Wicked Grace

"Have you ever played Wicked Grace? It is easy to learn, but difficult to master. You must watch your opponent's moves as carefully as your own."


 * ''--Isabela

Overview
Wicked Grace is a two-player card game common to Thedosians. It emphasizes deception, cleverness and the matching of various hands of cards to achieve a numerically winning hand. Card suits are based on negative and positive states, or alternatively upon virtues and vices, hence the name "Wicked Grace."

Rules of the game
One of the players begins by shuffling or cutting the deck, and each starts with a hand of five cards. Players draw and discard cards, and play them--sometimes playing them upside-down--in order to enhance their hands until the "Angel of Death" card turns up in the deck.

The game is over when this card appears, and both players must show their hands. Non-matching cards are are a losing hand. Drawing a card already discarded is considered cheating, though cheating appears common and possibly even expected in this game.

Known card classes

 * Serpents (for example, serpents of deceit and avarice, decay and sadness)
 * Songs (such as temerity and mercy, twilight and autumn)
 * Angels (including death)
 * Knights (roses, ages, sacrifice and wisdom, for example)
 * Daggers (the serpent-entwined dagger, for example)

Good vs. bad hands
A bad hand is one with few or no matching suits: of song, serpents, etc. A middling hand would be one with two sets of matching suits: two serpents and two songs, for example. A good hand is one with a numerically significant set of matching suits. A set of four of the same suit of cards, for example, is considered a winning hand when the Angel of Death appears.

Trivia

 * Other common cards games of chance in Thedas include Diamondback, a game most commonly played by dwarven Noble hunters, though not exclusively.
 * One of the methods to unlocking the Duelist (Origins) specialization in Dragon Age: Origins is to beat the pirate captain Isabela at Wicked Grace.
 * Despite being a game of chance, its emphasis on non-traditional suits, virtues and vices, and "reversing" cards gives Wicked Grace a superficial similarity to a Tarot reading.