Nertz - A Fast Paced Card Game for Lots of People

I learned this game years ago at a neighbors house. They had a piece of plywood on their table and had about 20 people playing this game at once. They had tons of decks of "Rook" cards to play this game. I guess you could play it with regular cards but since they used "Rook" cards, that is how we play it.  

Every time I go into a second hand store, I check out the game section. Just today, I found another deck of "Rook" cards and they are different from all the decks you see here. I don't know how often they change the design but I have at least 6 or 7 different designed "Rook" card sets. 

For the decks that have the same background, we took a Sharpie marker and marked the back of the cards with a dot or a star in different colors so that no one will get confused with sorting the cards after the game is over. 

To set up the game, you put a pile of 13 to your left and then lay out four cards all face down. You deal for the person on your left as this keeps cheating down. 


Once everyone has their pile of 13 and their pile of four in the middle, you start by flipping the top card of the 13 over and then the four across. The goal is to get rid of your pile of 13 cards. 

To do this, you flip over the four cards and start by putting any number 1 cards in the middle. Once a number 1 card is played, anyone in the group can play a 2 on top of it. The cards in the middle are played in color sequence so all the cards in one pile have to be the same color. 

There are several ways to make points. Each card that you play in the middle count as a point and each time you are the one to complete a set of 14 cards, you take that set and place it by you and when that round is finished, you get 10 extra points for finishing a pile. 

If you are the first to get rid of your pile of 13 or "Nertz" pile, then you get all the points left in everyone else's "Nertz" pile. For example, if I you went out and I had four cards left in my "Nertz" pile, and they were a 5, 11, 6 and 2. I would tell you to add 24 points to your score. 

If you are playing with a large group of people, then those points can really add up. You can stack cards from your "Nertz" pile onto the pile of four you have before you but those piles can't have the same color on top of each other and have to go down consecutively in number. For example: If you have a red 5, you can put any other color of 4 on it but you can't put a red four on it. Then you go down from there.

Once you flipped all your piles of four over and your "Nertz" pile over and you can't play, you take the rest of your deck and start flipping them over in counts of three. You can only play that top card of the three. If you play that card, then you can play the next card beneath it. Similar to solitaire.

You can see the piles in the center where everyone has been playing. You play those consecutively in the same color. 

Often times, someone will have something in their pile of four or on their "Nertz" pile that will help you play something on your pile. I usually "cough" their name and number jokingly but the girls will often just take the card off for them and play it. It gets funny and is a REALLY faced paced game. It may be too much for little one's but gets quite competitive for certain spots as people race to get their card on something first.

Once someone has finished their "Nertz" pile of 13, the game ends for that round. You flip all the cards that have been played over in the middle and then sort them by deck. Count each card played in the middle and each card count as a point for you. 

For example: If I had 15 cards given back to me after they have been sorted from being played in the middle, I get 15 points added to my score. If I have any completed piles of 14 (Which means that I put the number 14 on the top of the pile and collected that pile from the center of the table,) I get 10 points added to my score for each pile of 14 I finished off during the game. 

Then everyone adds up the number of points left in their "Nertz" piles and gives that amount of points to the winner who was the first to get rid of their pile of 13. 

Once all those points are added up, you shuffle and deal for the player on your left. You continue playing that way until one player reaches 500 points or what ever number you choose. Sometimes if time is short, we go with a lesser number but 500 is the standard.

Hope you enjoy this game as much as we do!