This is a great card game to teach the kids. It will keep them entertained for hours as they try to beat their opponent. With a little bit of guidance, the kids will be beating you in no time. A fantastic game to be pulled out on family night!

What you need:

• deck of cards

Number of players:
2+

Activity:

The object of War is to win all the cards in the deck.

Aces are high, 2s are low.

The tricks are played according to rank; suits are ignored.

All 52 cards are dealt to each player (if you have two players, each player has a total of 26 cards).

You do not look at your cards – they are placed in a stack face-down.

Holding the stack of cards face-down in one hand, you use the other hand to flip the card face-up on the table in front of you.

Each player flips a card, so if you have two players you will have two cards facing up in front of you.

The highest card wins the trick and the trick winner takes the 2 cards and places them at the bottom of his or her stack of face-down cards.

You continue play like this until one of you has accumulated all the cards.

In the game of War, a war is a means to break a tie.

When two cards of the same rank are played, you break the tie by playing new cards in addition to those already on the table.

The player with the highest-ranking new card wins the tie breaker and all the played cards.

If you both play a card of the same rank – let’s say you both play a Jack – you have to have a war.

You leave the Jacks face-up on the table and put one card on top of your Jack – face-down – and then another card face-up on top of the face-down card.

So you’ll have the following configuration of cards in front of you: the tied Jack, a face-down card, and a face-up card.

The person with the highest face-up card takes all the cards on the table and places them face-down at the bottom of their stack.

If the top card is another tie, you place another face-down card, then a face-up card – basically, you keep going until someone wins the war.

This is the best and fastest way to accumulate cards.

If one of you runs out of cards in the middle of a war, the other player wins.