Stick Em, originally published as Sticheln in 1993 by designer Klaus Palesch, is one of the most respected trick-taking games ever made. The Capstone Games edition brought it to a wider audience in 2020 with updated art and components, and the game’s reputation has only grown since. Supporting three to eight players with sessions running thirty to sixty minutes, it asks a question that sounds simple and plays anything but: how much pain are you willing to take to score points?
The trick-taking community holds Stick Em in high regard, frequently placing it among the best games in the genre. Fans praise the pain color system as a stroke of design brilliance that turns every hand into a nerve-wracking balancing act. Critics are few, though some newer players find the scoring counterintuitive at first. The game’s longevity speaks for itself. Three decades after its original release, it’s still generating passionate recommendations.
The Pain Color That Changes Everything
The pain color is the defining mechanic, and it’s what separates Stick Em from the hundreds of other trick-taking games on the market. At the start of each hand, every player simultaneously reveals one card from their hand. The suit of that card becomes their pain color for the round. Any cards of that suit collected during the hand count as negative points equal to the face value on the card. Everything else scores positive, one point per card regardless of value.
This creates a scoring system where a single high-value pain card can wipe out an entire hand of carefully won tricks. A player sitting on the 14 of their pain color watches it tick like a bomb through every trick, knowing that taking even one wrong trick could swing their score by fifteen points or more. The simultaneous reveal also means you’re choosing your vulnerability based on incomplete information, trying to read what others might pick while protecting yourself.
The trump system amplifies the chaos beautifully. Every suit that isn’t led is trump. If hearts are led, then spades, clubs, diamonds, and every other suit all count as trump, with the highest card of any of those suits winning the trick. This means players can always follow with any card, and every card in hand is a potential weapon or liability. You can dump dangerous pain cards on tricks you don’t mind losing, but the constant threat of accidentally winning a trick loaded with your pain color keeps every decision taut.
The game scales remarkably well across its player range. At four players, hands feel tight and personal. At six or seven, the chaos escalates and the trick-taking becomes more unpredictable, but the pain color system keeps the strategic core intact. Few card games manage to be excellent at both ends of such a wide player count.
The Learning Curve of Negative Thinking
The scoring takes a round or two to click for new players. The idea that winning tricks is good but winning specific cards within those tricks is devastating runs counter to most trick-taking instincts. First-time players often play their initial hand using conventional trick-taking logic, grabbing tricks greedily, only to discover at scoring that they’ve accumulated a mountain of pain color penalties. The teaching moment usually sticks, but that first hand can feel confusing and discouraging.
Card counting becomes difficult at higher player counts. With seven or eight players, tracking which pain cards have been played and which are still lurking in opponents’ hands becomes nearly impossible. Some players find this liberating, leaning into the chaos. Others find it frustrating, feeling that their skill at reading the trick is undermined by information overload.
The game can feel punishing when luck runs against you. Drawing a hand heavy in your own pain color creates a round where damage mitigation is the only realistic goal, and watching other players score freely while you’re scrambling to avoid catastrophe can be deflating. These rounds are part of the design’s rhythm, but they hit harder for players who expect consistent agency in their card games.
Theme and presentation are functional rather than exciting. The Capstone edition looks clean and readable, but there’s no thematic hook to draw in players who don’t already enjoy abstract card games. Selling the game to a mixed group sometimes requires a leap of faith that the mechanics will carry the evening.
Why Negative Points Create Positive Tension
The brilliance of Stick Em lives in how the pain color forces players to think differently about every single card play. Most trick-taking games ask you to maximize wins or minimize losses in a linear way. Stick Em asks you to thread a needle, collecting as many low-risk tricks as possible while avoiding the specific cards that will destroy your score. Every trick becomes a negotiation between greed and fear, and that emotional texture is what keeps the game interesting decades after its release.
The simultaneous color selection at the start of each hand adds a layer of meta-game that deepens with repeated play. Experienced groups develop tendencies, and reading those tendencies becomes part of the strategy. Choosing a pain color that overlaps with what you think others will pick can create situations where multiple players are trying to dump the same dangerous cards, leading to tricks that nobody wants to win.
Is Stick Em Right for Your Card Night?
Trick-taking fans who haven’t played Stick Em are missing one of the genre’s essential experiences. The pain color mechanic alone justifies the game’s reputation, and the flexible player count makes it viable for groups that other trick-takers can’t accommodate. Casual card players willing to push past the initial scoring confusion will find a game that rewards repeated play with increasing depth. Skip it if your group dislikes games where a single bad trick can wreck an entire round, or if abstract card games without thematic dressing don’t appeal.
The Verdict on Stick Em
Stick Em has survived three decades for a reason. The pain color mechanic is one of the cleverest ideas in trick-taking history, turning a familiar structure into something that feels dangerous and alive. It plays fast, teaches in minutes, and rewards table reads and calculated risk in equal measure. The scoring can sting, but that sting is the whole point. For groups that enjoy card games with teeth, this is one of the best options available.