Lost Heir

A trick taking card game where players bid to find the Lost Heir.

There are 32 cards, divided into four city suits of seven cards, plus one Lost Heir card, a Wrong Boy card, and two additional city cards to even out the deck for two or four players. For flavor, each suit represents a different city, and each card is named (Mayor, Chief, Commissioner, Detective, etc.).

Players bid for the right to make trump (in game terms... choice of Police). The dealer may take the bid, or refuse. If the bid is taken, the first card lead becomes trump for the round. The game continues until all tricks are played. Players score one point per trick taken, plus an additional five points if they recovered the 'Lost Heir'. A player loses three points if they recover the 'Wrong Boy'. The player who won the bid for the round gets no points if he did not match his bid.

The game is played over a number of rounds... the first player to 40 points wins.

The game had two major versions in the 19th and early 20th century, the original American edition (with the cities being New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia or Buffalo), and the Canadian version (with the cities being Montréal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Halifax). The game was reimplemented in Québec in 1914 as Joffre (aka Shoo le Kaiser) and recently in the Georgian Bay area of Ontario as The Big Buck.