Is if possible to release a detailed rulebook for the card game caravan? The one in the game manual is only a quick reference, and the in game one is confusing and incomplete. I don't own the strategy guide but my sisters husband does and after looking it over, there is only suggested decks inside, nothing on rules. I love this game and a few of us have started playing IRL on our Tuesday card game nights. We have turned it into a bit of a drinking game too, but there are some rules that need clarification.

1) While its unlikely, its possible to start off by drawing 8 face cards, none of which can be used to start a caravan. Then what? The game will not let you discard in this stage of play.

2) The in game guide states you can not have two of the same cards from the same deck (IE two kings of hearts) but you can have a king of hearts from deck 1 and one from deck 2. What does this mean? Obviously a deck of cards only has one king of hearts. If you are building a play deck with from two decks of cards, does this mean you can have two of the same kind of cards or not? It would be stupid if this meant two different "looking" (different color cards, etc) decks of cards as you could rig your deck to know where certain cards are in your pile. If you were playing IRL how does this work? I am not far enough in the game where I have picked up new cards yet but I just can't see this meaning two different looking card decks.

3) It almost happened when playing in game where my opponent and I had 26 for all our caravans and ran out of cards to play. Its theoretically possible you both have 26 in all piles and not have any cards if the last few in both your hands are queens. I know its highly unlikely, but you can in theory tie as both players no longer have cards to play and 26 in all three caravans. Its also possible that both players have to discard a caravan and then end up with the same number in that last pile. No where are ties mentioned in the rules where both players have the same caravans, so whats the official call? How is the game programmed to handle this (unlikely) scenario? In the game I played I still had four cards left so i got rid of a caravan and used the cards I had to make a new one but what happens when you both run out of cards and thats not an option?

3) We need a clarification on winning. Just when I thought I figured it out, it did not follow the system the way I thought it would. In one game I had 21, 26, 26 and my opponent only had one caravan over my hand yet I lost the game somehow after they played a card, which because it ends so fast, and you can't see the table after the winning card is played, I could not tell what the card was that they played.


What it comes down to is we need a complete, concise, well documented rulebook, like they have for every other card game ever invented.


What we need Zenimax to do is publish a definitive players guide to this card game. Some thing very detailed with every rules clarification. The IGN posted rule guide does not go into too much detail. No where else is there a detailed guide. It would be nice if it was printer friendly and at the bottom have a quick reference sheet. If they don't want to do it, it would be nice if they would clarify the rules and I will type up the guide.

Secondly, it would be nice if they would patch the game so after your opponent wins, you have to acknowledge the loss rather then just go to the you loose screen. This is because the game ends so fast you can not see the last card your opponent played. Its really hard to learn if you can not see how you lost, and look over the table with cards on it after the game ends. It would be easy enough to code that you have to hit "x" to acknowledge the loss which then takes you to the "you loose" screen. Again, the way its coded now, you cant even see the last card your opponent plays if its the card that looses the game for you.

I am more clueless than you. I have no idea what I'm doing in the card game. Usually it just forces me to discard until I run out of cards, at which point I have to cancel the game.

You may be running into something I was running into. In addition to moving left and right to select a pile, you can also move up and down. So if your pile has a 7 of diamonds on it, you can't play another number on the 7, but if you go down you can then play a card lower or higher. Your pile must continue getting smaller/bigger numbers. If you don't have one to play, you can play any card that's the same suit (as long as it's not the same number, you can never play a number on the same number).

Here's the best I could do for rules:
http://www.strengthgamer.com/Fallout_New_Vegas_Super_Gui.html
or
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/111/1119257p1.html

Awesome suggestion on the patch, because seeing how you lost is important for learning what to do (and for deciding whether or not to headshot someone for cheating).

Man, this game makes me stupid. I thought some hands on exp would help me get the hand of it. It did not..... I don't understand one single thing about it. And I mean that!! When I see the cards out on the table I have no idea what to do with them. I read the holotape over and over, however I still don't get it. HELP!

Man, as much as I want to understand this game I'm HATING it right now.

Not only am I confused why I can't put down certain cards, but the computer beats the PANTS off you.

In 3 moves, he has 1 caravan at 26. In 3 more moves, he has the second caravan at 26. In order to beat me, it takes him 3-5 more moves, and I'm done. At that time, I have a Caravan of : 14, 8 and 2.

Pretty infuriating when you can't comprehend the game and then the computer takes advantage of that. Thankfully, I've only played 5 games, each time betting only 1 cap. My record stands at W:0 L:5

These are all great questions. I have found the strategy in Caravan to be really awesome. I would be interested to hear how you turned it into a drinking game. I may like to try that. :foodndrink:

I think the game is awesome. Complicated, but awesome.

There's one scenario I didn't understand though. I had 3 caravans of 26, my opponent has 2 with 26 and one with 22 or something. Why didn't I win? I couldn't place cards without going over, my only action was to discard cards and when I couldn't do that anymore, the AI won.

I believe you would have won if you would have hit your opponent with a Jack dropping one of his piles below 21. I dont know why it is this way, but if you are both between 21 and 27 I think you have to get your opponent outside of that range to win. You could have also thrown a number card on their deck to push their total outside of the desired range (I think once again). Playing on your opponents deck seems to be a huge part of the strategy of this game.

