Schotten Totten With a Standard Deck: Build It From Playing Cards

The short answer: two decks, not one

You can play Schotten Totten with a standard deck of playing cards, but not with one deck. The boxed game holds 54 Clan cards, numbered 1 to 9 in six colours, each number appearing once in every colour. A standard 52-card deck has four suits of 13 ranks. What breaks is the number of colours: the game needs six, a deck has four.

So the faithful build borrows two suits from a second deck. Everything else in the Schotten Totten rules then works as written: nine stones, six cards in hand, three cards a side per stone, the same formations, the same win.

Watch out for one coincidence. Many decks come with two jokers, and 52 cards plus two jokers is 54, the exact size of the Clan deck. It is the wrong shape: four suits of 13 ranks and two odd cards, not six colours of nine values. Counting cards is not enough; the colours and the values have to match too.

The builds compared

Four ways to make a deck from playing cards, from the one that plays exactly like the box to the ones that change the game. The ace counts as 1 in every build.

Sources: the Schotten Totten contents (54 Clan cards numbered 1 to 9 in six colours) from the Schotten Totten rulebook on RulesPal; the Battle Line contents (60 troop cards in six colours, values 1 to 10) from the Battle Line rulebook on RulesPal; the deck itself (four suits of 13 ranks, jokers not part of the 52) from Wikipedia's article on the standard 52-card deck.

Building the two-deck version

1. From the first deck, keep ace to 9 in all four suits: 36 cards. Set the 10s, face cards and jokers aside.
2. From the second deck, keep ace to 9 in two suits, say spades and hearts: 18 cards. These are your fifth and sixth colours.
3. Mark those 18 cards on their face. A dot of pen in a corner or a small sticker is enough. Without it, the second 7 of spades is the same card as the first, and a colour run or a colour can no longer be read from the table. Marked spades are a colour of their own; plain spades are another.
4. Hide the backs (see the next section).
5. Lay out nine stones in a line between the two players. Nine of the face cards you set aside work well, laid sideways. Shuffle the 54 cards, deal six to each player, and play.

Keep the 54 cards together afterwards, marked ones included, and the next game starts as fast as the boxed one.

Different backs leak hidden information

Two decks bought apart usually have different backs. That matters more than it looks, because Schotten Totten is a game of what you cannot see.

• The draw pile shows its top back. If the second deck has red backs and the first blue, everyone sees whether the next card drawn is one of the two borrowed colours. You can wait for it, or deny it.
• Your hand shows its backs. Your opponent sees how many of your six cards come from the borrowed colours, and when one leaves your hand for the board.

Either fact is exactly the kind of information the rules keep hidden: the Schotten Totten FAQ walks through why a claim may only rest on cards on the table. Three fixes, from best to cheapest:

• two decks of the same design, so the backs match;
• opaque card sleeves of one colour on all 54 cards;
• if neither is at hand, draw from a bag or a box so the top of the pile stays hidden. Your hand still shows its backs, so this is only half a fix.

What one-deck shortcuts change

A single deck is tempting. Both shortcuts still play, but neither plays like Schotten Totten.

Ace to 9 in four suits (36 cards). The board has nine stones with three places on each side: 54 places in all. Thirty-six cards cannot fill them. Some stones stay short of cards for the whole game, and once every card is played, a stone where neither side holds three cards can never be claimed. If nobody has five stones or three adjacent ones by then, the rules give no way to end the game. Three of a kind also gets harder to build and easier to block, since each number now exists only four times instead of six.

Ace to king in four suits (52 cards). The values run past 9, so sums climb and runs have more room. The bigger change is the ladder. In the real deck the order of formations follows their rarity, as the exact counts in Schotten Totten formations ranked show. With four suits of 13 ranks, a plain run becomes rarer than a colour (660 three-card sets against 1,100, ace low, no wraparound), yet the ladder still ranks colour above run. The order you play by no longer matches the odds you play against.

Neither is wrong as a house game. They are different games, and a player who learns on them will misread the real one.

Battle Line with a standard deck

Battle Line, Reiner Knizia's reworking of the same design, needs 60 troop cards: values 1 to 10 in six colours, with seven cards in hand. The two-deck recipe covers it with one change: keep the 10s. Ace to 10 in the four suits of the first deck plus ace to 10 in two suits of the second makes 60 cards, six colours of ten values. Mark the 20 borrowed cards and hide the backs exactly as above. That gives the troops only: Battle Line plays its ten tactics cards in every game, so those still have to be made by hand. Every other difference between the two games, from hand size to the tactics deck, is in Schotten Totten vs Battle Line.

The tactics variant

The tactics variant adds ten cards with special powers. Playing cards can cover two of them: the two jokers of a deck stand in for the two Joker tactic cards, wild for any colour and any value 1 to 9, with the box's limit: each player may have only one Joker on their side of the stones. The variant also deals seven cards instead of six. The other eight (the Spy, the Shield-Bearer, the combat modes and the ruses) have no playing-card equivalent; you would have to write each power on a spare card. What every one of them does is in the Schotten Totten tactics cards guide. Learn the base game first: it is the whole game, and the tactics are an option on top.

Or skip the build

If the goal is to learn the game, there is a quicker route than marking 18 cards. You can play Schotten Totten online for free against the computer or a friend, with the real 54-card deck, nine stones and the formation ladder applied for you. Then, when you sit down with two decks of playing cards, you will already know what a colour run is worth.