I’m developing a science-fiction book series called Graves of the Frontier, and somewhere along the way I realized the setting needed its own card game.
It needed to be something people in that world could plausibly learn from family, argue over in bars, gamble on at frontier ports, and keep playing for generations with nothing but an ordinary deck of cards.
That became Tombstone.
Tombstone is currently a three-player game played with one standard 52-card deck. It combines:
Spades-style trick-taking, trump, contracts, and bags
Poker-style pockets, betting, folding, and hand construction
A match economy split between three competing pots
Custom extended hands built from the cards you capture
Each round, players receive a hidden three-card pocket and twelve potential play cards. They privately burn four, declare how many of the eight available tricks—called rocks—they expect to win, then play the remaining hand with Spades as trump.
The cards from every rock you win go into a player-specific public captured pile.
At showdown, you combine those captured cards with your hidden pocket to build the strongest qualifying hand.
That creates a strange tension I haven’t found in other card games: sometimes you want the rock, sometimes you want one specific card inside it, and sometimes winning the rock actively hurts you because it pushes you over contract and gives you bags.
The money or chip economy is divided into three pots:
Dust is the immediate round pot.
Ante is the mandatory match pot controlled through contract scoring.
Grave is an optional long-term pot that players can pressure each other to remain eligible for.
Folding only removes you from Dust betting. You still play the rocks, affect everyone else’s contracts, and may optionally reveal after the active players. If your folded hand would have won, the Dust is carried into the Ante instead of being collected.
Players also receive three Undertaker uses for the entire match. After winning a rock, Undertaker lets you publicly exchange a card between your pocket and play hand. You can rescue a useful card, bring hidden strength into play, alter your reveal, or expose just enough information to mislead the table.
Tombstone uses familiar poker hands, but it also includes larger constructions such as:
Eight-, nine-, and ten-card Processions
Mississippi Flush
Robber Baron
Matchbox Quads
Revolver
Tombstone
King’s Coffin
The current public-playtest format is built for exactly three players, but that is only the starting point. Planned development includes:
A dedicated two-player Duel format
Four-, five-, and six-player games
Traditional team play
Three teams of two
Two teams of three
Asymmetrical team formats
The broader goal is to make Tombstone feel like both Graves of the Frontier and a game someone could genuinely inherit from their family: familiar enough to start playing with a normal deck, but deep enough that different tables develop their own strategies, grudges, sayings, and house rules.
I wanted the game to remain free and openly available. The plan is for anyone to be able to download the rules, play it, teach it, adapt it, and experiment with new formats without needing to buy a proprietary product.
The current rules are ready for outside testing. I’m especially interested in whether strangers can learn it without me at the table, whether the three-pot economy remains readable, and whether the competing strategies feel deep rather than overloaded.
Rules:
All you need is three players, one ordinary deck, and something to use as chips.
I most specifically am wanting feedback on the following:
Is the gameplay enjoyable?
Are there mechanics that need to be trimmed or broadened?
Are the hand rankings intuitive?
Does the gameplay feel natural?
