#743 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Tuesday September 5)
Good morning,
I love games. Love, love, love. I love board games, trivia games, card games. I spent ridiculous numbers of hours as a kid playing my favorite games (Risk, Stratego, Chess, the 3M Bookshelf games, and bunches of card games).
Among today’s most popular games, I’m partial to Settlers of Catan and Codenames. These are really excellent games for multiple players that have the proper balance of luck and skill.
A CARD GAME OF MY YOUTH
As we look back on our childhood, we tend to remember the “big things.” We remember vacations, big celebrations, and major news events and our reactions to those events. What we tend to forget are the more prosaic events—the day-to-day and the ordinary. That said, I recall three quotidian situations clearly. One is sitting around the dinner table, with the kitchen phone behind my father, as he awaited late calls to run to the hospital. A second is sitting around the family room with my parents and sister, each reading a book and occasionally sharing selected passages or ideas. Sometimes the TV was on (even in those days we tried to multi-task!).
The third “ordinary event” was the playing of games. Among my more vivid memories is hanging around after a big dinner, finding our way into the family room to talk about the day’s news, argue politics, and discuss what was going on in everyone’s lives. This all typically took place with the backdrop of card games being played. The game of choice more often than not was introduced to us by Aunt Seemah. It is called “Spite and Malice” (arguably because sometimes a player would elect to do something that couldn’t help them but would hurt the other player). I can’t tell you how many games of this I played or watched being played.
The regular protagonists in this ongoing series of challenges were Aunt Seemah, my Cousin Chris, Uncle Charlie, my father and me. In my mind’s eye, I will always see this group or some subset thereof around a game table, playing this game, laughing and shooting the breeze. The game is great because it’s relatively straightforward and offers a great balance of skill and luck.
I’ve passed the game on to the next generation. I used to play this game religiously with Brad and still play all the time with Lauren. I have to get Jake playing again…!
SPITE AND MALICE
My aunt has asked that I summarize the rules of Spite and Malice, so that it can be passed on to her grandchildren. Here, then, are the rules of this two-player game, if you care to play it:
1. The game is played with two decks. The two jokers in one deck are put into the other deck. The deck with the four jokers becomes the “draw pile.” The other deck is dealt out, face down, into two stacks of 26 cards. One deck is placed in front of each player. The top card is turned face up. The highest card goes first.
2. The object of the game is to play the top card from the 26 card pack in front of you, and then play the remaining 25 cards successively into the middle of the table. The player who plays out their pile first wins.
3. A turn begins with the player drawing cards from the draw pile, in order to begin their turn with five cards in their hand. The turn consists of playing cards into the middle (hopefully using the cards to help get cards off of the player’s 26-card pile) and, at the end of the turn, laying down a card in front of the player.
4. Playing cards in the middle works like this:
a. Cards are played in the middle up from the Ace all the way to the King. One cannot double any card (i.e., a two on the ace, a three on the two, all the way to the king).
b. When a pile hits King, it is removed. When the draw pile is spent, all of the removed cards (those that were run all the way to the king) are shuffled together and become the new draw pile.
c. If you have an Ace, it must be played. If you have a two, it also must be played if there is an Ace in the middle. Play of any other cards are optional.
d. There are three reasons to play cards in the middle: (1) to help you get the top card in your stack played into the middle, (2) to block the other player from getting a card off (e.g., if there is a three showing in one of the center piles and your opponent has a six at the top of their stack, you might play the four, five, and six to block him/her, and (3) to rid yourself of cards that can’t help you in the short term, so that you can draw more cards at the beginning of your next turn.
e. Recall that there are four jokers. They can be played for any card OTHER THAN an Ace or a Two.
5. After having completed the plays in the middle, the player must lay down a card in front of them (“laying a card”) and the turn is over. If you cannot lay a card, you don’t have to.
6. Laying cards in front of you is done like this:
a. You have up to four piles to lay in front of you. You have to lay cards down. They are played from high to low (and you can “double up,” although that means some of the cards you might want to use in the middle may be stuck under other cards that you can’t play in the middle. So if you lay down a seven, you can only lay another seven or a six on top of it.
b. When you cannot lay a card, you indicate so to the other player.
c. If you finish your turn (or, for that matter, begin a turn) and you have five cards in your hand but cannot lay down a card (remember that playing cards in the middle is optional; whereas you must lay a card if you can), you’re “Stuck” and you announce it to the other player. The other player may then continue playing until you indicate you no longer are stuck.
d. While you MUST lay down a card when you can, you are not under the obligation to play into the center.
7. If the second player also gets stuck, the two hands, the draw pile and all central cards (but not the cards on the table in front of each player) are picked up and shuffled. They become the draw pile. The first person who was stuck takes the first turn.
8. If you play all five of the cards in your hand into the center (in other words, you play them all and don’t lay down the last one), you get to draw five more cards and you get to continue your turn.
9. Whoever plays the last card in their pile wins.
It’s a great game. I promise.
Have a great day and enjoy whatever game you choose to play,
Glenn
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