I'd love to see a playthrough of this with the scoring included.

What if: you wanted to play a 3 of spades. But god said: "That's not OK."

This was the best CGTDS episode yet.

My friends and I played Eleusis back in the 70's. We were math geeks in high school. I found the rules for Eleusis in the (I think) October 1973 edition of Scientific American. The trick to playing God is to make a rule that isn't too easy or too hard because either will result in low scoring games. Since Gods score is based on the score of the players, a rule that generates high player scores is best.

I'm not sure what I did for KZfaq to start suggesting unusual playing card games to me but I'm not complaining about it

I learned Eleusis as a kid from a book of non-ordinary card games, and to this day when someone screws up a turn we still say, "BAD PROPHET!"

So a hand in this game can go for 60-90 minutes (depending on people at the table and difficulty of the Dealer's Rule). There is a variant to this game called Eleusis Express, which was created for elementary school students to learn about the scientific method, here are the differences: 1) Players have 12 cards in hand instead of 14 2) On your turn you can play ONLY 1 card or declare "no-play". An incorrect play or "no-play" forces you to draw 1 card (not 2). 3) If the "no-play" is correct, you get 1 less card when you're dealt a new hand. 4) There is no "Prophet". Instead if a player makes a correct play or "no-play", they are allowed to guess the secret rule. If they guess the rule, they score a bonus and end the round. 5) There is are no timers. A round is over once someone correctly guesses the rule or a player goes out by not having cards in hand. 6) Scoring is different. The Dealer does not score in this variant. Your score for the round is 12 MINUS the number of cards in hand. If you had no cards in hand score +3 Points. If you correctly guessed the rule score +6 points. I agree that Express takes out a lot of what Quinns and others found fun about this game, However the fun of card games is, you can incorporate rules that you like so if there's something in Express that you like, add that into the main game.

YESSSS IT'S MY FAVORITE CARD GAME I have been bugging people to play Eleusis with me ever since I got a Martin Gardner book in middle school.

I’d pay money for the shut up and sit down published “card games that don’t suck” book. You know, for in case of end of the world and no access to the internet.

I'm so happy to have found SU&SD discussing card games with regular cards. I love boardgames immensely and I adore TTRPGs even more immensely, but I also have a very special place in my heart for games like this. I think there is a special magic in being able to take one or two decks of cards around and having an infinity of completely different games to play. Absolutely love this series! Even though I already knew most of the games, some were new and just watching the explanations of things I know is also very fun. I hope you haven't given up on making more of these! I'd love to see videos of Skitgubbe, Durak, Bartok/Warthog, Basra, Euchre, just because it would make so much more people get interested in playing them!

I wasn’t entirely on board until the Prophet, which is a fantastic self-imposed-disaster mechanic. If you don’t feel like scorekeeping or want a simpler variant of Eleusis that’s great with younger players, you should check out Mao.

This game looks really good. However, I am looking at my board game collection thinking "Why didn't any of you think this?" Great video series.

Thank you, you just made me discover my favourite cards game of all time... you totally got my respect

Wow, a card game with theme! That seems super fun. I usually don't play card games due to the lack of themes.

As soon as the deduction came out, I started internally mumbling "Zendo... that's like Zendo... That's like Zendo... Also Zendo...", then you smack us at the end with saying you don't know any board games quite like this?? Time for a new review!

I'm super interested in this! What's the recommended player count for it to feel good?

Holy shit! THAT is really looking like a game that doesn't suck! I can't wait to try this! Thank you so much for this!

"Are you ready God?" "Always." * weary annoyed look *

Great series, and I'm super excited to try this out with my friends! Sounds like a blast!

It really remainds me of a game called maugh, in wich every time a round ends the winner gets to create a new secret rule for the next round. It also consists on experimenting with crazy concepts and using trial and error to solve what has changed into the game. Also is really funny to se how the crazy rules of your friends pile up round by round making the game goofier and goofier.

