Palace

Goal

Get rid of all your cards: your hand, then your 3 face-up cards, then your 3 face-down cards. The first player with no cards left wins.

Cards

With 2 players, use one standard 52-card deck without Jokers. With 3 to 5 players, shuffle two of these decks together. Suits don’t matter.

Ranking

From highest to lowest the ranks are A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, and 3. The 2 is below them all. The 2, 3, 7, and 10 also have special effects, listed under Card abilities.

Starting hand

Deal each player 3 cards face down in a row. Nobody looks at these, not even their owner. Then deal each player 6 cards. Each player chooses 3 of the 6 and lays them face up, one on each face-down card, and keeps the other 3 as their hand.

Setup

The rest of the cards are the draw pile. Turn its top card face up to start the discard pile. If that card is a 10, set it aside out of the game and turn the next one.

Play

1. Play equal or higher. Play goes to the left. On your turn, play a card equal to or higher than the top card of the discard pile. From your hand you can play several cards of one rank together. Any card can be played on an empty pile.
2. Draw back up to 3. After you play, draw from the draw pile until you hold 3 cards, for as long as the draw pile lasts.
3. Four in a row burns the pile. When the top 4 cards of the discard pile are the same rank, whether one player laid them or several did, the whole pile is burned. Set it aside out of the game. The next player can play any card.
4. Pick up the pile if you can’t play. Add the whole discard pile to your hand, and your turn ends. You can also pick up the pile instead of playing, whenever it has a card in it.
5. Then your face-up cards. When your hand is empty, play from your face-up cards, one card a turn.
6. Then your face-down cards. When your face-up cards are gone too, turn over one face-down card without looking at it first. If it can be played, it’s played. If it can’t, it goes into your hand with the whole discard pile. At this stage you can’t pick up the pile by choice.
7. Hand first, always. Whenever you hold cards in your hand, you play from it before your face-up or face-down cards.
8. The first player out wins. The game ends as soon as one player has no cards left. If 400 turns in a row pass without a pile being burned or a player going out, the game ends in a draw with no winner.

Card abilities

Each power card carries its mark in its top-right corner.

• ↺2. Can be played on any card. The next player can play any card.
• ◌3. Can be played on any card, and the next player plays to the card underneath it as though the 3 weren’t there. Several 3s in a row are all looked through. If the pile holds nothing but 3s, any card can be played.
• ↓7. Is played by the usual rule, but the next card played must be a 7 or lower.
• ✸10. Can be played on any card. It burns the whole pile, and you draw back up to 3 and play again.

The 2, 3, and 10 can be played on a 7. A 3 counts as a card for four in a row, so a 3 between 8s breaks a run of 8s, and four 3s in a row burn the pile.

Variants

Play on for places. The game doesn’t end when the first player goes out. The others keep playing for 2nd place, 3rd place, and so on, until one player is left holding cards. That player comes last.

How this version differs

• The 3 and the 7 have special effects. In the published rules they’re ordinary cards, and only the 2 and the 10 are special.
• You can pick up the pile by choice. The published rules say you must play a card if you can.
• A game with 400 turns in a row without a burn is a draw. The published rules have no draw, and play goes on until a player goes out.

Open the rules page