R: 3 / I: 1 Standard Card Games
Anyone know of any games that are fun with just a regular deck of cards? Or even modified or multiple ones?
There's one game that someone taught me that's been pretty fun; I haven't played with over 4 people but lately I've figured that you'd divide by 4, rounding up, to find how many decks you'll need. It's called Fiji, but I haven't been able to find a record of it anywhere else.
The setup:
Deal to each player 3 tableaus each having 2 cards, the bottom one is face down and the top one is face up. Then give them 3 cards in their hand. Before play starts they can switch cards with their hand and the face up cards on their tableaus, this is the only time in the game this can happen. Put the leftover cards into a draw pile.
The Goal: The point of this game is to get rid of every card in your hand and tableaus.
Rules:
Ace is the high card. The players play cards into a central tableau. To start the pile the person with the lowest value card starting from 4 plays first (IIRC suit values from lowest to greatest are clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades) If they have less than three cards in their hand they must draw until they have 3 from the draw pile at the end of their turn. The next player must play a card that is higher than or equal to the number of the card in the middle. There are exceptions with the special cards.
Special cards
10 - Can be played on any card, removes the tableau from the game and then that player starts a new one with any card; they may draw back to 3 before starting the tableau.
8 - Skips the next players turn.
7 - The next player must play a card with the value of 7 or lower.
3 - Can be played on any card, copies the card under it (if none it's a 3).
2 - Can be played on any card.
When playing on the middle tableau the player may also play any duplicates of cards in their hand, like playing three 8s at once (however it only skips the next person's turn and not the next 3 people's turn). Also if at any time there are four cards in a row with the same value such as 6 6 6 6, then it is as if the player who made that happen played a 10. This includes if there are 3s that copy cards to that extent, so 3 6 6 6 would count.
Once there are no more cards in the draw pile you stop drawing cards and a player plays until their hand is gone. Once that happens they must then play the face up cards on their 3 tableaus, if there are duplicates they may play those duplicates at one time. If a player has all face down cards they then play them one at time. They first pick one, reveal it to themselves and play it if possible. If at any time a player has a hand they must first get rid of that hand before playing any of the tableau cards.
Common misconceptions: 8s and 7s cannot be played on any card.
Loops are very rare so don't worry about them – in the few years of playing this game I've only had it happen once.
So does anyone else have any good card games that they want to share? People always seem to know only one or two games such as war, go fish, bs, 21 and poker. It seems that these ones dominate the knowledge sphere and don't really make room for other smaller games, even if the smaller ones are more fun.