I have a simple question someone may be able to answer. It alludes to the fact that you can use many diffent cards from many different decks, tops, gomorrah, etc but i hav found alot of extra cards and cannot figure out how to add them to my caravan deck. I have a buncha loose card and cannot see them when i initiate a caravan game. how do you add loose cards to the caravan deck?

Yeah, I use kings when ever they come up to make my opponents caravan jump over 26. This makes him waste a turn clearing his caravan or using a Jack to lower his score. I ended up winning 3 in a row by using that stradegy and keeping my three caravans in the 21 - 26 range. I'm not clear on what actually ends the game. If I could figure that out than I'd be set.

IGN or someone should release a walkthrough video of it. I am still confused as hell.

This, So much this. I play Spades, I play Hearts, I play 3 different kinds of Poker, but I can't understand the rules of Caravan or how to play it to save my life. I haven't seen a card game this complicated since Magic the Gathering.

Can some kind soul who understands and enjoys Caravan make a guide with step-by-step screenshots from the game explaining the rules and walking us through a couple of games?

How the game expects me to learn everything from a note on my Pipboy is beyond me.

Caravan is a card game designed to insight rage and anger into the player for his or her incomprehension of the game, and the inevitable loss of the pot. The purpose of caravan is to throw the losing player into such a blind rage for being swindled that they promptly pull out their shotgun and ante up the [radio edit] out of the winner.

Worst game ever. No tutorial for the game when its freaking confusing. I play Dungeons and Dragons 3 immense textbook like books. I can't understand this card game. It is one of my few gripes about the game, so I just ignore it.

Yeah. I can agree with this. Why can't the game step you through your first game like other games do for their unique mini games? Argh. This isn't Caravan, it's Tragic the Gathering!

I would say just continue to try the game out and remember that the goal is to get all your piles to total between 21 and 27.

You have to start with a numbered card as the 1st card down in each pile. After choosing the starter card for each of your 3 piles you can start adding additional cards to each pile. You can choose to count either up or down, or by alternating colors but must continue with a direction after it has been established.

For example: starter card is a 9 of spades. You can follow this up by playing either another spade or a red suit. If you choose to play something like an 8 of diamonds then your next card would have to either another spade or club. You would have to continue to alternate colors on that pile.

If you played an 8 of spades on the 9, you would have to continue to count "down". It does not have to be in numerical order. The 8 can be followed by a 5 of spades, as long as it continues to follow the direction of the pile. This also applies when following the 9 with a 10 of spades. You would not be able to follow the 10 with the 5.

Using number cards are the easiest to use as they are just simple addition. It is the face cards that are more complicated.

From what I have figured out:

The King doubles the card it is applied to. If you play a King on a 5, the value changes to 10. If you play it on a 6, then the value doubles to 12.

The Queen when played causes the pile to reverse order. If the Queen was played on a pile of cards that included the 9, 8, and 7 of Spades the pile would reverse order. You would be allowed to follow up the 7 with a 10 of Spades. It also allows you to change from a straight pile to an alternating pile if desired.

The Jack seems to remove the card just before it is played. It can be played anywhere in the pile.

***I still am not clear on the Ace or the Joker.

I'm also not sure which card does it, but one removes all numbered cards of the same suit from the table. I was winning a hand last night and played something on my opponents side of the table that caused more than half my cards to be pulled off. I lost.

I gave up on Caravan when I saw the "instructions"

I've found that the quickest and most successful way to play Caravan is to VATS them in the back of the head with a critical sneak attack, take everything off their corpse as well as the Brahmin's, and then high tale it outta there.

I'm not entirely clear on the rules, but I try to get between 21 and 26, and keep the other guy out with face cards.

:tops:

Mayne I'm too confused here..because I can't figure out how to select where cards go?

IE once I've set all my base cards on my caravan I can NOT select which stack to place a card in, it simply has to go in order from left to right and back again. How do I change which stack to put them in?

The only controls on screen are R - cancel, W place card, Q - discard. Arrow keys do nothing, mosue doesnt' select any stack, etc.

im fairly interested in how to actualy win the game because the way i was explained doesnt worked.

ive only played it twice and both games ive managed to get all three tracks to 26 before the npc could get 2 tracks. so what gives? as i herd it reaching in between 21 and 26 means its sold and the winner is who ever sells all three first or sells two before the other can sell one. however the npc can still bid to try and beat my score if i had say 23 then they would out sell me. BUT I HAVE @^ IN EVERY FREAKIN PILE.
i thought i had the hang of it after i read the rules but the rules dont work.

Pretty much in the same boat as this - although I have one minor difference (ok, major): once I get to my fourth card to play, it sits on the first stack highlighted in red instead of green, and doesn't even let me place it on that first stack. I can freely discard it, discard the track, or forfeit the game, but the "place card" option remains grayed out no matter what card comes up.

I am just gonna not even waste any more time with this minigame til some actual directions that make sense are released. It was nifty in concept, but the implementation needs some serious work.

Who is the moron that decided to use a complex and obscure card game like Caravan to use as a mini game. Why not poker or blackjack for crying out loud. Because when I think Las Vegas, I think Caravan...not.