Whenever I play a game with someone new, we quickly realize we have to clarify the rules we’re using beforehand, since so many people have their own varieties. What are some non-standard game rules that you/your family/friends follow?
I’ll start. My family has a rule where we’re not allowed to win on a Wild card. It adds a bit of challenge, and keeps someone from being unbeatable if they play by hoarding wild cards.
We play speed Uno. If you have the identical card as the card that’s played, you can lay it down if you get it to the pile before the person whose turn it is lays down theirs. Play then continues from you.
I had a friend who played this way too and I honestly love it, keeps the game a little more dynamic and fun.
I’m glad I saw this post today - I played with kids at lunch and we used your rule. It adds a bit of speed and keeps everyone paying attention.
If you can’t play on your turn, you keep drawing until you can.
If you combine that rule with the ability to endlessly stack Draw 2 or Draw 4 cards, you have what I think may be the most evil version of Uno that can be played. We called it Thermo-Nuclear Uno (i.e. Mutually Assured Destruction) since you knew that dropping a Draw 4 would almost certainly lead to someone being buried in cards and it might even be you. Even if you manage to dodge the stack, payback is coming and you won’t get lucky every time. I can remember games that we would finally just quit after an hour since no one would ever be able lay down their last card. Merging two decks can make this even more brutal and cuts down on interplay shuffles too.
This is how we play… and it has resulted in some VERY long games.
Once we had some friends over and their 8 year old son was playing with us. He almost won a few times, but his dad did everything in his power to keep him from winning. It was close to midnight before that game ended and it was the first time I considered changing the house rules.
Adults cane be weirdly petty about kids winning games.
I barely beat my aunt and grandma at a game of scrabble when I was around 13 by playing the word “ulu,” a type of Alaskan knife. It let me triple word score and clear my rack. I had no idea it was a valid word, but it was and it pushed me to a win.
The whining and complaining about that win nearly ruined the whole night.
My favorite Scrabble win was using ‘eBay’… before playing that word I looked at the instruction sheet and it specifically said that “words that begin with a capital” are not allowed. There were some sour grapes after that one.
Yeah that was our awful step grandfather who would complain when anyone but him won. As a result, we never played games with him so we can celebrate whenever anyone wins. Unfortunately my idiot brother seems to have taken after my idiot step grandfather, so he doesn’t get to play games with us either.
We have a custom Fuck Uno card that is +12.
Everyone is required to wear a red clown nose during the game… and nothing else!
That sounds like a… fun house.
Strict rules, buddy. If it’s your turn and you ask if it’s your turn, +2. You go out of turn? +2. Everyone’s looking at you weird? Believe it or not, +2.
Doubles and stacking.
I’m not playing with that “pull until you draw a playable card” rule. It can be a wild card, but as a general rule, nah.
I’ve seen a variant that allows consecutive/same cards to be played in one go, so for example 123456. People ended up finishing their cards in very few turns.
My hot take - if you’re not playing with stacking draw cards, you’re playing Uno wrong
Draw Fours and Draw Twos stack. You can play Reverse or Skip in response to Draw cards.
Lots of fun when the draw chain gets up to the 20s and everyone is desperately burning Skips and Reverses to avoid it.
Oh I like this one
if there are only 2 people we get rid of the draw 4 cards
Thats a good rule. Im a total wild sandbagger.
As am I. 20% of the time it works every time.
Jump in and stack 2 on 2.
My personal gripe is mostdenysay 4 on 4 can not be stacked but I disagree.
Even the actual UNO video game has 4+4 stacking (with the modifier. But there are modifiers disabled by default that are default-rules in the physical game)Nah if it’s a draw card it can be stacked is how I play it.
Only thing is you can stack a draw 4 on a draw 2 but not the other way around
I have played Uno once in my life. (I’m not opposed to it. My family just played 500 Rummy when we wanted to play a card game. I never even heard of Uno until the one (edit: or uno) time I played it. My wife recently informed me that this is in some way unusual or, to use her words, “so weird.”)
So I guess my house rules these days (it’s been twenty-some years since that one time) would be “during each turn, desperately search the rulebook to figure out what to do.”
I win or you get eaten by kittens
We only have one house rule: anyone who suggests Uno gets beaten.
I play by challenge and double down/jump in rules.
Challenge rule: if the person plays a wild and the next player decides to challenge it, the person being challenged shows their hand to the next person in line, and if there was another card that could have been played instead, The person who played the card has to either draw two cards, or if it was a wild draw four, they draw the cards instead. However they were wrong, then they draw the penalty cards (so if it was a draw 4 they draw 6, and a standard wild they draw 2)
stacking/double down/jump in: If any player has a card that is identical to the current revealed card, they can jump in, and play that card as long as the next player has not started playing their turn. When a player jumps in, the turn order starts as if they had just had a turn, so it would be the next person from their position. If the card was a card that required a player to draw, the effect of the original card is cancelled, unless the player jumping in was the player that would have received the cards, in which case the effect is stacked and given to the next player(so a draw 4 becomes a draw 8), This effect can continuously be stacked as long as someone else doesn’t jump in or the person doesn’t have an identical card to continue stacking.
