Up or Down?
In Up or Down?, you build ascending and descending rows of cards, trying to place as many cards of the same color in a row as possible.
To set up, shuffle the deck, deal each player a hand of three cards, reveal six cards and place them in a ring from low to high, then split the deck in half and place these piles in the center of the ring, one face up and the other face down. The deck contains cards numbered 1-126, although you adjust the deck based on the number of players.
On a turn, place a card from your hand between the surrounding numbers in the ring, e.g., 37 between 34 and 52, then you take one of the cards surrounding your just-placed card and add it to your display, either starting a new row or adding to an existing row. (If your card is lower than the lowest number or higher than the highest, place it between the lowest and highest card, then add one of those cards to your display.)
You can have up to three rows in your display. When you place a second card in a row, you must decide whether the cards in that row will be placed in ascending order or descending, and you stack the cards accordingly. If you cannot or do not want to place a card in a row — following the ascending or descending order you set up — take all the cards in a row of your choice, flip them face down into a personal discard pile, then start a new row with your current card.
To end your turn, draw a card from either pile inside the ring. Once all the cards in the game have been played, score your rows. For each row, multiply the number of cards in that row by the number of cards in the most common color in that row. For each card in your discard pile, score 1 point. Whoever has the most points wins.
Number of players: 2 - 6
Game duration: 17 mn
Complexity: 1 / 5
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Play Up or Down? and 1194 other games online.
No download necessary - play directly from your web browser.
With your friends and thousands of players from the whole world.
Free.
Rules summary
Overview
Up or Down? is similar to Racko, though you now have three racks, and they can go in either ascending or descending order. The way cards are drawn and discarded is also different.
Setup
| # of Players | Card Range (short game) | Card Range (long game) |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 1-42 | 1-54 |
| 3 | 1-60 | 1-78 |
| 4 | 1-78 | 1-102 |
| 5-6 | 1-96 | 1-126 (all cards) |
Each player gets a hand of three cards. The remaining are placed in two piles: one face up and one face down. Six cards are placed face up around the decks--this is called the display.
Gameplay
On your turn, do the following actions in order:
- Place a card from your hand into the display (the cards around the deck). The card must be placed in numerical sequence.
- Take a card from the display adjacent to the card you just put down.
- Place that card on one of your columns.
- Draw a new card from either the face-up pile or the face-down pile and add it to your hand.
When you place a second card on a column, that determines whether the column will be ascending or descending. You want the first card of each column to be at one of the two extremes.
If you cannot or do not want to place a card in a column, you can discard an entire column and begin a new one. Each card in your discard pile will score you 1 point at the end of the game.
Turns continue until all players no longer have any cards in their hands (even after both the face-up and face-down piles are depleted).
Scoring
The score of each column is the number of cards of the most frequent color times the number of cards in the column. The score of each column added together plus the number of cards in your discard pile is your total score.