Strawman

The goal: deliver the contract you bid, and pick up bonuses along the way, which either player can earn: both pay Victory Points. Card Points are your tool: 36 of the 70 carries the day, from a hand the table keeps feeding you.

The heart of Strohmandeln lies not in the hand you are dealt, but in the one you actively build. Between the two players sit the game’s namesakes: three small piles of cards each, the Strohmandeln or Strawmen. This open market of cards is the center of the contest. The table itself plays along: face-up cards wait in front of you like hired hands, ready to be sent into any trick as if they sat in your hand. Every card you spend from the table turns over a new one, and every turn of a card can change the battlefield. It is a blend of foresight and small surprises that has echoed through alpine taverns and family kitchens for generations.

The Cards

Strawman uses the full deck: all 54 cards, 22 Taroks, eight cards per color suit. Scoring the Hand turns those 54 cards into 70 Card Points.

The Preparation

Cut the deck; whoever draws the higher card deals first. Afterwards the deal alternates.

The dealer shuffles, the opponent cuts, and each player receives 15 cards, dealt in packets of five. The remaining 24 cards wait; they become the Strawmen after the bidding.

The Bidding

This is the shortest auction in the book. The non-dealer looks at their 15 cards and says either “I’ll play” or “pass”. If they pass, the dealer gets the same choice. (And no, there is no standing here: with two players and one bid each, the seat order has nothing to referee.) Whoever plays becomes the Declarer and must bring home 36 of the 70 Card Points.

And if both players pass? No redeal, no mercy: the hand is played as Dodge Round, both for themselves, fewest Card Points wins. There is no folding in Tarok. (And no Kontra in Strawman: the lopsided stakes below do that job.)

Contracts (VP = Victory Points)

These are the base contracts, all you need for a full evening. When your table wants more, the Expansions add to them.

Should you claim it?

Look at the fifteen cards you were dealt, and picture the reinforcements still waiting in your Strawmen: this section is for weighing whether such a hand can carry the contract.

Strawman keeps feeding you all game, so count what you already hold, not just today’s fifteen cards.

Say “I’ll play” (the Declarer game) if you hold: six or more Taroks including the Skus or the Moon, plus two Kings. Twelve more cards are still coming from your Strawmen, and they favor a hand that can use them.

(Fine print: that means about six sure winners, Kings and big Taroks (XV and up) counted together.)

Pass with everything else, and remember: two passes together become Dodge Round, not a redeal, so a weak hand still gets a home.

The King insight: in Strawman a lone King is worth a whole trick, bank it: only about 2% of the time can anybody trump it.

The Strawmen

Now comes the signature move. The remaining 24 cards are dealt face-down in packets of four, alternating between the players; each packet becomes one pile, until three piles of four sit in front of each player.

Before the first trick, each player flips the top card of each of their piles, left to right:

• A Tarok or a King flies straight into its owner’s hand, and the next card of that pile is revealed in its place. This can cascade through the pile, with one limit: the bottom card is never revealed and goes straight into the owner’s hand, regardless of its type.
• Any other card stays face-up on its pile.

Whenever a visible card is played, flip the next card of that pile at once, before the trick continues: a Tarok or King goes straight to the hand, anything else stays face-up.

Playing the Hand

The non-dealer leads the first trick, always, whoever declared; after that, the winner of each trick leads the next. Tricks hold only two cards, one from each player, and the usual rules apply: follow the led suit, play a Tarok when void, anything goes when you have neither. And one law reaches beyond your hand: your face-up pile cards count as part of your holding. If you cannot follow the led suit from your hand but a card of that suit sits face-up on one of your piles, you must play it from there; only when hand and piles together have none may you reach for a Tarok. There is no Rising Rule in the Declarer game; in the Dodge Round it switches on. (And with only two cards per trick, the Fairy Tale Trick can never occur here: a two-card trick can never hold all three Trull cards at once.)

Play continues, tricks and reveals alternating, until every card from hands and piles has been played.

A trick at the table, piles and all. You lead the K♥ from your hand. Your opponent has no Heart in hand, but the Q♥ lies face-up on their middle pile: the law reaches there, and the Queen must fall. Your King takes a fat trick. Now the spent pile flips its next card: the XVIII. A Tarok, so it jumps straight into their hand, and the pile flips once more: the 3♦, neither Tarok nor King, stays lying face-up, part of their holding from the very next trick on. One trick, and three things happened: you banked points, your opponent grew a Tarok stronger, and a fresh card joined their front row. That exchange, tricks feeding reveals feeding hands, is the whole engine of Strawman, and it is why spending pile cards is usually sweeter than spending your own.

Bonuses and Announcements

There are three bonuses, open to either player, and they are announced after the opening reveals and before the first trick. Each is worth +1 achieved silently or +2 announced. Strawman is forgiving: an announced bonus that fails costs nothing here. In the Dodge Round there are no bonuses at all.

Bonus	The feat	Silent	Announced
Pagat Ultimo	the Pagat wins the last trick	+1	+2
Four Kings	all four Kings captured in your tricks	+1	+2
Trull	Skus, Moon and Pagat captured in your tricks (a table bonus here, not held as in Calling the Twenty)	+1	+2

Scoring the Hand

Count in three easy steps, same as Calling the King:

1. Step one: count your captured cards.
2. Step two: divide by three and round to the nearest whole number. That is your base count. (Two stray cards still round up; a single stray rounds away to nothing.)
3. Step three: add the pips. That is your pip count, and together the two counts are your Card Points.

A worked example, at the table. The Declarer gathers 30 cards. The base count is 10. That is steps one and two: 30 cards ÷ 3 = 10. The pip count is 26. That is step three: the Skus and the Moon (8), two Kings (8), two Queens (6), two Cavaliers (4). Together: 10 + 26 = 36 of 70 Card Points. Won, exactly on the doorstep.

Victory Points, Simplified style. The Declarer wins: they add +2. The Declarer falls short: the opponent adds +3. Dodge Round: the leaner pile adds +2. Bonuses on top for whoever earned them. Both players climb; first to 11 Victory Points takes the evening, exactly as Mair’s Tyrolean rules play it.

The contracts at a glance