Tractor Rules

“Sheng ji is a family of point-based, trick-taking card games played in China and in Chinese immigrant communities. They have a dynamic trump, i.e., which cards are trump changes every round. As these games are played over a wide area with no standardization, rules vary widely from region to region.” - Wikipedia

Quite frankly the other versions are stupid, so here’s the best version. We call it tractor, though there are other versions that call it that too.

The game is played with one deck per 2 people. The standard is 4 people 2 decks but it can be expanded to 6 people 3 decks and so on.

The game is point based, with attackers trying to gain points and defenders trying to stop the attackers.

The attackers’ objective is 40 points per deck used. So the bar for the attackers in a standard game is 80 points.

Setup

First “bury” 4 cards per deck being used (so 8 cards in a normal game) by setting them aside, then the players take turns drawing cards until the remainder is split.

For ease of play, sort your hand by suit. Threes are the smallest and aces are biggest. Each round there will be a dominant suit determined by calling. The dominant suit trump nondominant suits.

As players draw cards, a player can call by showing a joker and a ten. The suit of the ten used to call is the dominant suit for the round.

The caller has the advantage of looking through the buried cards and swapping out as many as they wish to give themselves a better hand. Also, a player who has multiple tens should choose to call with the suit they have the most of to give themself more dominants.

If the caller called with a small joker, another player has the option to countercall with the big joker.

The caller, and anyone who has the dominant ten, (same ten the caller used to call) are the defenders for that game.

Twos, tens, and jokers are always dominant, regardless of suit. Twos and tens of the dominant suit beat twos and tens of the nondominant suit. Notice how defenders have an advantage by having the dominant tens.

Thus, the card hierarchy from lowest to highest goes:

three through aces of the nondominant suits → three through ace of the dominant suit → nondominant twos → dominant twos → nondominant tens → dominant tens → small joker → big joker.

Gameplay

Once the caller finishes swapping out the cards, the caller starts the first round by placing any card they wish. Game commences with the caller’s play clockwise.

Legal plays are:
singles, identical multiples (2 ace of hearts, for example), and 2 consecutive multiples of the same suit such as 2 threes and 2 fours of hearts. A consecutive multiple is called a tractor, where the game gets its name, because they’re quite rare.

Everyone else has to follow the suit and pattern of the initial play of that round. If the caller starts with a pair of hearts, everyone has to play a pair of hearts. If they have no pairs of hearts, they still have to play two hearts. If they only have one heart left, they must play it and fill in the second required card with whatever they wish. A player can only start playing other suits if they have no more of the pattern-setting suit left.

For playing with more than two decks, a multiple can force a player to play a smaller multiple. For example, 3 threes can force out a pair of fours if the player with the fours have no triples. Even though the fours beat threes, the triple beats the double. And likewise doubles beat singles.

Jokers can have multiples too, such as a pair of small jokers. A big joker and a small joker is not a pair.

Whoever has the highest hand of the round wins that round. If multiple players have the highest hand, the first player to play that hand wins.

The winner of a round has the choice to pick up points played during the round. Points picked up are placed in a separate pile. That's the attackers’ tally for the game.

Cards worth points are fives worth 5 points each, and kings and tens worth 10 points each.

Any round winner may take the opposite action to fool other players into thinking they’re on the opposite team. This means an attacker may choose to not pick up and a defender may choose to pick up. The caller has no point in bluffing since by the rules the are the one player whose side is known (defense).

The winner of the round then starts the pattern for the next round. The game then continues until all cards have been played.

If attackers win the last round, they pick up any points the caller may have buried in the card swapping process