'em
If you wish, you can play a Hold'em-esque version of Sigilian Poker as well. If that is the case, rounds proceed like so:
1.) Players ante or post blinds.
2.) Players are dealt 3 cards each.
3.) A round of betting occurs.
4.) Five cards are dealt to the center. These cards may be used as if in anyone's hand.
5.) A round of betting occurs.
6.) Two cards are dealt to the center.
7.) A round of betting occurs.
8.) Two cards are dealt to the center.
9.) A round of betting occurs.
10.) Players reveal their cards, scoring as though their hand consisted of those three, plus six chosen from the nine in the center.

So, what do you think?