The ideal fancy thing to use for God's chips would, of course, be figurines of the four horsemen. I could even imagine some variant where each one triggers a different effect (and the player elimination is just the Death one), although the game being as clean as it is does add a lot to the game. Other observations: - It'd probably be nice to mark off "eras" when a prophet fails, so you can see everything they got right and the thing they got wrong; this just helps with handling the information tracking - Calls of "no play" should probably be called by saying "blasphemy" instead, with God forgiving you if you were correct or...not, if you weren't - The no play rule plus the prophet rule plus scoring do manage to curtail some of the worst possible malevolent gods; "nothing is valid" or barely any cards are valid can be sussed fairly quick by someone declaring no play and then putting in for prophecy - On the other hand, calling prophet is not always correct even if you're sure because someone else can take it off you...I could imagine this leading to weird situations where two people each suspect the other has the rule down and so neither wants to call prophet because the other one will be the one to actually get it.

Zendo by Looney Labs is the 'board game' version of this. You should check it out if you like this style of deduction.

Please make a video playing this game! This game is awesome but for some reason people dont share it on internet enough, thank god you made this video

Question: when removing the chips of a failed prophet, aare they replaced by God's chips or is it tracked in some other way?

What happens if the deck runs out? It seems like this could happen pretty quick considering players start with 14 cards

I am so happy to FINALLY see Elusis getting some love from a gaming channel. 😄 I first read about this game years and years ago and thought it was the most interesting card game ever made (this was way before games like Magic). It’s also clearly an inspiration for similar games like Zendo. On a side note the game book I read which included Eleusis had some other really interesting variants for classic games. For example, if you’re not familiar with the doubling cube in backgammon, it allows a player to tell their opponent to either accept doubling the ante or to forfeit the game. So if you were playing for $1 a win, if I use the doubling cube my opponent either has to forfeit and pay me a dollar or we double the ante and continue playing for $2. Professional backgammon players will tell you that the doubling cube is by far the most important and hardest to firmly grasp part of backgammon, because a mistake in doubling can easily cost you multiple wins at once. The interesting thing about the doubling cube though is it has nothing to do with backgammon itself, you can use it in any two player game. So if you wanted to play Magic the Gathering for money or “best of 15” then you could use a doubling cube to spice things up. Winning with the cube requires having enough of a handle on the game you’re playing to know that you have just enough of an edge to raise the stakes, and also knowing if you get challenged when the game is still close enough to risk the double. If you only challenge when you are clearly going to win then your opponent will fold every time and you don’t gain much, but if you double when you have just over a 50/50 shot then your opponent should logically accept the double if the game is still close. Anyway, long tangent aside, that book and Eleusis are both great. Excellent choice guys! 👍

Can’t wait to play this, it sounds incredibly awesome !!! Love this series!!

There’s a similar game called zendo that uses small translucent plastic pyramids, but it’s less about patterns

So I got together with some friends and we played a 5-player game of this, with 2 decks. Had a really good time, but came up against a problem for which there doesn't seem to be a rule, at least not in any documentation we could find online. One player's God rule was pretty devious and as such meant that we got to the stage where players were frequently saying 'no play' in desperation just to get God to pick a card from their hands that continued the sequence. As a result, we were all being dealt lots of penalty cards and the two decks completely ran out well before anyone had worked out the rule. At this stage we weren't sure what to do - we could no longer receive any penalty cards for incorrect experiments, so our house rule became that if you only played one incorrect card it stayed on the table, but if you played a sequence of two or more incorrect cards at once, they were returned to your hand. But it still felt a little messy, and I was surprised there wasn't a ruling covering it. Maybe the round should end at the point when the deck runs out, to show that God's rule is too elusive for the scientists to divine, and as such nobody (including God) gets many points? Would be good to know if there's an official ruling on this.

Oh hey! It's a bit like Zendo or Green Glass Door.

I generally don't like generic card games but I'll be definitely playing this!

