Tesla: Master of Lightning

From BoardGameGeek:

A VERY High-Voltage Card Game for 2 to 6 players. Through clever play of your cards, you place bids, hoping to win tricks which will bring you more powerful cards to use in future hands. So it's a blind-bidding, trick-taking, deck-building hybrid. The 144 cards in the deck depict events in the amazing life of the great electrical genius, Nikola Tesla, one of the inventors of our modern age. Following the successes and pitfalls of his life story, each player in this game attempts to accumulate the greatest amount of Voltage (victory points) before the deck runs too low. In keeping with the theme, many aspects of the game are in threes, and victory points are measure in Millions of Volts (A.C., of course). Each player begins with an "Input Deck" of nine cards. From this they deal themselves a hand of six to play the round. Each round then consists of three tricks. The first trick consists of (A) drawing three "prize cards" from the main deck that the players will try to win and (B) each player chooses three cards from their hand to bid, trying to win those cards. (Sometimes, if the "prize" is undesirable, a player may play low to intentionally lose the trick.) The winner gets the prize cards, and all players keep the cards they played, which go into their "Output Deck" (discard) for future use. The second trick in the round uses TWO prize cards and each player plays TWO cards from their hand to the trick. Finally the last trick is a One-Card trick. And again, prize cards go to the player's own Output Deck, and all other cards are recycled by each player. In succeeding rounds, when a player's Input Deck is depleted, their Output Deck is shuffled and placed face-down to become the new supply for their hand. This way, the prize cards come into play as the game progresses. Some cards are "Power Cards" which cause extra draws, discards, and actions to be taken which add extra value to one's hand, and can hinder an opponent's efforts. The winning is determined after all cards have been won. Some cards are "Positive" and some "Negative" scoring cards, and several have special point values. The suited cards do not have a scoring value UNLESS the player has acquired a "Value for your Voltage" card, which gives those cards points at the end. Therefore, gaining those during the game (even though they have no value until the end) can make the difference in a winning or losing score. Now available at Amazon.com and RedHenToys.com !