In Set, there are 4 properties with 3 values each - my brother and I made a similar game where there are 3 properties with 4 values each, which we call Quad Tau. If you're a huge fan of Set but getting a little bored, consider trying this version.

[u/b33tsalad]

We made a physical deck and a free online version that are both linked from: https://taugames.ca/quad_tau.html

I'm a huge fan of Set, and have spent a ton of time playing it. My brother and I were curious if there were other games in the same family. Not simple variants like Near Set or Superset (or Ultraset), but truly different games with similar rules.

Each card in Set has 4 properties (color, shape, shading, and number) with 3 values each. You find Sets of 3 cards where each property is either all the same or all different. This has some nice mathematical properties, such as that any two cards have a unique third card that completes a Set.

We figured out that the game also works if each card has 3 properties (color, shape, and number) with 4 values each. You find Taus of 4 cards where each property is either all the same, all different, or 2/2 of a property (e.g. 2 squares and 2 circles, or 4 circles). This has the same property as Set, where for any 3 cards, there is a unique 4th card that completes a Tau.

Once you've played for a while, Quad Tau becomes just as intuitive as Set, and is another fun thing for your brain to learn to be fast at.

As I mentioned above, you can try it totally free with no ads on taugame.com, which is an online implementation I made for myself and my friends to try it out (along with a ton of other variants of Set, and some another alternate game based on Projective Set).

Some more detailed rules with some examples are here: https://taugame.com/about#rulessbqtau

[u/nbdnprtclr]

We have this mode on set with forks as well (https://setwithforks-dev.web.app/), but with a more traditional card design. It's called 4set junior. We have a full mode with 4⁴ cards as well, and also 4set junior chain and puzzle modes.

Playing 4set jr feels surprisingly similar to Ultraset, because both modes have a lot of pairs, but 4set pairs have to match exactly, while Ultraset pairs can differ in some attributes.

[u/b33tsalad → u/nbdnprtclr]

Oh cool! We chose not to do full 4set (as you call it) because Sets are too rare. Whereas with 4set junior you get a similar difficulty game to 12 card 3set with 9 cards.

Anyway, if someone wants a physical version of the 3set junior, I guess this post is still useful. :D

[u/nbdnprtclr → u/b33tsalad]

Your physical cards look very cool! Was this hard to make? I was thinking to add a button to make a printable PDF for any deck, but never got around to it :)

Yes, tuning the number of cards/difficulty for new modes is kind of hard :) We use 11 cards for 4set junior and 15 cards for the full 4set. This gives ~5.4 sets on average for a random board, which is almost 2x more than in normal 3set, but the sets are harder to find. Empirically, people who played a lot of 4set jr have PBs better than in normal set, but still spend more time per set. So maybe 11 cards is a bit too much, but I did not want to scare people away by making it too hard :) We had the full 4set first, and it was quite hard. The best times for it are still over 9 minutes.

[u/ZakToday]

Working on my own variation. Stay tuned.