Card Clash

How to play

Everyone is dealt a hand from the same deck: animals, countries, cars, tech giants or football clubs. Every card is something real, with real numbers on it. An animal card has its weight, length, top speed and lifespan. A country card has its population, its area and the Olympic medals it has won.

Each round, one player calls a stat, and the call passes round the group so everyone gets a turn. Then everyone picks a card from their hand and plays it face down, all at the same time. You can take your card back or swap it until the last player has played. Then all the cards flip at once, and the best value on the called stat takes the round. For most stats that’s the highest number, but on a few the lowest wins: the quickest 0–100 km/h time, the cheapest price, the best FIFA ranking.

There’s one round for every card in your hand, so with five cards you play five rounds and every card gets used exactly once. The player with the most points at the end wins. If the caller takes too long, a stat is picked at random, and if you don’t play in time, a random card from your hand goes down for you.

The decks

The host picks one deck per game. Each deck has 150 cards, and every figure on them is real and double-checked.

• Animals: weight, length, top speed, lifespan, danger and cuteness.
• Countries: population, area, tourists a year, Olympic medals, FIFA ranking (lowest wins) and record heat.
• Cars: power, top speed, 0–100 km/h (lowest wins), price (lowest wins) and fuel use (lowest wins).
• Tech giants: founded (earliest wins), founder’s age (youngest wins), users, peak value and legend status.
• Football clubs: league titles, continental titles, stadium seats, followers and founded (oldest wins).

Danger, cuteness and legend status are scores from 1 to 10, and the card explains how each one is given. Everything else is a measured number. Every card also carries one short, true fact, which is often the best part of the reveal.

Each language gets its own 150 cards per deck, leaning towards the things people there know. A British English room gets Aston Villa and the Mini, a Turkish room gets Trabzonspor and the Tofaş Şahin. In American English rooms the numbers come in miles, pounds and mph.

The Ace and the Ace-Breakers

Every deck has one Ace. It beats every other card whatever the stat, even on a stat where the lowest number wins. The only cards that can stop it are the Ace-Breakers: a few small, weak cards that lose to nearly everything, but beat the Ace. If the Ace and an Ace-Breaker hit the table in the same round, the Ace-Breaker wins.

The catch is that the Ace isn’t dealt in every game. It’s more likely to turn up the more players there are. Ace-Breakers are always dealt, one in a small game and up to three in a big one. So if you’re holding an Ace-Breaker, you never know whether there’s an Ace out there to catch. When the Ace isn’t on the table, an Ace-Breaker is just an ordinary card, and usually a bad one. The final screen tells you whether the Ace was in play.

Scoring

• Best card: +1. If several cards tie for the best value, all of them score.
• The Ace: +2. It wins the round on any stat.
• Catching the Ace: +3. For an Ace-Breaker played in the same round as the Ace. If more than one Ace-Breaker catches it, they split the 3, rounded up, so two players get 2 each.
• Everyone else: 0 for that round.

Difficulty

The host chooses how much the cards give away. Next to each value, a card can show a hint: weak, middling or strong. The hint tells you how good that number is in the real world, which helps when you can’t say whether 48 km/h is fast for an animal.

• Easy: hints on your own cards and on every card played.
• Normal: hints on your own cards only.
• Expert: no hints at all, and one value on each card in your hand is hidden, so sometimes you’re calling a stat on faith.

An example round

Four friends, the animals deck, five cards each. Priya calls first. She’s holding a cheetah, so she calls top speed.

Sam plays a horse (80 km/h). Ellie has nothing quick, so she gets rid of her rabbit (48 km/h). Priya plays the cheetah at 110 km/h and starts celebrating, until Jack’s card flips: a peregrine falcon, 389 km/h in a dive. Jack takes the round, +1.

Round two, and it’s Jack’s call. He picks cuteness. Ellie plays a hedgehog and Sam a cat, both 9 out of 10. That’s a tie for the best value, so both of them score.

Round three, Sam calls weight and plays the Ace, sure of an easy +2. Then Ellie’s card flips: an Ace-Breaker, a card that would lose to almost anything else in the deck. It caught the Ace, so Ellie gets +3 and Sam gets nothing. Everyone now knows the Ace is gone, and the last two rounds are a straight fight.

Tips

Call the stat for your best card. You only play one card a round, so look for the single card in your hand with a standout number and call that stat. Remember everyone else will throw their best card at it too.

Weak cards have their uses. An old, slow car loses on power and top speed but can win on price or fuel use. A small country can still have a better FIFA ranking than a giant one. Before you write a card off, check the stats where the lowest wins.

Plan for every card. Every card in your hand gets played once, good or bad. When someone calls a stat you can’t win, use that round to get rid of your weakest card and save the good ones for your own call.

Holding the Ace? It wins on any stat, so it’s tempting to save it for a round you’d lose. But the Ace-Breaker holders are waiting for it too, and the longer you hold it, the more likely they still have their Ace-Breakers in hand. Early on, someone may already have thrown theirs away as a weak card.

Holding an Ace-Breaker? It’s a gamble: there may be no Ace at all. Once the Ace has been played, your Ace-Breaker is just a weak card, so put it down on a round you were going to lose anyway.

Free rooms and Guezzer Pass

Free rooms play with the animals or countries deck, five cards each, on normal difficulty. With Guezzer Pass, the host opens every deck, including cars, tech giants and football clubs, hands of 3, 5 or 7 cards, and all three difficulty levels.

When it works best

Card Clash takes 2 to 12 players, and a game lasts about 5 to 10 minutes, so it fits nicely between longer games. Nobody needs to know the numbers in advance. On easy, a child can beat an adult with the animals deck, and football fans and car people will argue over every flip. Each hand is on its own phone, so it plays just as well on a video call as round a table.

Questions people ask

How is it different from classic stat card games?

It starts from the same idea of comparing stats on cards. The differences are that everyone plays at once and face down, so nobody can wait and react, the call passes round the whole group, and the Ace can turn any round upside down.

Are the clubs and companies involved?

No. Football and company cards use names only, with no club crests or company logos. Card Clash isn’t affiliated with, or endorsed by, any club or company in the decks.

Are the numbers real?

Yes. Apart from the 1-to-10 scores, every value is a real figure, checked before it went in. Numbers that keep changing, such as followers, users or the FIFA ranking, are a recent snapshot, so today’s figure may be slightly different.

Can two people play?

Yes. With two it becomes a straight duel, and you take turns calling. The Ace turns up less often in small games, but an Ace-Breaker is always in the mix.