Small Shelf Games: Crazy Eights

Welcome back to the Small Shelf Games series; a series of posts about games that can be played with generic game components that are small, easy to store, and don't need you to break the bank to play.

Today, we're going to talk about Crazy Eights, also known as Last Card, a classic card game that's notable for being possibly the easiest game to modify with your own rules. It's core rules are incredibly simple, and it's a great game to play with kids at lower complexity levels, or with adults at higher complexity levels.

Note: It's possible you've played a variant of Crazy Eights before; UNO is a commercialized version of Crazy Eights which is probably one of the most well-known commercial card games in the world.

Crazy Eights

• Players: 2-7
  • Recommended: 3+
• Complexity: Low
• Type: Shedding
• Required:
  • A deck of 52 Standard Playing Cards.
• Optional:
  • A second deck of 52 Standard Playing Cards.

    TIP: The more players you have or the more special rules you add, the more likely you are to have a better experience with a second deck.

Round Setup

1. Shuffle the deck and deal each player 7 cards.
2. Place the remaining deck in the center of the table, face down. This is the Draw Pile.
3. Flip the top card of the Draw Pile face up next to it. This is the start of the Discard Pile.
4. Designate a player to go first.

Tip: Not sure who should go first? Try the player with the last digit of their birth year closest to 8! If there's a tie, compare months, then days. If there's still a tie, I recommend* finding birth certificates to determine how closely someone was born to the 8th hour of the day.

Gameplay

1. On your turn, you must play a card from your hand that matches the rank or suit of the top card of the Discard Pile.

   For example, if the top card is ♣️3, you could play any 3, or any Club card.

2. The only exception to this rule is the 8 card, which is wild; it can be played on any card, and you can announce the suit that the next player must play.

   For example, if the top card is ♣️3, you could play an ♦️8; the suit of the 8 doesn't matter, and you can now announce any suit you like.

   If you announced "Hearts", the player after you would need to play a Heart card, despite the top card being a Diamond.

3. If you can't play a card, you must draw a card from the Draw Pile.

   • If you can play the drawn card, you may immediately play it.
   • Otherwise, add it to your hand.

4. Control passes to the next player.

If the draw pile runs out, set the top card of the discard pile aside, shuffle the rest of the discard pile, and place it face down to form a new draw pile. Put the set aside card back where the discard pile was; it's still the top of the discard pile.

Winning

The first player to empty their hand wins the round.

Scoring

It's entirely possible to play Crazy Eights without scoring, only playing for fun or only tracking rounds won. However, if you want to add a scoring element, you can award (negative) points to players based on the cards left in their hand at the end of the round; once any player reaches a predetermined score, the game ends, and the player with the lowest score wins.

The score each card is worth will depend on the abilities you've decided to place on the cards, but here's a common scoring system:

• Number Cards: Face Value
  • 3 is worth 3 points, 7 is worth 7 points, etc.
• Face Cards: 10 points
• 8: 20 points

Taking it further

And that's it! An extremely simple game with these core rules, but where it comes alive is in the custom rules you can add, typically in the form of giving more cards special abilities. Here are a few of the most common examples:

• Queens become Skips: Playing a Queen skips the next player's turn.
• 2s become Draw Twos: Playing a 2 makes the next player must draw two cards.
• Aces become Reverses: Playing an Ace reverses the order of play; instead of turns progressing clockwise, they now progress counter-clockwise. Playing another Ace reverses it back.

These are the most common special card variants, but there's countless more you can add to the game to make it your own. If you're feeling stuck for ideas, try some of ideas in the next section, attributing them to whichever ranks or suits you like.

Special Card Ideas

• Community Draw: Everyone except the player that played this card must draw cards.
• Deflect: If the current player would need to draw cards, they can play this card to deflect the penalty to the previous player.
• Discard Suit: The player that plays this card can choose a suit to discard all cards of that suit from their hand.
• Distribute Suit: The player that plays this card can choose a suit to give all of the cards of that suit in their hand to another player or split between all players.
• Draw Until Suit: The player that plays this card can choose a suit, and the next player must continually draw cards until they draw a card of that suit.
• Leader Draws: The player with the least number of cards in their hand must draw cards.
• Magic Eye: The player that plays this card can look at another player's hand.
• Nasty Surprise: The player that draws this card must immediately discard it and draw additional cards.
• Redistribute: When played, everyone's hands are collected, shuffled, and redistributed evenly.
• Reflect: If the player holding this card would need to draw cards, they can instead play this card to reflect the penalty back to the player that caused it.
• Skip Everyone: The player that plays this card gets another turn.
• Skip Two: The next two players lose their turn.
• Swap Hands: The player that plays this card can choose another player to swap hands with.
• Targeted Draw: The player that plays this card can choose a player to draw the cards instead of the next player.
• Transparent: Duplicates the effect of the card this is played on.

Tip: Some of these specialties can be quite powerful, especially if you're playing with multiple decks and will have up to 8 cards of each rank.

If playing with a lot of special cards, consider restricting them to a single suit, as well as rank. For example, only the ♣️K is the Targeted Draw card. Other kings are just regular cards.

Variants

In addition to the common rules giving extra abilities to cards, here are a couple of more advanced variants you can try:

• Stacking: If a player plays a card that imposes a penalty on the next player (like a Draw Two or Skip), the next player can play a card of the same rank to defer and stack the penalty on the next player.

  For example, if Alice plays a Draw Two, Bob can play another Draw Two to defer the penalty to Charlie. If Charlie can't play a Draw Two, they must then draw four cards.

• Jump-In: If you're playing with more than one deck, you can try this high octane variant; if a player has an identical card (matching rank and suit) to the top card of the discard pile, they can play it out of turn. Turn then continues from the jumped-in player's position.

• Draw Until Play: If a player can't play a card, instead of only drawing one card, they must draw until they can play a card.