Ultimate Nerds

Alright, a while back, when I was in elementary school, I came up with a card game which I called trades.  I tried playing it again recently and found that it was still pretty fun.  I decided I’d post the rules of the game.

Trades:  A card game for 3 or more players

Each player gets 7 cards.  A time limit is chosen (5 minutes is standard).  The goal of the game is to have the lowest total when you add up your cards at the end of the time limit.  Aces count as one, jacks as 11, queens as 12, and kings as 13.  You exchange cards by making trades.

There are three types of trades:

Mandatory Trade:  You pick 1-4 cards from your hand and place them face down and declare who you want to trade with.  However many cards you trade, you then pick half that many of your opponents (rounding down, eg. if you trade 3 cards, you choose 1, if you trade 4 cards, you choose 2) at random.  They then pick half (rounding up) of their cards to make it so that an equal amount of cards are being traded both ways.

Optional Trade:  You pick 2-4 cards from your hand and place half (rounding up) of them face down, and the others face up.  You then choose an equal amount of their cards at random and they can choose whether or not they want to make the trade at that point.

Trade with the Deck:  You are limited in any given game of Trades to 3 Trades with the Deck, in which you choose one of your cards, put it at the bottom of the deck, then pick a card from the top and put it in your hand.

You can either take turns declaring trades, or you can make it a free-for-all where anyone can declare a trade at any time (if you declare a trade with someone who is already trading, your trade starts after theirs ends.)

You cannot trade away the exact same cards you got in a previous trade (if you got 3 cards in your last trade, you can only trade away two of those cards during your next trade.)  This rule keeps the same few cards from getting constantly passed around the table.

The game ends when the time limit is reached, at which points the players add up their cards and the person with the lowest total wins.

This is only a rough version of the rules.  I’m probably going to continue to play-test it and improve it.  If anyone plays the game and finds any loopholes in the rules, or any imbalance issues, then please comment on this thread for incorporation in the next version.

Hope you enjoy!

-Malec2b(Alec)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.