h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've played Asshole. I've played Bastard. I've played Crazy Eights Countdown. I thought those were bad. But this is without a doubt crazier than all those others combined, squared.

Who the h&ll made up this game? And has anyone ever actually completed a round of it?

First, I want to know how to play Asshole, Bastard, and Crazy Eights Countdown, then I want to point out that I thoroughly agree with the subject heading of this forum!

As a matter of fact, I've been toying with the idea of writing articles on these games. The only thing is, I'm not sure if the editors'll let me write articles titled "Bastard" and "Asshole." Asshole is basically a variant of Big Two or Thirteen, if you've ever played those games. I don't remember the exact rules, but it involves putting down a card that beats the last card played; then if nobody can beat your card, you get to lead another card, or a pair, or three of a kind, and the next player has to beat that or pass; twos are high, and also a two beats a pair and a pair of twos beats three of a kind, and jokers beat anything. The other difference between Asshole and similar games is that you only go once around the table instead of going around and around until everybody's passed, and the players have names like President, Janitor, and Asshole, which basically determine how many cards they get.

Crazy Eights Countdown basically consists of round after round of regular Crazy Eights; during the second round, the winner of the first round is on "Crazy Sevens," which means they start out with seven cards instead of eight and their wild card is seven instead of eight. This repeats every round; i.e. the winner of each round gets to reduce his or her number by one, and the game continues until someone gets down to zero.

Bastard is a lot more complicated, and unfortunately I don't have time to describe it right now since I'm getting kicked off this computer. But remind me later and all will be explained.

Is this later?

Yup, it's later. Basically you need three to five players--four is probably best. Each player gets three cards dealt face down in front of them (nobody looks at those), and then three face up on top of those, and then three in their hand (they get to see those and nobody else does). The rest of the deck goes face down in the middle, and either the top card is turned over, or the person with the lowest card in their hand plays it--it doesn't really matter how you start off the game. Going in turn, each player then has to meet or beat the card on top of the pile--suit doesn't matter--_using only the cards in their hand_. If you can't meet or beat it, you eat it--that is, you pick up the entire stack. Then--again depending on which rules you decide to play by--either you play a card to start the cycle again, or you turn over the next card in the deck. Personally I favor the second method, because then you get new cards added in constantly; with the first method, the cards that didn't get dealt out in the beginning just sit there throughout the game, and depending on which cards they are, that can make things boring.

For there are several cards that make things interesting. Twos are low and aces are high, but tens are wild--a ten beats anything, and then the next player has to beat the last card played--e.g. if I play a ten on top of a seven (although that would be kind of dumb of me) the next player just has to meet or beat the seven. Twos also are wild, and when a two is played, the pile gets "set" back down to two--i.e. the next person can play a three, and so on. Jacks are the real power card: a jack behaves like a ten except that it also reverses the direction of play--which means of course that the person who played the last card now has to beat it.

Another wrinkle is that if you have more than card of the same denomination, you can play all of them at once--but of course that isn't always the best thing to do. High cards or wild cards should never be played more than one at a time, because you'll want to keep them in your hand whenever possible.

So what about those cards on the table? Once you empty your hand, then you get to use the face-up cards in front of you. Note that this is only temporary--as soon as you pick up more cards, they go straight to your hand and you have to start playing from your hand again, until it is once more empty. As you can imagine, the later stages of the game get rather cagey as more and more hands become empty and everyone has to start using the cards that are visible to all. But things get even weirder after you finish using those cards; then you have to use the face-down ones _without looking at them first_. Takes quite a bit of luck, and usually what happens is you toss out a card, it doesn't turn out to be high enough, you pick up the pile and then wind up finishing out the game with the cards in your hand. Or something along those lines.

Sounds complicated, I know, but it's easy to pick up and a lot of fun--although I don't advise playing it with enemies.