Card Games Part 1

Man, I feel like I am on a roll today. I had a lot of inspiration while I was at work today and you guys are getting to reap the benefits of it. 

So these are a couple of games that I use to play in groups and the first game is one that I taught my girls up at girls camp when I was a fellow camper and then again a few years later when I was a leader. 

All you need for these games are a couple of decks of Uno cards and regular playing cards (one deck will do if you have a smaller group but you'll needs more than one if its a larger group. Also, with Uno cards unless they are different versions (like years that they were produced) they might look the same so you will want to mark one set a bit differently so that when you are cleaning up, you can get the right cards with the right deck.  Also, some leaders or camps might frown on having playing cards (you know poker style cards with face cards), we had a camp director one year that was staunchly against having those kind of cards around even though we played fun games with them. So please, no judgmental comments here-follow your camps rules, this is only a suggestion on some fun.

So the first game that is fun for all ages and requires the Uno cards is a game called SPAZ Uno. Player beware this game can get intense and painful because it is all about speed.

So the premise is to get all the cards BUT first things first. I gotta tell you what the cards mean. In a typical Uno deck you have your basic number cards with instructional cards. We are going to ignore the numbers and words and just focus on the colors:

Green=place your hand on the surface (being a table if you are playing at a table or the ground if you are sitting on the floor). To remember this think of GREEN being GRASS. 

Red=hand across your heart. This should be pretty explainable. Red for heart.

Yellow=Hand at forehead. Now this has a couple of references, YELLOW fever or if you have a bright idea.

Blue=sky. Again, pretty easy. Blue as in the blue, blue sky.

Now come the tricky part. The Wilds. These cards you have to keep an eye out for the two different wild cards:

the standard Wild card you do all four actions in order. Green, Red, Yellow, Blue. 

the DRAW 4 WILD card you have to do all four actions and back down again. So Green, Red, Yellow, Blue, Yellow, Red then Green. 

Now, remember I said the premise of the game is to get ALL of the cards. How do you do this? The person who does the action the fastest wins the cards that have been played. 

Here is how you play:

You deal all the cards out. The cards are to remain face down. First place goes to the person on the right of the dealer. They take the top card of their pile and place it face up in front of them. Then the next person goes. What you are looking for is doubles (for example two reds in a row or two blues in a row, etc.). When a double comes up, EVERYONE needs to perform what ever action correlates to that color (two reds mean you need to race to be the fastest to put your hand on you heart).  Fastest wins all the cards that has been played so far and collects them and places them face down under their stack of cards. The winner of that round begins next play. If at any time a WILD is played EVERYONE does the actions that correlates to the type of wild card that was played. Winner takes all the cards and they start the next round. Doubles are counted as the card you play and previous card that was played.  When you run out of cards you are out of the game. Last person standing wins. 

Photo from Vanilla Sky

Part 2 to learn about the other game go HERE