Play with Cards
A card game of strategy & thievery for 2–4 players
What You Need
- 1 standard deck of 52 cards + 2 jokers (54 total)
- 2–4 players
- Pen and paper for scoring
Setup
Shuffle the deck. Deal 4 cards face-down to each player. Players may look at their own cards.
Build a pyramid of face-up cards in the centre of the table. The bottom row has the most cards, each row above has one fewer.
| Players | Rows | Pyramid cards | Reserve cards |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 6 | 21 | 25 |
| 3 | 7 | 28 | 14 |
| 4 | 7 | 28 | 10 |
In the digital game, one entire row (the middle row) is placed face-down. These cards flip face-up when the cards covering them are removed. Feel free to experiment with which rows or cards are face-down — it changes the strategy!
Place the remaining cards face-down as the reserve pile.
On Your Turn
You must take one card:
- Take a free face-up card from the pyramid. A card is free when no cards are directly above it.
- Draw the top card from the reserve pile.
- Joker swap: if you have a joker in hand, trade it for any face-up pyramid card. Place the joker face-up where that card was.
After drafting, you may do one of the following:
- Create a new meld — lay down 2–4 cards of the same rank from your hand, face-up in front of you.
- Extend one of your own melds — add matching cards from your hand.
- Steal an opponent's incomplete meld (2–3 cards) by adding cards from your hand to complete it to exactly 4 cards. Move the entire meld in front of you.
- Or do nothing and end your turn.
You may only do one meld action per turn. Melds must contain at least one natural card (not a joker).
Stealing
Melds with fewer than 4 cards are vulnerable. Any opponent can steal them on their turn by adding matching cards of the same rank from their hand. If the meld still isn't 4 cards, it can be stolen back! Melds with 4 cards are safe and cannot be stolen.
Pairs are quick points but easy to steal. Quads score 100 and are untouchable!
Scoring
| Meld | Score | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Pair (2) | Sum of natural values x1 | Two 8s = 16 pts |
| Triple (3) | Sum of natural values x2 | Three 8s = 48 pts (24×2) |
| Quad (4) | 100 points flat | Four of anything = 100 pts |
Jokers count as 0 in scoring. Cards left in hand at game end are subtracted from your score (face value, A=1, J=11, Q=12, K=13, Joker=0).
Game End
The game ends when the last card is taken from the pyramid. The player who took it gets one final meld action. Then all players total their meld scores and subtract their hand penalties. Highest score wins. Tiebreaker: fewest cards left in hand.
Variants
Meld scores are multiplied by the number of pyramid rows that still contain cards. The multiplier is highest at the start and drops as rows are cleared — meld early for maximum points!
Shuffle one joker or a marked card into the reserve pile before the game. When this card is drawn, the reserve pile is locked — no more draws from the reserve for the rest of the game. Only pyramid cards can be drafted.
cascatagame.com — Play Cascata free in your browser