Schotten Totten

About this board game

Schotten Totten is a two-player card game released in 1999, with games lasting about 20 minutes. Nine boundary stones divide the players, who compete to create the stronger three-card formation in front of each stone.

Players build poker-like formations of three cards on their own side of the boundary. Once both sides can be compared, the player with the higher-ranking formation wins that stone. Every play contributes to a larger contest across the row, making each card placement important.

Schotten Totten also adds a distinctive logical challenge. You may claim a stone before your opponent has played all three cards if you can demonstrate that the stone is impossible for them to win. This allows careful deduction to turn incomplete information into an immediate claim.

• Compete across nine boundary stones.
• Build three-card formations using poker-like rankings.
• Use logic to claim a stone before all cards are played.
• Win by claiming five stones or any three adjacent stones.

The victory conditions create two different routes to success: steadily collect a majority of the stones, or establish control over a connected group of three. Watching both the cards already played and the formations still possible is central to every decision.

In 2000, GMT published the rethemed version Battle Line, which includes ten additional “tactics” cards and cards numbered from 1 to 10 instead of 1 to 9. The 2004 edition of Schotten Totten also includes these tactics cards.