Cego - Black Forest Tarot

Cego is the card game of the Black Forest – a 54-card tarot played in the German region of Baden since the 19th century. This app brings it to your iPhone and iPad: against three computer opponents, any time, without signing up. THE GAME The app plays the Bräunlingen style. Eleven cards each, ten left face down in the middle – the cego that gives the game its name. Whoever picks it up trades half their hand and plays alone against the other three. Every contract is here: • Solo from the hand, and Ulti with the Little Man • The raising ladder: Cego, One, One Empty, Two Empty, Two Different and Little Man – plus Selbst, Gut and the counter-solo • The special contracts Piccolo, Bettel and Räuber LEARN AS YOU PLAY Cego takes more than five minutes to explain. So the app helps you in without getting in the way: • A hint button that tells you not just what to play, but why • Cards the follow rule currently forbids are greyed out • A running score for your side • A rules section, from the deck to the settlement formula • Practice questions on counting, following suit, raising and settling • A history section: how the game travelled from Spain to the Black Forest • A score sheet that records every hand – who played what, and what it cost • Card sounds when dealing and playing, which can be switched off Once you know the game, switch the coaching off and the table is yours. BOTH WAYS OF COUNTING Not every table counts alike. The app knows both and gets the arithmetic right: groups of three with 70 points in the game and 36 to win, or half points with 79 and 40. WHERE THE GAME COMES FROM Soldiers from Baden who fought for Napoleon on the Iberian Peninsula from 1808 brought a Spanish card game home with them. Out of that and the local tarot came Cego. The history section tells the story – from the first trace in 1852 to the 1914 ban on the Baden gendarmerie playing it. HISTORICAL CARDS The card faces come from the Wüst Tarock, Frankfurt, around 1860 – the pattern the Black Forest Cego grew out of. Double-headed trumps with their genre scenes, the Gstiess with his lute, King, Queen, Cavall and Jack. The originals are in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. FOUR PLAYERS OVER GAME CENTER Bring your own group: up to four people play together, the AI takes any empty seat. So two humans are enough. If someone drops out, the AI finishes their hand. NO STRINGS No ads, no purchases, no account, no data collection. Your score stays on the device.