Bonehead 2026

Bonehead is a trick-taking game played using a normal set of 28 dominoes. It takes inspiration from traditional games like Schafkopf and Skat, but offers new twists on play.

Every domino is counts as its "lighter end": the side with the smaller number. For example, a 6-1 is worth 1 point, and a 3-0 is worth 0 points. There are therefore 56 points total in the deck of tiles. Players will bid how many points out of 56 they think they can capture. The player with the highest bid becomes the declarer, and gets to announce the game type and trumps.

The trumps announcement can either be "Doubles Only" in which only doubles are trumps, from 6-6 as the strongest down to 0-0 as the weakest; or a trump suit game, where the declarer will announce a trump suit (0 through 6). In the trump suit game, the highest trumps are still doubles, but are followed by all tiles of the announced suit.

Players play out the hand, trying to collect valuable tricks. At the end of the hand, players add up the points in their collected tiles. If the declarer got at least as many points as their bid, they score points equal to their bid. If they failed to do so, the defenders instead get points for the failed bid. Additionally, regardless of whether the declarer reached their bid, all defenders score any points in their won tricks individually.

—description from the designer