Tag Archives: Go Fish

Have You Been Playing Uno Wrong All Along?

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unocards

The holiday season is one of the few times in a given calendar year I play games with most of my family members.

The necessity of gathering for multiple events — it takes two or three days to see everyone around Christmastime, based on geography, family obligations, and such — creates opportunities for group gameplay that simply don’t exist other times of the year.

This got me thinking about house rules.

Every family has house rules for games and activities. Maybe it’s where you stand and throw in a round of cornhole, or what’s fair in a game of Horse, or how many do-overs younger kids get during a trivia game. It could be whether you call all shots during a pool game or only the 8-ball shot. That sort of thing.

I virtually guarantee that every household has some house rules for Monopoly, whether it’s doubling your $200 if you land directly on Go or collecting previously-paid fees when you land on Free Parking.

As it turns out, a lot of us have been playing Uno with house rules as well.

Get this:

unocards3

That’s from the official Uno Twitter account, which I didn’t know was a thing.

This was also a total surprise to me. Growing up, I learned that you can stack Draw 2 cards or Draw 4 cards. Apparently, in some households, you can add to Draw 2 with a Draw 4 or a Draw 4 with a Draw 2, making a Draw 6 for an opponent.

In any case, that sort of stacking has never been allowed in the official rules.

Gasp! That means many heartbreaking Uno moments from my childhood could have been avoided!

So, I decided to dig a little further. Were there other rules I didn’t know about?

As it turns out… there were.

unocards2

In this Facebook post from January of 2018, an astonished Uno player discovered this little gem in the Uno rule book:

Did y’all know that you can only play the Draw 4 Wild card IF you have NO other cards of the same color that can be played??! AND if you suspect that someone has illegally played this card, they have to show you their hand. AND if they in fact played the card illegally they must draw 4, but if not, the person who challenged the play must DRAW 6?

How am I only learning about these rules now?! I, for one, never knew that you could force someone to show you their hand if they broke the honor system Go Fish-style.

Have these revelations changed the way you play Uno, fellow puzzlers? Or am I in the minority as part of a group that thought we knew the rules, but were very much mistaken?

Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

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PuzzleNation Product Review: Hoard

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Stealing a dragon’s treasure is an iconic adventure trope, a classic test of a hero’s mettle or a thief’s craftiness. But do you have the skills and luck necessary to pilfer from a sleeping dragon and get away clean?

In the card game Hoard, you’ll get your chance to do exactly that as you and your fellow players maneuver around a sleeping dragon, trying to collect matching sets of treasure while defending yourself from or attacking your fellow plunderers, all with the ever-present threat of a slumbering fire-breathing beastie looming over you.

In fact, waking the dragon (or lulling it back to sleep) is a key part of the game play, since it could be to your advantage to wake the dragon after securing some treasure for yourself.

Hoard combines the resource management aspect of numerous other card games with the luck and wherewithal of Memory. As you move around the board, you have the choice to look at one of the dragon’s treasure cards. You can either take that card, or you can leave it (and hope you remember what you found there, in case you need it later). If you leave the card, you’ll instead draw a random card from the deck.

You might find helpful treasure, a sword to attack with, a shield to defend with, a way to wake the dragon, or a way to soothe the dragon. The variety of cards makes the relatively small playing area a rich field, rife with possibilities.

Wait a minute, why would you WANT to wake a dragon?

Simple. You play for several rounds, and each round can only end in one of three ways:
A.) The last card from the deck is pulled
B.) A player begins a turn with no cards in their hand
C.) The dragon wakes up

So, if you’ve secured a good bit of treasure and you think you’ll win that round, it’s to your advantage to wake the dragon and end the round before the other players can catch up.

Only the players with the top two point totals (amassed from making treasure sets and other related card patterns, similar to Go Fish) receive victory points at the end of the round.

The first player to five victory points wins the game.

The strategy involved is what makes this a terrific game for puzzle fans. You need to make sure that you keep finding matching sets of treasure (both by remembering what cards are around the dragon and seeing which cards you get from the deck), defend your treasure from the other players, and avoid getting outfoxed in manipulating the dragon.

The mechanics of the game are simple, but the sheer number of options available to the player — as well as the element of chance involved — make for a very replayable game experience. One round, the dragon could be your greatest ally, while another time, the dragon wakes at the worst possible moment for you and your meager treasure hoard.

A great game for families, casual players, and hardcore board gamers alike, Hoard is gorgeous, well-executed, and great fun.

Hoard is a Cheeky Parrot Games product, available online now!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!