All I hear with that music and Quinn's voice: Is Matt singing "Concepts, concepts, concepts, concepts, concepts, concepts, co-on-cepts"

Finally a CGDDS episodes that sounds off the walls amazing!

It's funny that he draws the line at "ants" not "cats" like they would stay in place for so long.

All of that power could go to someone’s head!

So super cool this game. I have never heard before of it. Thank you for the video!

I absolutely don't expect it, but it would be great to go back and do the first few videos in this series but with this shirt on

I would love to see you guys play this for 20 mins or so

Can't wait to play it!

Request: SUSD plays Eleusis

Sounds like a amazing game. One question: in the video Quinns explains you can become a prophet after you have played your card. I don't see this rule on the linked pages. There it states (as a rule modification in the 'tips' section): "You may announce at the end of someone else's turn that you wish to become prophet. Then, beginning with the player who just played and proceeding clockwise, each player in turn has the opportunity to become Prophet. If no one else elects to do so, you become Prophet immediately." So I wonder if Quinns played this rule wrong or he used other rules?

I like Ben. Please make him a regular.

I feel like a hilarious rule would be "[PLAYER NAME] can't play cards." Watch everyone scramble to figure out the pattern. And if the named player realizes what's happening they can declare no play every turn.

Looks like Ben was trained in the Paul Dean school of facial expressions

Looks really fun. Great content guys

THIS FUCKING RULES!!!! i need to get some friends round to play this

Soooo... this started out SUPER interesting. Then you mentioned the profit thing and I thought "OOH! Even cooler!" Then the explanations just kept coming and coming, chips start coming out, and it just folded into, "I think I'll break out Sushi Go instead".

Anyone have some simplified scoring that could make this more fun when the round ends?

For anyone who like the sound of Elusis, I would heavily recommend the game Zendo, which is a direct evolution of the same formula. Fantastic game that could use a signal boost.

In my favorite book about classic games Elusis is called the best card game, I wanted to play it with someone fo 15 years, but nobody wants to try it...

I wonder, is the thing about other players being able to take over the declaration of prophet actually a rule? I can't seem to find any mention of it in the rules linked, nor in any other website dealing with Eleusis... Love the video though and I'm definitely trying this one!!

There is a similar game called Zendo, which is the same basic mechanic, but with different sized and colored plastic shapes, and it doesn't have the gambling mechanic. If be curious to see what you all think of this, especially side by side with Eleusis.

please you have to play it live

Whoa! Can’t wait to try that one!

Our house rule is that God scores the difference between the high and low score. This rewards rules that someone can guess, but not everyone.

game card def dont suck. my daughter has me on playing so many different new games all the time we love it.

Awful god rule ideas: 1) play must alternate between odd and even numbers 2) the rank of the next card must always be larger, unless the last card is a 7 or all legal cards have been played 3) the red and black cards are in a war, you must always play cards of the color currently loosing the war 4) the value of the last n cards must not add to a multiple of n 5) an odd number of the following conditions must be satisfied: - the card is a queen - the card is a 3♣ - the card has the same suit as the previous card - the card has the same color as the previous card - the card has the same rand as the previous card - the last 3 cards now form a 3 of a kind - the last 3 cards now form a run (in order) - the last 4 cards now form a run (in any order) - for any n the sum of the value of the last n cards is now 15 - the rank of the card is a prime number - the index of the card in a sorted deck is a prime number - the card has been played before - the Riemann hypothesis is true - P=NP 6) someway to make the rules Turing complete probably by implementing a cellular automata 7) have lots of very rare special cases to screw up profits. 8) the color of cards must alternate according to the fair share sequence 9) when you convert the cards to letters the sequence must form the start of a valid French text. 10) when you convert the cards to inference rules of logic you must have a valid mathematical proof 11) have the ranks of the cards encode statements like "this statement is true" "the previous statement is false" "the next statement is true", ... the suit of the card must indicate weather the statement is always true, always false, a paradox or undetermined. (this is mostly a nightmare for god who has to solve a complex logical puzzle every time a card is played) 12) curl the line of cards into a 9x9 grid, that grid must form a solvable sudoku puzzle, tens and face cards have their own completely desperate rules. 13) the ranks of the played cards are the coefficients of a polynomial mod 13, the roots of this polynomial describe acceptable cards 14) a way for the cards played to change the rules for future cards

Could someone advise me what happens to the time tracker after the prophet is overthrown?

