Elfern, also called Elfmandeln, is an old German and Austrian two-player card game described as easy and enjoyable to play. It is a trick-and-draw game with no trumps, played with a 32-card pack, either the French-suited Piquet pack or the German-suited Skat pack, with each player dealt a hand of six cards. The object is to win a majority of the twenty honours, namely the ace, king, queen, jack and ten of each suit, or the ober and unter in a German-suited deck, and a player needs eleven or more points to win a single deal. Elfern is at least two hundred fifty years old, with documented references appearing as early as 1759 in a letter by the poet Christian Furchtegott Gellert. Its name derives from the German for playing elevens, referring to the winning score requirement, and the game remains popular among German children today and is considered a possible ancestor of the Marriage family of card games.
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1. Elfern (Wikipedia)
lead paragraph, player-count
Elfern or Elfmandeln, is a very old, German and Austrian 6-card, no-trump, trick-and-draw game for two players using a 32-card, French-suited Piquet pack or German-suited Skat pack.
History
Elfern is a primitive German game, similar to Bohemian Schneider, that is mentioned as early as 1759 in a letter by Christian Fürchtegott Gellert; its rules appearing in Hammer's Taschenbuch in 1811 and in the Neuester Spielalmanach published in Berlin in 1820.
Lead sentence
Elfern or Elfmandeln, is a very old, German and Austrian 6-card, no-trump, trick-and-draw game for two players using a 32-card, French-suited Piquet pack or German-suited Skat pack.
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