Thoughts on the Nature of War

I've been thinking a lot about War lately, and—wait! No, not real war! The card game, silly! I've been thinking a lot about the card game War because, well, I've been playing a lot of it lately. (Here's where all the people who got here via Google searches click away in disgust.)

OK, so today I did something I've never done before as an adult: I played War without cheating to cause my child to win so I could just get on with my life. Today I decided that Pete and I would just play and play and play and play and play and play and play until one of us won for real, fair and square (me, as it turned out). This will henceforth be known to all as The Game of War That Lasted Longer Than Any Other Game of War in World History. Pete kept exclaiming delightedly, "This is going to go on forever!" (to which I would just mutter, "No, it will just seem that way.") We had three ace wars—and one was a double! We had a war of deuces in which I lost an ace! He was down to 5 cards at one point and then came back into the lead! And more! I guess if you play that long, everything happens.

Anyhow, I had plenty of time to think about the game, and I'm appealing to the blogosphere to help me with a few rules. I mean, if I'm going to play the game straight through the way you're supposed to, I should know what to do. Here are my specific questions:

1. Do you just put your winning pairs (or more, if it was a war) under the rest of your cards so that you never run out, or do you put them in a separate pile and then use them when you run out of cards? If the latter, do you shuffle them? I say yes to that last one.
2. If a war is declared but one player has fewer than 4 cards left, what do you do? (Same question applies to a double war.) I say both players use the same number, whatever is available. If that results in a second war, I guess you would have to turn up the down cards and see who won that way.

Now, beyond the regular rules, my mind began to wander. To wit: What if you gave one player all the reds and the other player all the blacks so it would all start off even? Then just shuffle them up and see what happens. Or, better yet, what if each player could then just choose a card to play for each round? You'd have to have a very good memory to recall what had gone by, but it would certainly turn it from a pure dumb-luck game to a game of strategy.

I hope no one from the U.N. posts a comment.

Comments

[susan]

Rules of War are here http://www.pagat.com/war/war.html. I loved war as a child but not as an adult. Luckily my mom lived with us and loved to play cards with my daughter.

[Karen]

Thank you! When we do a war, we put three cards face-down, then a fourth card face-up.

Andy and I both grew up in households that played A LOT of cards, so of course our kids do too! I would never choose War as my first choice, but my kids like it. that and Go Fish will have to suffice till they're old enough for poker.

[susan]

I think we did 3 down, 1 up also.

I came home from work one day to hear "Mom, Gramma and I are playing poker. It's fun." I think my daughter was about 9. :-) They were playing for beans or buttons or something like that. She plays for real money now - in low stakes friendly games of course.

I bless my mom often for keeping me from feeling guilty about not playing cards or board games with my daughter.

[Karen]

My dad taught me and my sisters how to play poker at an early age. I think it's an important life skill.