This article contains everything you need to know about Arkadium’s Sergeant Major Game.
Use the list below to navigate specific topics about the Sergeant Major.
The Game
Sergeant Major is an exciting trick-taking game played by 3 players. based on whist, using a standard 52 card deck.
Here is how the game looks on a typical match. The player is in the bottom, with all of the available cards ready to play.
You can see the username of the player on the left, and the hand score on the right. The center is the player's in-game avatar, which can be changed in the options menu.
NOTE: As the game functions on a different system than standard Arkadium accounts, your username in-game will always be displayed as a variation of "Guest".
You can see all of the options available to you on the bottom of the table. Here is what each of them represents.
The Table option allows you to see the game's stats, as seen here.
The Pause option allows you to pause the game. This is not allowed in multiplayer games.
The Chat option allows you to type a message to chat with other players.
Using Game will let you quit the table or join a brand new one, with bots or real players. It will also allow you to use the Multiplayer menu.
The Multiplayer Menu gives you more options, to browse the different available tables, host your own, or join a private table with other players you know.
Using Help and Rules allows you to check guides for the game's options and rules, if you need a quick refresher.
The Profile allows you to check a variety of options to do with your chat and player interactions. You can also change the deck you play with, the game's wallpaper, the avatar you use and check your stats.
Main Menu
The main menu of the game will give you a wide range of options to choose from. Euchre can be played in both singleplayer against the computer, and multiplayer against real people. You can see how many players are active at the time next to Play.
The New Game option will allow you to play against the computer, while Join Table will match you up with existing players. Browse Tables lets you check from a variety of tables hosted by different players, each with their own options. You can choose to your liking.
HOST TABLE: Some of the options regarding hosting a game connected to a registry are locked out, due to the game using a different account system that is incompatible with the Arkadium system. Due to this, these options will not be available in our version of the game.
There are many options to choose from.
To learn how to play the game, you can use the interactive Tutorial. This will teach you all of the game's rules. You can also read the game's rules directly.
You can also customize your account and game settings on the bottom.
How to Play
Here is how to play the game. You can read these rules from the game itself. We recommend playing the tutorial first.
Rank of cards
Cards are ranked from Ace (highest) down to 2 (lowest).
Objective
The objective is to be the first player to take 12 tricks in a round.
Deal
A random player is chosen to be the dealer.
Each player is dealt a hand of 16 cards from a standard deck of 52 cards. The remaining 4 cards form a "kitty" and are placed to one side.
Players are assigned a target number of tricks that they must take. The dealer's target is 8, the player to the left of the dealer has a target of 5, and the player to the right of the dealer has a target of 3.
Choose Trump
The dealer picks a "trump" suit: clubs, spades, hearts, or diamonds. Cards with the trump suit outrank cards of all other suits.
Next, the dealer chooses 4 cards to discard and then takes the cards from the kitty.
Play
The player who is left of the dealer leads the trick by playing a card first. Turns are taken in clockwise order, each player "following suit" by playing a card of the same suit as the first card, if possible.
Once everyone has played a card, the pile of 3 cards is taken by the person who played the highest card with the same suit as the lead card. This is known as "winning a trick".
If a player does not have a card with the same suit as the lead card, they may play any card. Cards with the trump suit are special - they override the rank of other cards. If a card in the trump suit is played on the trick, then the highest trump suit card will win the trick.
The trick winner starts the next trick.
Exchange
When all cards have been played, the deal moves clockwise, and a new set of cards are dealt to each player.
If a player did not take their target number of tricks in the previous round, then they are said to have "under-tricked." Players who have met more than their target number of tricks are called "over-trickers," and are given an advantage.
- If there is only one over-tricker, this player chooses cards from their hand to exchange with the under-trickers (or under-trickers, if the two other players took fewer tricks than their target). The number of cards to give to each under-tricker is computed by the under-trickers' target minus the number of tricks that they took. For example, if the under-trickers' target was 8, but they
- only took 5, then the over-tricker gets to trade 3 cards with them.
- If there are two over-trickers, then each of the over-trickers exchanges cards with the under-tricker. The player who has the largest target for the current hand is given an advantage; they are the first to trade cards. In this case, the number of cards exchanged is the difference between the number of tricks taken by that over-tricker, and their target for the previous hand. For example, if they had a target of 3 tricks, but took 5, then they choose 2 cards to exchange with the under-tricker.
- After cards are handed from the over-tricker to the under-tricker, the under-tricker is forced to return the highest card (or cards) in their hand that are of the same suit as those cards that were given to them. For example, if the under-tricker is given the 2 of clubs, and they have the Ace of clubs, then they must pass the Ace of clubs back to the over-tricker!
Discard and Play
After the exchange, the dealer calls trump, discards four cards, and takes the four cards from the kitty.
If the dealer under-tricked, they would have exchanged one or more high cards with an over-tricker. If they find higher cards in the kitty that are of the same suit as those exchanged with an over-tricker, they must show the over-tricker those cards that are higher in rank than those that were traded.
After showing any such cards, play begins. The first card is played by the person who is left of the
dealer, as before.
Game End
The first player to take 12 tricks (or more) during a round wins!
Scoring
The Sergeant Major game has no scoring system. There is no way to save a score in the Sergeant Major game. This game is meant to be a fun multiplayer match game, without a specific scoring system or leaderboard. The game is incompatible with the regular competitive Arkadium leaderboards, and it's meant for simple fun card matches.