About Phantom Trick, from BoardGameGeek:
In Phantom Trick, the ghosts you keep face up cause you to lose points. By pairing two cards of the same value, you flip them over and turn them into beneficial cards.
This disappearance can also occur during a trick: two cards of the same value are immediately flipped over and no longer count toward determining the winner. If the first card disappears, the suit being led may even change.
With a forcing rule and no trump, you must anticipate duplicates, avoid costly tricks, and sometimes win to clear a ghost already in front of you. After three rounds, or if a player has no points left at the end of a round, the player with the highest score wins.
Winning isn't always a good thing when ghosts are involved. Every trick you take risks attracting restless spirits that haunt you and drain your points. But when two identical spirits encounter each other, they vanish, turning misfortune into an opportunity. In this supernatural contest, making ghosts disappear is just as important as knowing which ones to avoid.
Phantom Trick is a must-follow trick-taking game in which matching card ranks cancel each other, potentially changing the lead suit and the winner during a trick. Whenever two cards of the same rank are played, they immediately disappear from contention, and if the lead card is canceled, the lead passes to the next eligible player. Trick winners claim one remaining face-up card as a penalty, but collecting another card of the same rank cancels the pair and converts it into positive points. Players whose cards disappear during a trick also collect their canceled cards toward positive scoring, creating a constant tension between winning tricks, avoiding penalties, and engineering valuable cancellations.
