Top Trumps

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Top Trumps is a card game. The aim is to be the one with all the cards of the pack (thirty in the modern version) by the end of the game.

Prehistoric Monsters Top Trumps
Prehistoric Monsters Top Trumps

Contents

[edit] Gameplay

A pack of Top Trumps is based on a particular theme, such as cars or aircraft. Each card in the pack describes an item from that theme. The item is usually described in terms of a number of figures. For example, in a pack on the cars theme, each card will describe one car in terms of its engine size, weight, top speed etc.

All the cards are dealt among the players. There must be at least two players, and at least one card for each player. The starting player (Normally the person to the left of the dealer) selects a category from his or her topmost card and reads out its value. Each other player does the same. The winner of the round is the one with the highest (or otherwise best) value for the chosen item. That player wins the topmost card of all the other players and places them at the bottom of his pile. He then chooses the category for the next round. In the event of a draw, the cards are placed in the centre and a new category is chosen from the next card by the same person as in the previous round. (Some house rules require that the same category be chosen for the round following a draw.) The winner of that round obtains all of the cards in the centre as well as the top card from each player.

Players are eliminated when they lose their last card and the winner is the one who obtains the whole pack. Some house rules allow 'three card pick', whereby a player who has three cards remaining is allowed to choose any of their three cards to play with. Typically, this lengthens the game considerably.

[edit] History

[edit] Original games

Top Trumps was a very popular children's game in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, especially amongst boys, for whom it was a popular playground pastime. The topics tended to reflect this, with military hardware, modes of transport and racing cars all being used. The packs tended to be priced such that children could collect new packs by saving for a few weeks.

The original Top Trumps were launched in 1977 with eleven different packs by a company called Dubreq, best known for the stylophone. The company was taken over by Waddingtons in 1982 and they continued manufacturing packs until the mid 1980s. The packs from this period are now very collectable.

[edit] Modern relaunch

In 1999 the rights to the game were purchased by Winning Moves who reintroduced the game. The topics covered tend to be much more diverse, including card packs on topics such as (examples of each genre in brackets):

In most new packs a description of the item on each card is included. In the case of the wildlife and scientifically themed packs this may provide some educational benefit.

The success of the recent series has led to a "junior" version of the game being produced, with topics such as Disney Heroes, Thomas the Tank Engine and Postman Pat. There is even a more adult pack on FHM Covergirls.

Many of the packs are, like their predecessors, becoming collectable, especially those sold for limited times (such as those associated with films), or which were specially commissioned.

There is a version of the game available on WAP.

A number of packs have been released in other countries as well as the UK. These include Germany, France, Spain, Turkey, Australia and the USA.

[edit] Super Top Trump Cards

A number of recent packs have also featured Super Top Trump (STT) cards. These additional cards are not available with the original pack, but can be found in related merchandise. For example, the popular US television series 24 has a Top Trumps pack, but the STT card is only available when you buy season 4 on DVD. A number of STT cards have been made available free of charge to members of the Top Trumps club through its website. But in July 2006 membership became free and no more STT's will be made and given out from the website.

Grandmamma from Roald Dahl pack preview
Grandmamma from Roald Dahl pack preview

Some STT cards are rarer than others. Most of the STT cards made available via the web tend to be relatively common, although some earlier ones from popular pack titles, such as the Nazgûl (Lord of the Rings series) can attract relatively high prices. Cards made available in other ways can be exceptionally rare. An example is the Grandmamma STT card for the Roald Dahl pack. It was only given out, free, to Scouts at a charity sleepover event in 2004. Very few of these are in circulation and they are difficult to obtain even through online auctions. Apparently even the owner of Winning Moves, Tom Liddell, does not have a copy of this card. It is thought by some members of the Top Trumps forum that the Grandmamma was never actually released, and that none are in circulation. Tom Liddell has refuted this belief. However no information other than a blurry preview of this card exists. [1]

[edit] Top Trump Books

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Please discuss this issue on the talk page.

Top Trumps and Haynes have created a line of books featuring facts of a certain subject. It includes Racing Cars, Ultimate Moterbikes, Fighter Aircraft, Ultimate Cars and Doctor Who, with more to come.[1]

[edit] Top Trumps LIVE

Obviouslt it was inevitable not to make Top Trumps an online play game. So they did. Their first version was Western Gunfighters, this had loads of errors in, you could win it easily as sometimes, on the opponents turn, he does not use a stat and it becomes a draw, then both of you decrease your cards and you can get 16 cards in the middle, then if the final turn is a draw win (he looses his last card in a draw) you win the whole thing. This isn't on the website.

However, they released Horror onto the web. You could play with 29 monsters from the pack and the griffin card which replaced King Kong, some stats were edited but this was a fun play. They also released Skyscrapers, and more recently released Sharks.

However the people at Top Trumps have also made online Top Trumps games including "World Football Stars 06" and "Cricinfo". CricInfo was never actually a pack and was exclusve to the PTT websites.

[edit] Top Trumps Mobile

Top Trumps fame has only got bigger, and Top Trumps on something handheld was the perfect idea. For a small amount of money you can get a choice of games on your mobile from Footballing Legends to Gumball to Star Wars, I-III to MotoGP and in the pipeline, space and skyscrapers.

You have the choice to play single player against the computer, play with up to 3 friends on one mobile. Or where 2 players can play via a bluetooth connection.

However, the fall on the mobile is that it only has 4 stats to the pack as opposed to the usual 6 stats. In the Star Wars pack, Grievous' Bodyguard is replaced by Shaak Ti, not yet sure abhout differences in other packs.

[edit] Top Trumps Console

In the pipeline threre is going to be Top Trumps games on the Playstation2, PC adn the nintendo DS. These will feature 2 Top Trumps games per game. "Dogs and Dinosaurs" and "Horror and Predators" will be the first 2 games.

Join Mat and Bex and fill the albums bt taking quizes and find hidden secrets. The games will be available in stores in Spring '07.

[edit] Other versions

The success of Top Trumps has led to other companies producing similar products, principally on the transport/military themes and more recently personalisation. You can create and order your own packs featuring friends on a new site called Top Mates.

The Top Trumps fans favourite website Trumperama has been relaunched, where you can also create your own Top Trumps on any subject you choose using a clever online card editor.

There are also many other versions made by the fans. Such as Stuff Trumps and others are hosted Here

There are also a number of other web based variants of the game. The BBC have variants on snooker, Buffy, Doctor Who and EastEnders located on their site while the Webtrumps site has games with rules closer to the card game.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Reply to question from Tom Liddell. Retrieved on August 17, 2006.

[edit] External links

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