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House rules that I’ve seen – 1) no shuffling the pile when you take it – add it straight to the bottom of your deck (attentive players may notice when a double is coming up). 2) in addition to “doubles”, you can also slap on “sandwiches” (ie, 7-4-7 or K-3-K), or even on “double sandwiches” (ie, 7-4-Q-7 or K-3-J-K).
Also it’s polite to flip your card away from yourself (so nobody can claim that you’re trying to peek at what your top card is before laying it down).
Yeah, flipping away from yourself is the only fair way to play, It also encourage REALLY fast flipping and slapping.
I learned the game with no shuffling allowed, which makes sense, since card counting is a very important skill in the game.
We played with those rules, as well as one other that my friends came up with.
Backstory: In highschool, we’d get up to fifteen people playing at once. That would be a lot of hands on the pile, and sometimes there wasn’t a clear winner (overlapping fingers happen sometimes).
For this reason, one of the ‘players’ (he almost never played bc of how often he won) came up with “Glen’s chop” (first name changed for obviouse reasons).
He would give five seconds for any hands to be removed, and every second after would do a karate-style chop to the middle of the pile of hands. The last one to leave the pile claimed it.
It was known to everyone who played at my school, even if Glen wasn’t there, someone would come in with a Glen chop if there wasn’t a consensus on who won the pile.
Thats a fantastic addition.
When I was a kid the game was called “War.”
I played War as well, but at least the variant I played was simpler had some differences in the slap-inducing structure. I don’t actually remember the details at this point, but there definitely wasn’t the “X cards on a face card” part.
War is a different but similar game between two players. Every round the higher card gets the pile. Two same cards face off with run off cards and the winner gets the pile, but it much less violent.
There was a more violent kids game. I don’t recall what it is called, but when you lost each suit had a penalty assigned – slap, pinch, rub, twist I think? Better hope you don’t have a big stack or your hand would be purple.
We had one similar to War but the loser of the runoff got punched in the arm. Number of hits depended on what the tie was on; one hit for numbered cards, two for face cards, three for aces.
What we called “war” was FAR simpler than this, but I must admit that this game seems more fitting of that title.
The “war” we played was basically just two people setting down a card and the winner was the one with the higher value. I can’t really recall any of the rules beyond that; it wasn’t that much fun do we didn’t play it too often.
War is a similar but simpler game. https://bicyclecards.com/how-to-play/war/
Yeah, War is similar. Ratscrew adds speed and pattern recognition as skills, which I enjoy.
We call this Egyptian Ratcatcher in my family. And we’ve bruised bones. XD
I learned it as Egyptian Ratscrew, but eventually the first part of the name fell off. I have scars.
I played a lot of this during drama rehearsals in high school. We called it a variety of names, but it was fun! This is super nostalgic, thanks!
Thats exactly where I learned it. huddled back stage, playing ratscrew instead of learning my lines.
We called it ratsgroom. Few more additions:
If you slap when you shouldn’t, your bottom card goes under the pile as a penalty. Keeps that one person from slapping every turn…
If you put a card down when you shouldn’t, it’s becomes invisible and doesn’t count towards anything on the pile (pairs etc). If the pile is won by you, but you accidentally put a card down, whoever slaps gets the pile. (This rule is obviously not for people New to the game)
Slap on red tens. (I hate this one)
NO RINGS OR OTHER JEWELLERY
New players can slap in at any time (also used with 3+ people games to give loosers a chance to get back in)
We encouraged rings, sharp nails and other ‘tools’
Oh… well then it’s less of a card game and more of a “two for flinching” game for geek bullies. (And the geeks will never play the nerds, cause the d&d nerds ask for medieval gauntlets for Xmas) also keeps different generations from playing together. Oh sure, intimidation is part of it, but (comic aside) intentionally trying to hurt each other during a card game is asinine
Um… or its the card game “@$$hole”… but that’s a drinking game so rational thought is highly discouraged anyway
Oh wow I forgot about Ratscrew. I used to play this with a bunch of guys in homeroom.
Ah yes, Egyptian Ratslap
Ratslap? I guess that makes sense.
I wonder why playing with Carlos has not yet resulted in stabbed hands and cards.
There could be a lot of wounded rats below deck