It’s already been said, but you should try Zendo. Seriously, it’s great.

This looks quite awesome. I've been rather unimpressed with some of the card games suggested, notable the "classics" like gin rummy or cribbage which I've played and just don't find all that fun even when I'm winning. For some reason those classic games are often akin to tossing stones across a lake. It's something to do, and for a moment you might have fun, but it's not something you specifically set out to do. But then something like this is both deep enough and simple enough (well, scoring is a bit much) that it's something you can dig into and have some genuine fun. Something where a person's personality can come through as opposed to rummy where you can easily play against a computer and have pretty much the same experience. It's also imaginative enough to get me excited to play. I don't think you've done this, by the way, but a card game I found in Fallout New Vegas (called *Caravan* in the video game) is a lot of fun. I have no idea if it predates that video game, but I've played it with real cards and had a good time. The only failing, from my perspective, is that it seems to be only a two-person game but maybe a clever person could adapt it to three or four people. I liked the "special powers" available from certain cards, which suggested to me an option to house rule some unique abilities on cards in addition to or in place of those.

I'm watching this and all I can think is how long it will take for one of them to knock that tall glass off the corner of the table with their elbow...

ive thought about using cats as poker chips lol

This looks like a really awesome game, and I think I'll rope my family into playing it tonight! Now I just have to thieve the cards and chips from the poker box...

When you come here during a pandemic to find some games for the family to play at short notice and the video starts with "Oh we're shaking hands" NOOOOO!! Disease, plague etc :)

A very important note: the scoring looks extremely daunting, but it's actually easy to figure out what will earn you more or fewer points when you get the hang of it. Basically, the rules are that complicated so that God benefits when players take longer, but not too long, to figure out the rule, and when some, but not all, players figure out the rule.

what happens if the deck runs out of cards?

Just had a go playing this. Absolutely amazing game

i really want to watch SUSD play this

Can you review Durak next in CGTDS??

what happens when some player runs out of cards?

This one seems quite unique. I'm actually interested in this one. I do have a rules question: If you became a Prophet you use your markers to indicate when you became Prophet and every 10 cards played thereafter. But let's say you do it wrong and you are no longer the Prophet... Do the markers go away and if a new Prophet is assigned the markers are placed anew for the new Prophet?

Ben has wonderfully expressive eyebrows

What happens if the punishment deck is empty?

Quinn showing off his tan. Where'd you vacay, Q?

That... shirt! ♠♦♣♥

Is this game named after the city, or is there a process related to the theme of the game named "eleusis" that I can't google?

No love for New Eleusis? This was Martin Gardener's gloss on the original. Very similar mechanic, but a variant on scoring that rewards God for designing a rule that is neither too easy nor too difficult to discover. Recommended.

Someday they’ll play Euchre.

Soooo....what's the penalty when god gets his own rule wrong? :D

i feel like i need to see this being played to fully understand it.

The links to rules and tips are currently broken.

was not expecting to see the blaseball anchor here

How convoluted are you allowed to be with the "rules"? Like can someone say the red/black is dependent of what time is it on the clock at the time of placement (odd minute black, even minute red) and the suits must go in ascending order except when the number which corresponds to the location of the card has an "o" in the name, and everything gets reversed as soon as more then half of the players finish their drinks?

what happens if everyone declares to be prophet? or is there a limit?

God places a token every ten cards unless there is a prophet. If a prophet is ousted they remove their tokens. When this happens does God retroactively put down their tokens, e.g. lets say 20 cards were played under the Prophet for a total of 25 cards. If the Prophet fails does God put down two of his tokens at this point?

