With a title like LUZ, Spanish and Portuguese for “light,” you’d expect this Taiki Shinzawa trick-taking game to have a bit more clarity. Silly you. Silly me! LUZ is a game of shadows and half-knowns, a trick-taker that casts a shadow of uncertainty.

Given that Shinzawa is responsible for the likes of Ghosts of Christmas, a trick-taker in which you play three or four must-follow tricks at the same time while the trump suit shifts with player behavior, I should clarify that LUZ isn’t that opaque. It’s all relative. If Ghosts of Christmas is a few standard deviations outside the mean, LUZ is safely within the bell part of the curve.

This is a must-follow trick-taking game where players bid before the hand begins. You have the choice of making an exact bid, which requires you to hit the nail squarely on the head in order to score, or a more forgiving bid that gives you one trick’s worth of wiggle room in exchange for scoring half the points. Higher risk, higher reward.

This doesn’t sound so different from whist, other than the room for some wiggle in your wager. The opacity comes from the last two rules: the back of each card indicates what suit that card belongs to, and you never know the values of your…

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