MV2: Spirits and Spades

Maria OG opted out of the game, claiming to prefer watching a bit more television to playing cards, which surprised Andy a little bit. He was less surprised when Tłʼóoʼdi suddenly appeared and took a seat at the table. She was dressed in a bright green skirt and top, with a cape of feathers thrown over her shoulders, and she studied Andy for a long moment as he cut the cards. He was suddenly very aware that he was dealing with newborn spirits here; it wasn't like the wolves, who'd all had prior life experience and then become monsters."Everybody good with numbers?" he asked quietly. 

"I can count," Tom said quietly, then glanced nervously at the other two. 

They nodded, so Andy asked, "And how a standard deck of cards is counted?"

Tłʼóoʼdi looked puzzled, so Andy launched into an explanation of the suits, the numbers, the face cards... and how all that fit into the rules for Spades. "So the way this works is that four of us are two teams. I'm sitting across from Tłʼóoʼdi, so we're one team. Divvy and Tom, you're the other team. What you need to do now is make your best guess about how many hands you can win with the cards you're holding; that's your bid. There's a rule called 'sandbagging' where you lose points if you win too much more than you predicted, but we're going to ignore that for now."

He dealt the cards, then sat back to let everybody write down their bids. Tom nodded seriously, studying his cards, then turned them towards Andy. "What should I do with this?"

Ahhhhh... Andy shook his head. "I mean, first of all, you're really not supposed to show your cards to anyone else, especially the opposing team. But all right, first time out, we'll just walk through it." He laid his own cards out on the table, face up. "With what I'm holding here, I think I can take three hands. Tłʼóoʼdi, will you show us your cards?"

She laid hers down just as he had, and cocked her head as she studied him. 

"All right," he said. "With what you're holding, I'd say you can probably take four. Tom, if you play it right I think you can do the same. Divvy, do you want to show us, or keep yours hidden?"

"Hidden," said the spirit. "That's what keep the game interesting, right? Not knowing what the other players are holding?"

"It is," Andy acknowledged, "but since this is our first game there's nothing wrong with looking at the strategies openly."

"Even so," said Divvy. "I believe I can take five."

"All right," said Andy, and wrote it down on the notepad he'd grabbed from the shelves. "Let's find out."

He picked his cards back up, and Tłʼóoʼdi and Tom did as well.  

"Trust your partners," he advised. "You don't have to put down the card you think is most likely to win a hand, if you think your partner has one that will do it or if you think what they already put down will take it. If you're sure your team is going to lose a particular hand, you can use it to get rid of low-value cards that you know won't win anything."

He wasn't terribly surprised when Tom and Divvy took the first game. Advantage of surprise, and all that, he thought, smiling. "Well done," he said. "Tłʼóoʼdi, well played. It didn't go our way, but you have the idea now. When we play again, nobody shows their cards -- and maybe we can kick their asses, metaphorically speaking."

The woman in the cape of feathers smiled at him.