War
Quick Rules
- Deal the whole deck evenly; both players flip their top card at the same time.
- Whoever flips the higher card takes both cards and adds them face down to the bottom of their own pile.
- Tie? Each player deals 3 cards face down and 1 face up - highest of those face-up cards takes everything played in that "war."
- Aces rank highest, above Kings.
- Win by collecting the entire deck; for a timed game, whoever holds the most cards when time's up wins instead.
How to Play (Quick Overview)
- 1
Shuffle the deck and deal all 52 cards face down, 26 to each player - keep your pile face down without looking through it.
- 2
Both players simultaneously flip the top card of their own pile face up.
- 3
Whoever's flipped card ranks higher takes both cards and places them face down at the bottom of their own pile.
- 4
If the two flipped cards tie in rank, it's a "war": each player deals 3 more cards face down, then flips a 4th card face up - whoever's 4th card ranks higher takes every card that was played during the entire war.
- 5
If those two face-up war cards also tie, repeat the war process again, with the pile of cards at stake growing even larger.
- 6
Keep flipping until one player holds all 52 cards, or until an agreed time or round limit is reached.
Objective
Be the player who ends up holding the entire deck, by winning card-for-card comparisons against your opponent.
Setup
Shuffle a standard 52-card deck thoroughly and deal it out completely, giving each of the two players 26 cards. Each player keeps their cards in a single face-down pile without looking through them.
How to Play
Both players flip the top card of their own pile face up, at the same time. Whoever’s card outranks the other (Ace is highest, then King down through 2) takes both cards and places them, face down, at the bottom of their own pile.
When the two flipped cards tie, it triggers a “war”:
- Each player deals 3 more cards face down onto the table, without looking at them.
- Each player then flips a 4th card face up.
- Whoever’s 4th card ranks higher takes everything on the table from that war - both original tied cards, all 6 face-down cards from the war itself, and both of the face-up war cards.
If those two face-up war cards tie again, the war repeats: another 3 cards face down, another card face up each, with the pile of cards at stake growing larger each time it happens.
Play continues, flip after flip, until one player has collected every card in the deck.
Scoring
War has no point scoring - it’s a pure card-collection game. If you’re playing a time-limited version instead of playing to a full conclusion, simply compare how many cards each player is holding when time runs out.
Winning
The player who ends up holding all 52 cards wins the game outright. In a timed version, whoever holds more cards when the agreed time limit is reached is the winner instead.
Variations
- Running out of cards for a war: if a player doesn’t have enough cards left to complete a war (needing 3 face-down and 1 face-up), common house rules either let them play all their remaining cards as their stake, or rule them eliminated from the game immediately - agree on this before playing, since the standard rules don’t cover it.
- Egyptian War / Egyptian Ratscrew: a distinct, faster-paced relative of War that adds slapping rules for doubles and other card sequences - different enough that it’s covered as its own separate game.
- Multi-player War: some groups adapt War for 3 or more players, dealing the deck evenly and having all players flip simultaneously each round.
History
War is one of the simplest card games played in the English-speaking world, requiring no decisions from either player beyond flipping a card - which makes tracing its exact origin difficult. It likely developed gradually as a children’s game sometime before the 20th century, without any single identifiable inventor, growing out of the broader European tradition of simple card-comparing games.
Fun Fact
Because War requires zero strategic choices from either player, it’s sometimes used as a teaching example in mathematics of a game whose outcome is determined entirely by the initial shuffle - the result is, in principle, fixed the moment the deck is dealt, even though neither player can know it in advance.