Cabo

👥 2 - 4 players

⏳ 5 minutes

Objective: End the game with the lowest score

Setup:

  1. Discard Jokers
  2. Each player gets 4 face-down cards in a grid; peek at 2
  3. Place remaining deck face down, start discard pile with top card face up

Take your turn, either:

Exchanging cards, either:

A failed matching requires picking up a penalty card.

Power cards:

Card Power Effect
7 - 8 Peek Look at one of your own cards
9 - 10 Spy Look at one opponent’s card
Jack or Queen Swap Swap one of your cards with another player’s

Scoring: Lowest points = 0 points, Calling Cabo and losing = card points + 5 points, Ace = 1, 2 - 10 = face value, Jack = 11, Queen = 12, Black King = 13, Red King = 0

Exploding Kings

👥 2 - 5 players

⏳ 10 minutes

Objective: Don’t pickup an Exploding King

Setup:

  1. Discard Jacks and Queens
  2. Each player gets an Ace or Joker and 6 random cards
  3. Count the number of players, shuffle the same number of Kings into the deck minus 1
  4. Shuffle extra Aces/Jokers into the deck
  5. Place the remaining (shuffled) deck face down

Take your turn:

Hints:

Officer's Skat

👥 2 players

⏳ 10 minutes

Basic rules for a suit game

Objective: Win each round with the best card, end the game with the highest score

Vocabulary:

Setup:

  1. Discard 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, 5’s, 6’s, Jokers
  2. Each player gets 1 row of 4 cards face down
  3. One player then gets 4 face up cards on top of their face down cards and chooses a suit to be trumps
  4. 4 more face up cards are placed on the remaining face down row
  5. 2 more rows are added to each player in the same way

Play:

  1. The player who chose trumps (or won the last play) plays a card
  2. The second player then plays a card in return - they must play in the same suit if possible
  3. The best played card wins
  4. Exposed face down cards are flipped
  5. Play again until all cards are used

The winning card:

The order from high to low is:

  1. Jacks in order: ♣ Clubs, ♠ Spades, ♥ Hearts, ♦ Diamonds
  2. Trumps suit in order: A-10-K-Q-9-8-7
  3. First played card suit: A-10-K-Q-9-8-7
  4. Any other card loses

Regicide

👥 1 - 4 players

⏳ 5 - 20 minutes

Objective: Kill the royal cards

Dealing:

Players Jesters Max. Hand Size
1 0 8
2 0 7
3 1 6
4 2 5

Steps:

  1. Play a card or skip your turn (yield)
  2. Activate the suit power (check immunity)
  3. Deal damage to the enemy
  4. Suffer damage from the enemy

Enemies:

Enemy Attack Health
Jack 10 20
Queen 15 30
King 20 40

Suits:

More rules: https://www.regicidegame.com/how-to-play/

Rummy

👥 2 - 6 players

⏳ 15 - 30 minutes

Objective: Be the first player to use all your cards or have the lowest points left in your hand

Setup:

  1. Discard Jokers
  2. Each player gets 7 cards
  3. Remaining cards are placed face down

Take your turn, either:

Using cards:

Ending the round:

Scoring: Ace = 1, 2 - 10 = face value, Face cards = 10

After the round ends, score up everyone’s remaining cards and keep track of the total points everyone has accumulated. When a player gets to 100 points, the game ends.


Based on the rules originally printed by Mandy Henning and Melissa Limes, adapted to a 52 card deck:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160303232751/http://www.playcabo.com/instructions.html

House rules:

Consider the following rules to spice up your game:

Cards:

Card Power Effect
King Bomb This kills you
Ace / Joker Defuse Ace (or Joker) is an extra life! Defuse the King and place the King back whereever you like in the deck
1 - 4 None Useless unless used in a combo
5 Favour Force another player to give you 1 card from their hand. They choose which card to give you
6 Skip End (only!) one of your turns
7 Shuffle Feeling lucky? Shuffle the deck
8 See the future The magic 8 ball allows you to view the top 3 cards from the deck
9 Nope Nein! Cancel the last played action (before it happens!). Can be played by anyone anytime. Cannot Nope a Defuse
10 Attack 10 in binary = 2 decimal - move play onto the next player, they get your # of turns + 2

Combos:

Combo Effect
2 identical A player must give you a card of their choice
3 identical Take a card from another player
5 distinct Take a card from the discard pile

Calculating card points:

Card J A 10 K Q 9 8 7
Value 2 11 10 4 3 0 0 0

Teaching the game in order:

Misc: