Non-Violent, Politically-Correct War

Object: To lose all your cards

For Players Who Already Know How to Play War

The Key differences between this game and War are:

1. The Joker is the lowest card in the deck—it loses to every other card.

2. When players put down cards of the same rank, instead of having a “war” right away, they cooperate by trading decks, and then have a war.

3. The first player to get rid of all of his or her cards wins.

How to Play

1. Remove the blank card and the Old Bachelor card from the deck. Shuffle the cards and deal out the entire deck, face down to form two piles, each with half the deck. Players may not look at their cards.

2. Each player holds his or her half of the deck in one hand, and uses the other hand to place his or her top card face up on the table.

3. The player with the higher-ranking card takes both cards and puts them face up on the table in a pile. Aces are the highest-ranking cards, followed by King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Joker. All suits have the same rank (i.e. the King of Love is the same as the King of Piece.)

4. Players continue to flip over and capture cards until they have no more cards in their hands. They pick up their own face-up piles, shuffle them, and continue to play.

5. When two cards tie (i.e. they have the same rank,) one player hands all the cards in his or her hand to the other player, and takes all the cards in the other player’s had. Players then place their top three cards face down on the table, and the next card face up on the table. The player with the higher-ranking face-up card flips over the ace-down cards, then places all the cards (the cards that tied, the face-down cards, and the final face-up card) in his or her pile.

6. The game ends when one player had no more cards.

This game includes one blank card to replace lost or damaged cards, or to make a personal wild card (for example, draw a picture of a friend, which becomes the strongest or weakest card—you decide!)