Chapter 1: Intro
Hey guys, welcome back to the Tarot Closet. So today I'm very, very excited about this video. Today I'm making a video on how to... and we're gonna be learning how to play Tarocchi, also known as triumphing.
Chapter 2: Overview
Okay, so as we all know, or at least most of us know our Tarot history, the Tarot deck was initially created for playing purposes, so it was used to play games. The game is played with 62 of the same Tarot cards, and I will get into details on which cards we take out.
I'm gonna start with the Knights... I mean with the Wands and Swords. So these two are sort of kind of grouped together in the sense that the ranking, the order of the cards, are from highest to lowest—meaning the King of Swords is the highest and the Ace of Swords is the lowest. Same thing with the Wands: King highest, Ace lowest.
Now when we get into the Cups and Coins, it's ranked a little bit differently. We still have the King being the highest, but the 10 is the lowest. So let me go ahead and put that in order. So it would go like that: King, Queen, Knight, Page, 1, 2, 3... all the way to 10, the 10 being the lowest. So the same thing, as I said, with the Coins. I'm gonna get that in order... there we go, 10 being the lowest.
And then this is where we start taking some of the cards out. So let's go back to the Swords. With all the suits, we take out the four lowest cards. So for the Swords, it would be the Ace, the 2, the 3, and the 4 of Swords—take those out. For Wands: the Ace again, the lowest, 2, 3, and 4. And then for these [Cups and Coins], the lowest, like I mentioned before, the 10, 9, 8, and 7 are the lowest. Same thing with the Coins, there you go. And we're almost there, so now we have our 62 cards.
Now let's talk a little bit about the trump cards or, as we know them, the Major Arcana. I'm gonna remove this one for now [The Fool] because it's a special card and I'll talk about it in a second. The highest card is the World alongside with the Magician. Traditionally back then when it was played, the Angel card or the Judgment card as we know it was the highest for reasoning, but nowadays the World is accepted as the highest. So those are the highest ranking. These are ranked by the number, and I will give you guys more information on that in a little second.
So let's talk about points: how much are each card worth from the Major Arcana or the trumps? The World is worth 5 points, Magician is 5 points, and the Fool is worth 5 points as well. And on the suits, the King in all the suits is worth 5 points as well. The Queen in all the suits is worth 4 points, the Knight in all those suits is worth 3 points, and the Page in all the suits is worth 2 points. The rest are worth 1 point. Oh, and the rest of the Trumps are also worth 1 point.
Okay, so hopefully I've explained everything sort of in a way that you guys can understand. So now that we know some of the rules, let's go ahead and play the game. And like I said, I'm gonna talk about this guy [The Fool] later on in the video. Okay, so I think they're well-shuffled now. So you guys would have already chosen a dealer. Oh, by the way guys, so this game is a 4-player game and it's played in teams—so it's 2 against 2. That being said, the dealer having been chosen, he shuffled the cards, and now he's gonna deal 15 to each player going counterclockwise.
Chapter 3: Gameplay
Okay, so now each player has 15, and if you guys were counting correctly, yes, I have two extra cards. The dealer gets to keep 17, and I'll tell you why: the dealer is gonna have to discard two cards, and they cannot be Trumps. They can be anything but Trumps. So I'm gonna discard... let's go ahead and do the 5 of Cups and the 9 of Swords. And so I'll have a chance to win these back. The only way that I can win them back—no one else can win them, the only way I can win them as the dealer—is by winning a trick, so winning a round.
Okay, so now that I dealt the cards, the person to my right will start the game and he will dictate what suit everyone's gonna follow, and that's where we get the term "follow suit." So he's gonna start with Wands. Now this player has to play Wands. So that's a 10 of Wands, so anything higher than 10 will win this card, so it has to be in the courts. This guy has a Knight, and this player, in order to beat these cards, has to play a Queen or King of Wands.
Or let's say this player doesn't have any Wands whatsoever: he can play a Trump card, and that Trump card will trump all the cards. So let's say he didn't have Wands whatsoever, and he'll say it obviously, and play a Trump card [The Star]. And now it's my turn, so let's see what I have. I don't have any Wands, so in order for me to win this round, I have to play a Trump higher than The Star. There you go, I play The Sun because I didn't have any Wands. In order to dictate who wins, you look at the numbers of the ranking—The Sun is ranked higher than The Star, so I win the trick. Since I won at least one trick, I get these [discarded] cards into my pile, and now since I won that round, I'll start.
So now let's say that I don't have any number cards... let's say I didn't have any number cards, I can go ahead and start with a Trump. And then this person can dictate what suit the round will be. Let's go ahead and go with a Sword. So now this guy's got to follow suit and go with a Sword if he has any. No Swords on that, so he's gonna go with The Moon trump card. This player comes in and gets to play a Sword if he has it... which he does. So it doesn't matter, these two are out, so it's whoever played the highest Trump—The Moon—so this guy wins that trick.
Okay, so now let's go ahead and bring... I'm gonna grab The Fool. The Fool can be used at any time. This guy won, so let's go ahead and play his cards. Let's play coins. This guy doesn't have any coins, so he's gonna play a Trump, goes ahead and plays the Magician. And let's say I don't have any coins either, but since I don't have any coins, I'll play The Fool. This guy goes next and bam, he's got the Queen of Coins.
So now this is where it gets a little tricky: The Fool can never win a trick. So even though I played it, I don't win. This guy wins because he played the only [traditional] card, but the cool thing about The Fool is whoever plays it gets to keep it. So he gets these, and it goes into his little pile, and this guy [The Fool] goes into my pile. So now this guy won, he'll go ahead and start the game: Cups. I'm gonna play the King, this guy's got a 6... since I have the King, it's the highest ranking, so I win the trick.
Okay, so hopefully you guys kind of get it. So we go all the way around and around until we all run out of cards. At the end of the game, the teams will add up their points. So I will add up all the points in my collection here, and I will add up my points with my teammate—let's say this guy was my teammate—so then we combine our numbers, and whoever gets the highest number wins the game.
Chapter 4: Outro
If you guys have any questions ask me and I can go ahead and try and answer as best I can but yeah so that's the game of Tarocchi. Oh, by the way guys, so this deck that I'm using, if anyone wants to know, is the Tarocco Neo-Classical by Il Meneghello. But yes, thank you guys for tuning in and I'll see you guys on the next one, bye.