1:34 What if the top card of the deck doesn't follow the rule (for example, play only spades) ? Is it discarded and replaced until a compliant card is found or should players be informed that the first card may or may not break the rule?

Does somebody have a link to the rules; the Matuszek site doesn't seem to work (anymore)... :(

It seems like the scoring system incentivises God to be as obtuse as possible with his rule since the winningest strategy would be to have a player with a lot of cards and the other players to have nearly as many. Maybe it isn't meant to be played to win, but then I don't know why it was made for massive nerds.

Instructions unclear. Inserted myself as messiah in new religion.

this game could use some guidelines for restrictions on god, at least for beginning players.

Kind of like 'A Visitor in Blackwood Grove', where the players are guessing a rule contrived by a 'god' player.

I feel like this could be simplified to make it more fun for people that don't wanna learn loads of rules and scoring.

Zendo is like a 3d and less complex version?

Water and tea for card games during the day... Beers for board games at night?

I think you would like to play a game that I have created with my friends. We are working on publishing a proper board game version of it. It will be a while for it to be published because we are young and money is a problem but here is how to play with two different decks of cards, and two dice. The game is called kings of the round table. Kong’s of the round table can be played with 2 to 14 people( ps the board game version can be played with 54 players). Before you can play Kong’s of the round table you must separate the face cards from the number cards and then separate those groups by the suits. Shuffle the fours of face cards of one suite. This should love you with four groups of cards and the face cards. Give four cards of a suite to the king of the suite. Give three cards of one suit to the queen of that suite. Give two cards of one suite to the jack of that suite do the same for all for suites. You will have four cards one from each suite left over. Give two cards of each of the jokers. Take the jokers out of the other deck of cards and shuffle it. Has you add players you add characters. If their are two players the will both be Kings. Kings can play four cards in battle. If their are three players you have a king and a queen of one suite and king of a different suite. Queens can play 3 cards in battle but kings can play two cards cards Durrington the queens turn to help her out. Four players a king and a queen of two suits. Five players a king a queen and jack of one suite vs a king and a queen of a different suite. Jacks can play 2 cards in battle but they can give a card to the king and the king then plays up to 2 cards Durrington the jacks turn to help them out. 6 players a king a queen and a jack of one suite vs a king a queen and jack of a different suite. 7 players a king a queen and jack vs a king a queen and a jack vs a joker. Jokers can play 2 cards in battle and during the quest stage can steal three cards from any one three time. When a joker steals that don’t get to see the cards the just pull them from the person they are stealing forms hands. Phase one quests in the quest stage choose to go first and then the person to their right makes up a quest for them to go on a quest can be any thing, get creative. They make up cost for the quest. If the person playing wants to/ can play the much they give it to the person who made the quest and roll the dice. The cost of a quest is bast on the value of the card so a five is five points and a two is two points kings are 13 and aces are 1 point. During the first round of quests a quest can’t cost more then 5 points. You draw the mount of cards from the pill that you rolled on the dice. When everyone has gone on a quest you have completed one round. You will do a total of five rounds of quests. After five round of quests you move on to the battle phase. In the battle stage you choose who will go first. They law the stated amount of cards for their character in front of the player they want to attack. The person being Attacked dose the same the flip over their cards the person with the most points when. The winner gets 3 of their cards and one of their opponents then the loser takes one card. When you run out of cards you die. When one of the kings dies the game is over and team with a living king wins. During the battle stage you can use book and runs to get attack bonuses a book is 25 points and a run if 50 points.

2:20 I am limited by my imagination... aaaaa shit here we go again MY BRAIN HURTS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I just had a stroke trying to understand the scoring

Well, guys, I had a problem during one of my gameplays. I used 2 deck of cards. Players played so badly that we'd runned out of cards in the deck before 40 cards was put on the table. And we had a problem - what to do when we run out of cards for players to draw when they make an error? What do you suggest?

Great video

These were the rules for "New Eleusis", right?