Hat-Trick online is on!

We are happy to announce that as of today Hat-Trick (including the ‘Players’ expansion) has gone online. Check it out on Tabletopia right here.

A few hints for all those that are new to Tabletopia:

• it runs best on Internet Explorer, quite well on Firefox/Opera (it did not work for me, though) and does not work on Chrome. So I strongly encourage you to use IE.
• navigate the camera with WASD keys or use the mouse.
• you flip cards with the F key
• if you want to do something with cards/decks (i.e. rotate them with Q,E, grab more than one with SHIFT), highlight them first (by clicking on them, they should turn blue).
• remember – there’s a big difference between TAKING and DRAWING cards from the deck. When you TAKE them, they simply land on the table for all to see. DRAWING, on the other hand, puts cards in your hand face up and your opponent can’t see them.
• When you want to play an Action Card from your hand, flip it face down while it’s still in your hand (letter F), so that your opponent can’t see it once you lay it on the table.
• when DRAWING a card onto your hand, instead of clicking the deck and choosing the DRAW option, simply grab the topmost card from the deck and while holding the button, hover it to the bottom of the screen (it should turn blue). When you release the button, the card will land in your hand.
• do not discard Action Cards – when playing a new one, just lay it on the old ones. It’s even better if you stack them (release the card when the one underneath turns orange). This way you will be building a deck, which will make your life easier when making a new one later (they will be already stacked).
• remember about SHUFFLING!

Besides, I found deck handling pretty hard at the beginning. Here are a few hints that should make life easier for you:

• to put a card in a deck, hold it above the deck until the deck turns orange. Once you release the button, the card will go on top.
• to grab the entire deck, FIRST click the deck (highlighting it in the process) and then grab it while holding the SHIFT button. It comes handy, when building a new deck from the discard pile.
• There’s a bug which does not let you DRAW the final card from the deck (you can only TAKE it). We solved it by building a new deck from the discard pile, shuffling it and putting this final card on top of the new deck. It worked for us.

These are the things that come to my mind after first few plays. If something new pops up, I’ll let you know, preferrably in this thread on Board Game Geek. You can also ask questions there, arrange online matches or come up with brave new ideas – an online tournament, perhaps?

See you there.