Today David and I got home very late about 10pm and were totally wiped out. We’d been planning on playing cards, I’m trying to find things we can do together that don’t involve staring at screens together as we both do enough of that at work. The puzzle we did for Puzzle Day was great for that but we finished a while ago and we haven’t gotten a new one yet.
We played one game of Kings in the Corner which is my favourite card game.
The rules for those who care are:
“Rules
Each player is dealt seven cards from the top of the deck. A game play “board” is then set up on the playing surface. Four cards are laid down, face up, in a plus pattern, with the remainder of the deck face down in the middle. In this fashion there should be a card north, south, east and west of the deck with empty spaces in the “corners”.
The player who takes the first turn is determined by each player drawing a random card from the deck; the player with the highest draw takes the first turn. If you are playing with two players, whoever did not deal the cards will go first. Alternatively, the person to the left of the dealer starts.
On their turn, a player may perform any number of the following moves, in any order:
1) attempting to discard from their hand by playing their cards in descending numerical order in a suit of the opposite color using the “foundation” cards as a starting point. For instance, if there is a four of clubs sitting on the playing board, a player can take a three of diamonds or hearts from their hand and discard it onto that four. Players can continue playing as many cards from their hand as are eligible for play in this fashion.
2) If at any time a player has a King in their hand they have to(during their turn) place it in one of the empty corners (thus the origin of the game’s name.) These corner stacks now become active in game play and cards can be played on them during turns in the same fashion as the normal game board.
3) Move an entire foundation pile onto another foundation pile if the bottom card of the moving pile is one rank lower and opposite in colour to the top card of the pile you are moving it onto.
4) Play any card from your hand to any of the original (N, E, S, W) foundation piles that has become empty (because the card(s) that were originally in it have been moved to another pile).
At the end of the player’s turn, they draw a card from the stock.
The first player to play all of his or her cards onto the board is the winner.”
I then messed around for a bit trying to perfect cutting a deck of cards with one hand which one day I will be able to do cleanly despite my tiny hands! After that it was time to crash out.
We didn’t play as much as I would have liked but given the circumstances it was still nice to make the effort and I enjoyed it. I’m leaving a deck of cards out by the kitchen table now so it might happen again! Play More Cards Day...8/10 I like the sentiment and it’s made me do just that.