Miai 2026

Miai is a climbing/shedding game for two players with very simple, agonizing choices at nearly every turn. "Miai" is a Japanese term used by Go players that means "equivalence," and the focus of this game is around the balance of trying to win tricks, shed out first, and still have more captured points than your opponent.

Players have three choices each turn: Beat, Swap, or Pass. When a player beats the meld on the table by playing a better one, they add the beaten meld to their score pile. A player could also Swap by scoring one card from the current meld and adding one from their hand that is equal or better to the scored card and still creates a valid meld. Finally, Passing in Miai rewards the trick winner with a Victory Point, but rewards the passer with whatever they passed on as captured points.

After a player sheds out, both players total the sum of the captured cards and compare values. The player with the higher sum gets 2VP, the player that shed out gets 1VP, and each trick won also awards 1VP. Once four rounds are played, the game ends.

There is real, subtle tension in deciding if it is better to win with a big, valuable meld, or to pass and hopefully score later. It's a real miai.

Miai uses Sean Ross's Trifle deck as inspiration, but any standard deck will work using the Jacks as 0s.