Okay, I've read and re-read both the manual and the in-game tutorial. I've boosted my luck to 10 and bought tons of different cards. But I cannot for the life of me figure out how Caravan works. Sometimes I can add a card to a pile, sometimes I can't. Sometimes none of my cards are legal, so I have to skip the round or discard a pile of cards. The enemy always puts another card on one of his piles, and if they're between 20 or 27 he wins, I get that. I just have problems getting any of my piles up to 20 before I'm prohibited from using any more cards. Could someone with an enormous patience, a lot of goodwill and some experience with Caravan explain to me how that game is played?

I couldn't understand caravan as well.

Played it once. Lost a lot of caps.

Yeah, I just tend to play with people until I'm broke, then shoot them in the face with my Plasma Rifle so I get my money back. Basically, if I have a Plasma Rifle and they have a face, I win.

The short answer is use only 10s, 6s, and Kings. Or just 6s and Kings if you have 15 of each.

Hopefully in your starting hand you'll have 3 tens to put down and at least one King. Put the King on your 10 to make it 20, then either have a 6 in your hand to make 26 or wait for a 6 and work on your other piles. If you only use 6s and Kings then it's pretty obvious what to do, 6+2K = 24.

Either way, King your opponents stack if they get between 21 and 26, but the AI is terribad so Don't really worry about it.


On a side note: Theoretically there should be at least 28 legal copies of each card, right? Four suits and at least 7 'sources' - The 4 casinos, Vault 21, and the traditional red and blue decks. So how come I have been pretty much everywhere and don't have nearly 360+ cards in my available deck?

I don't understand either. That said, I've only tried to play twice and hate any card game but Blackjack, so I don't really have much input. But I'd like to know how to play as well.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1135873-a-wasteland-guide-to-caravan/

Huh, okay. 6s, 10s and kings, gotcha. Creds to Obsidian for making a minigame that's harder than the game itself.

press the DOWN button to move the card you're trying to play so it's next in line once i jumped this hurdle i quickly became a caravan master lol don't bother wasting your time with designing a deck. utterly unnecassery and don't listen to anyone who says otherwise for a second. randomise your deck each game, and you will likely be able to win 95% of games and be rolling in caps. i play it IRL with a friend

THERE we go! Why the hell wasn't this in the manual? I had NO idea you could place picture cards on the opponent's piles, it all makes sense now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AorCJkgie_s

Brought to you by the fine folks at Rooster Teeth.

LoL - heheh...
Kinda sums it all up, concise.
Personally, I have found the playing cards are bugged and I won't touch them!
But Giskard has just published a Guide to Caravan on his site:
http://www.theengineeringguild.co.uk/
Which I'm sure will be excellent, and hopefully helpful.
Regards

Wow, finally a Youtube guy whose voice didn't make me want to gnaw my feet off just to relieve the ear pain. I didn't know you had to move your card down in order to place it on a pile that's already got a card.

Hah, Caravan seems kind of bogus now with the AI being so bad, but I can see how it can be cool in real life.

I tried it but I don't like it

Caravan is difficult to learn mainly because it doesn't really give good information in the holotape. I had the hardest time until I learned that you play caravan with the left and right arrows instead of the mouse. Kept wondering why I could switch between cards, etc.... and after that I learned some strategies. Most aggravating thing is having 3 slots/stacks of 26 *3 caravans* while the opponent has 2 stacks of 26 and you can't win.

Best strategy I found was to put 10s, 9s, 8s, 7s, and 1 6 in the deck then finish it off with Kings, Queens, Jacks, and 2 jokers or 2 aces if you like.

There are three problems with caravan:
It's poorly explained ingame
Once you know how to play you win 100% of the time.
I have yet to see an NPC use a facecard to derail a track. If they did that it would make the game much more interesting and challenging.

They really should've made the tutorial much clearer.

Here's basically what they say:

Caravan is a card game, it is not played in casinos, to win all you have to do is be better at this game than the other guy. Good luck.

No real mention of how to play.

I do not think your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Luck value has any bearing on the game.
I agree that it is one of the most arcane and obtuse minigames in the history of gaming

It took me forever to figure out I wasn't even putting the card on the pile of cards... LOL. This is probably your problem.

Yeah... things really turned around for me once I discovered that you could screw around with your opponent by playing face cards on him/her (and that, for some reason, they'll never do the same to you). After that, I found it almost impossible to lose - I actually had to start forfeiting games in order to complete the "Lose 5 games of caravan" challenge on my second playthrough.

Edit: And this is without making any custom deck either - just using the regular deck that whatshisface gives you at the beginning.

LMAO!!! Sigged. That is awesome.

On topic. I too do not understand how to play Caravan. I tried once with the clown in Goodsprings, lost a bunch of caps and vowed never to play again. Although, I do admit, it might be a fun game to play in real life if I could figure out how to play. May give me a good reason to break out my FO:NV playing cards.

A few helpful thoughts:

-In order for a card to be legal it must either match the suit of the last card played, or be in the proper ascending/descending order. This order is determined by the SECOND card played on a pile. Ie. Any card can be played as a second card on any pile.

-In general you NEED to use the cursors in BOTH the up/down movements and the LEFT/RIGHT movements to choose a location to play a card. Often I found "every card was illegal," but in actuality you are trying to play a card ON TOP OF another card and not under it. Only face cards can be played directly ON TO other cards.

-In order to win you need to have EITHER 2/3 caravans in the 21-26 range IF the last caravan the opponent has 21-26. If your opponent has NO winning caravans, YOU must get ALL THREE of your caravans in the 21-26 range. Because of this rule, you can sometimes force a win, by withdrawing one of your own caravans.

-Jokers and Queen are often worthless. Only jacks and kings are the most effective face cards which respectively "knock out" or "double" cards. Technically the King applies expotentially and not a strict "double" but whatever.

Hope that helps.

Once you figure out how to play Caravan, it's basically free caps.

OP, keep playing and let me know if you're still having any trouble after watching that YouTube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayb48b-4L5g
- For an alternative tutorial video.

DAMN YOU!!! I was skimming through the posts before I declared "sig'd!" but you beat me to it! :lmao:

EDIT: I'm so jealous right now, I wanted to sig that so bad... :rofl: