Clock Suit #3051
Description
The Clock Suit
The Clock suit starts with 2 of each number (i.e. one fewer 1 and one more 5).
At the end of every turn, cards in the Clock Suit in players hand increment to the next value they can be based on empathy. 5 wraps around to 1.
Examples:
Example A: Turn 1, Alice clues Clock to Bob touching a Clock 5. At end of Alice's turn, it ticks and is now Clock 1. Turn 2, Bob plays Clock 1 successfully.
Example B: Turn 1, Alice clues Clock to Cathy touching a Clock 3.
At end of Alice's turn, Cathy's Clock card ticks and is now Clock 4. Turn 2, Bob clues 5 to Cathy, saving a 5. At end of Bob's turn, Cathy's Clock card ticks and becomes a 1 (because it can't become a 5 due to negative empathy). Turn 3, Cathy plays Clock 1 successfully.
Ideas:
Any Clock card can play as any rank theoretically (if you draw it early enough) which gives you some amount of control. But the control is unwieldy due to demanding timing. And control gets harder when you have a Brown Clock suit or White Clock Suit.
2p Clock vs 5 player Clock is very different due to number of ticks between turns.
You can discard five Clock 5s and still get max score which is hilarious.
Direct (H-group) vs referential conventions will likely have a fairly different experience with the variant.