Hand & Foot
A complicated card game, with many rules. I don’t recommend learning this one just based on my explanations if you’ve never played. Solely because it has so many damn rules.
Nevertheless, here we are:
Decks: 5-6 → keep jokers
Players: 3 - 6
Shuffle all the decks together including jokers
Once all decks are shuffled together they are placed in two piles in the middle of the table. Each player will pick up a chunk of cards, and deal two piles each containing 11 cards each. Once everyone has made their piles, they will send on pile to the person on their right and one to the left. You will now have 2 piles in front of you from each neighbor.
The remainder of the cards will be placed in two equal-ish piles in the middle.
Now players will pick one of their 11 card piles to be their ‘hand’ and one pile to be their ‘foot’.
Set the foot pile aside, you won't be touching that baby for a while.
Players are now allowed to pick up their hand pile and begin organizing them based on number.
The Play
The oldest person at the table gets to start. Every turn starts with either 1) picking up 2 cards, one from each of the face down piles in the middle OR 2) by picking up 3 of the face up cards from the discard pile and immediately playing the top card. The first 3 turns must do option 1 as there will not be enough cards in the discard pile for a player to choose option 2.
Once a player picks up, they can now either ‘enter the game’ and begin forming books, or they can end their turn by discarding a single card face up in the discard pile.
Each turn players must pick up cards and play a discard to finish their turn.
The goal of the game is to make books. A book is 7 cards of the same number (with or without wilds),
e.g. 8,8,8,8,8,8,8. OR 4,4,4,2,4, Joker, 4
You must have at least 3 cards in a book to start playing them in front of you. Once you start laying down books, you can continue to add cards to the pile until you have a total of 7. Once you have 7 cards, the book is “closed”.
There are two kinds of books, clean or pure books and dirty or unpure books - verbage can change based on who is teaching you the game. A clean book is a book of 7+ cards of all the same number. A dirty book is a book of 7+ cards with 1-2 wild cards in it. Wild cards are jokers and 2’s. You can play up to 2 wild cards in each book. You CANNOT make a book of 3’s or wilds. The only numbers eligible to make a book out of are: 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,J,Q,K,A.
To ‘enter’ the game, players need a specific number of points to start playing.
Round 1: 30
Round 2: 60
Round 3: 90
Round 4: 120
The game is a total of 4 rounds, or however many you get through because its long as shit.
To ‘go out’ a player must close 2 clean books and 3 dirty books as well as using up all of your cards. You can have as many books in progress as you want in front of you, so for example you can have 2 clean books closed and 1 dirty book closed and then 4 more books in progress in front of you. Every card played in front of you will be counted to your total points. Every card left in your hand when someone goes out will be points against you.
As you are playing, you start with your ‘hand’ pile. Once you begin playing cards in front of you and building books, you will have the opportunity to run out of cards in your hand. When this happens, you can finally pick up your foot and begin using those cards. You are NOT allowed to look at your foot cards at any point until you run out of cards from your hand. If you run out of your hand during a turn and haven’t discarded yet, you can pick up your foot and continue playing your turn with your foot cards. If you run out of your hand cards by playing a discard, you can pick up your foot but cannot play any of those cards until your next turn.
Nuances:
To ‘enter’ the game, players need a specific number of points to start playing.
Round 1: 30
Round 2: 60
Round 3: 90
Round 4: 120
Goal of the game is to close as many books as possible and go out first.
To go out: you need 2 pure/clean books and 3 impure/dirty books.
3’s cannot be used to make a book. They are ‘dead’ cards and are either worth 0 points or negative 500 points.
Each turn must start with picking up cards and end with a discard.
You do not need to have cards remaining in your hand. This has been a pain point in the Mattson house. My mother has determined that on your turn, if you have already played through your foot, you do not need to have cards remaining in your hand. For example, if you pick up 2 cards, and are able to play one in your books and discard one, you can do that and still continue playing. You MUST have a discard though. If you are able to play both cards you picked up, tough luck. Pick one to discard and move on.
If a player has decided to draw from the discard pile rather than the face down piles, the player must immediately play the top card and also add two cards to their hand. Otherwise they are unable to successfully draw from the discard pile.
E.g. -- The discard pile is showing an A, a black 3, and a 7. If a player has at least 2 Aces, or an Ace and a wild, they are able to pick up the top three cards and immediately play the Ace in front of them. IF the player has a book of aces in the works, and they do not have 2 additional aces in their hand, this does not count and they are unable to pick up from the discard pile. Players must have two new, unplayed cards in their hand to add any.
Scoring:
2 - 20 points
A - 20 points
4-8 - 5 points
9- k - 10 points
Red 3 - negative 500 points
Black 3 - 0 points
Clean/pure Book: 500 points
Dirty/impure Book: 300 points