Aggravation — rules card

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Aggravation 3 to 6 players · two 52-card packs plus four jokers — 108 cards THE IDEA • Eleven cards each, and eleven rounds. Each round has a CONTRACT you must lay down before you can start getting rid of cards. • Go out first and everybody else counts what they are still holding. Lowest total after the last round wins. THE FREE ROUND • Before the first turn of every round, going once round the table, each player may swap ONE card with the top of the discard pile. • No drawing, no going down, no stealing during it — one card for one card, and your hand is the same size afterwards. A TURN • Draw exactly one: the top of the pile, or the top discard. • Then you may GO DOWN if you can make this round's contract, and lay off spare cards onto melds already on the table. • Then discard exactly one. Every turn ends with a discard; there is no passing. • Once you are down you may not throw a card that would lay off somewhere. The opponents obey that too. At Sprout only, ⚙️ Settings can turn this off. BURIAL — THE RULE THAT SURPRISES PEOPLE • A discard is BURIED the moment another card lands on it, and a buried card can never be taken by anybody, ever. • So a steal, which lifts the top card off, can expose a card that was buried a second ago — and it is takeable again. STEALING • When somebody discards, a player who is not on turn may STEAL it. It costs a penalty card off the pile as well, so a steal is always two cards. • There are only so many steals a round, and the game tells you how many you have used. SCORING • Cards left in your hand score against you. Low total wins the whole game. • A player who fails to make a contract plays it again next round while everybody else moves on. WORDS THIS GAME USES Contract — What this round demands before you may lay anything down — two sets of three, a set and a run, and so on. It changes every round and it gets harder. Set — Three or more cards of the same rank. Suit does not matter. Run — Three or more cards in order in the same suit. Going down — Laying your contract on the table for the first time. Until you do, you cannot get rid of anything. Laying off — Adding a card to a meld already on the table — yours or anybody else's. Buried — A discard that another discard has covered. Gone for good. Wild — A joker, and in this game a two as well. A meld may not be more than half wilds. WHERE THESE CAME FROM The owner's household rules, transcribed in docs/aggravation.md. This is a contract rummy played in one family for years. There is no published authority for it and this card does not pretend otherwise. The family game is the reference. w.richardpringle.com/games/aggravation/ ▲ FOLD ▼ ▲ FOLD ▼ ▲ FOLD ▼ FOLD & TEAR